DEATH NOTE (2017) | Gryphon's First Impressions

-SOME SPOILERS MAY FOLLOW!!!-

I must say, I'm not much of an Anime fan. But if I were to pick a favorite, it would be Death Note, the story of a young man named Light who finds a notebook that allows him to kill anyone he wants just by writing down their name, begins a crusade to eliminate the world from all criminals and ends up pursued by a detective known only as "L". The minute I saw the first episode, I was hooked. I loved the show and I even loved the live-action films from Japan. Since then, talks of an American adaptation have been numerous with some even saying that Zac Efron would play the part of Light.

Well, now we finally have our American live-action Death Note movie. And...I didn't...not like it.

Let's start with some positives first.

First, my favorite character from the Anime/Manga, Ryuk, played here by Willem Defoe, was the best thing in the movie, hands down. His delivery is spot on and I love how he was portrayed on screen. In the past live-action films, Ryuk was a CGI character. But here, Ryuk is played by a real actor (Jason Liles) in a costume, with Defoe providing the voice and wearing motion capture dots on his face to enhance his appearance. Most of Ryuk's scenes have him obscured in darkness so you can't see the full effect, but on the other hand it does make him look more terrifying.

Keith Stanfield plays the genius detective L. For the most part, he has the right mannerisms that L would have, he eats a lot of candy, hunches over when he walks and talks in the same way L does in the anime. However, this L is a lot more aggressive in getting the results he wants, he goes so far as to chase down Light by car and foot, regularly having outbursts and even carrying a gun.

I thought the design for the Death Note itself was a unique update. And the score for the movie was pretty good, it has the overall haunting and foreboding tone that Death Note should.

Now for some complaints.

Similar to my views on Power Rangers, Death Note uses a few songs in it that are either distracting or unfitting to the scene, such as in the opening, the ending and the climax, which in my opinion is the worst offender of all. Death Note and 80's rock don't mix well at all. That's when we needed the intense orchestra and choir from the Anime, not songs you'd find being used on a CW show.

The Death Note in this film has a few new rules in it, which I interesting.
But there are a few big flaws I found. Light uses the notebook to influence a character named Watari to do his bidding before killing him. The rules of the book are that you need a persons face in your mind and their real name to kill them, anyone who knows the character of Watari would know that the name 'Watari' is an alias to protect his identity, and I'm pretty sure the Death Note doesn't work like that!
And then Light threatens to write Ryuk's name in the note book and kill him. But guess what? RYUK'S NAME IS ALREADY WRITTEN IN THE NOTE BOOK! He should have been dead awhile ago after that one guy wrote that warning about not trusting him. So the part where Ryuk says "There's 4 letters in my name and the most anyone's ever gotten where 2." makes no sense at all. A Shinigami shouldn't even be able to be killed by a Death Note anyway!

But by far, the biggest fault in this movie is the handling of the character, Light.

Nat Wolff plays Light Turner (instead of 'Yagami', because 'murica), but if you were to compare him the character from the original, he's doomed to suffer in comparison.
Light is a character with a genius intellect, fed up with how crime-filled and rotten the world is, he takes it upon himself to clean up the world and rule it as the new god 'Kira'. By any. means. necessary.
Here, Light is way more hesitant to kill anyone who stands in his way. In fact he's a big freakin' scaredy cat, he screams and panics like a little girl the first time he meets Ryuk, while it was hilarious to see it just seems out of character for Light.
In fact a lot of Light's more evil actions come from the character Mia (our Misa Amane stand in played by Margaret Qualley), she's the one who pulls of more of the extreme actions that Kira would do and pressures Light to kill innocents. So she acts more like the original Light/Kira than Light in the movie does. In a sense it's like the original character has been split into 2 characters for this movie.
Also, Light and Mia fall in love way too quickly, even by movie standards.

That being said...

When I finished watching this movie, I found myself conflicted. I couldn't really bring myself to hate the story surrounding these characters. As an adaptation of the original Manga/Anime, it falls short on so many areas. On the other hand, similar to my views on the 1998 Godzilla, if this movie were to exist as it's on separate entity with the characters having different names, then maybe it would have gotten a better reception. When looking at it as a spin-off in the Death Note universe, it takes the weight of expectations from fans off a bit, even though they probably would still find things to complain about.

Overall, as a fan of Death Note, I did not completely dislike this adaptation of it. In fact I actually found myself watching it again after my first viewing, and I could probably watch it again sometime in the new future.
Death Note fans should definitely keep an open mind when viewing it. That is, if they have a Netflix account.

Till next time, I have been your host Gryphon

and I hope you've enjoyed your time here in my lair.

So long...

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