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This Week in Anime - Can Anime Fans Enjoy Netflix's Death Note Movie?




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DmonHiro





PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2017 12:28 pm Reply with quote
"Sherlock's a bad show"... and... stopped reading.

In all seriousness, this movie is bad, but it's the kind of bad that's more annoying to me. The cast were really doing their best. They weren't phoning it in. But the script....
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FackuIkari



Joined: 31 Dec 2013
Posts: 411
Location: Argentina
PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2017 1:18 pm Reply with quote
I like the idea of a guy like this Light getting the Death note, someone smart but without a god complex like Yagami until that is pushed by the ones around him into becoming Kira.... buuuut then the execution wasn't consistent with that character since for a "smart guy" he makes a loooot of stupid decisions and he mostly acts by pure sentiment, not because he thinks abou it.

I think that's the real problem, not that it wasn't like the source material but it was bad by itself like a lot of movies, badly written characters, bad script, the acting was just ok at best and the pacing was all over the place.

Definetly is not as bad a Dragon Ball Evolution, I really don't get why people say that, you can see that they didn't gave a flying f**k in DBE, in this one you see they tried something, they failed but it is there

Also, the Final Destination deaths were cool


Last edited by FackuIkari on Tue Aug 29, 2017 1:29 pm; edited 2 times in total
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FilthyCasual



Joined: 01 Jun 2015
Posts: 2348
PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2017 1:26 pm Reply with quote
spoiler[The parkour chase scene was incredibly disappointing. For one, it was overlong, and for two, it replaces a potential mastermind battle of wits with a generic mid-action movie cut scene. I wasn't expecting much from Light, but wow, what a way to squander L. At least it wasn't a car chase where Light furiously scrawled police and FBI names into the death note while Mia drove and they chased him, causing them to crash their cars in increasingly destructive and elaborate ways or something, though.]

It definitely could've been a better movie, but it certainly wasn't a boring movie. Man, that head exploding like a watermelon.
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relyat08



Joined: 20 Mar 2013
Posts: 4125
Location: Northern Virginia
PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2017 1:32 pm Reply with quote
I love the original Death Note anime. Don't know if I'd say it was "smart"(smarter than a lot of people give it credit for, certainly, and far too many people miss the point of the final 1/3), but it's very clever and good. But I also thought this movie was super dumb AND entertaining, so I think your evaluation might be a little off. It probably depends more on what stage of the fandom you are in. Also, someone who thinks everything is the most serious thing in the world is probably going to like BOTH this AND the original, based on my interactions over the last 4 days.
Also, I think Steve is under-estimating the Light fandom. It doesn't matter how you paint him as a character, HE is not what his fandom wants to be, the Death Note is what they want. You don't have to make Light cool, smart, endearing, inspirational, or any other positive adjective I can think of. All you need is a book that can kill people and the fandom will be salivating for a chance to obtain one. The original never intended to make Light a character that people would aspire to be. The creators were, via their own words, baffled by the fact that people thought he was anything other than a horrible villain.

Anyway, yeah, this movie is bad, but it's entertaining, the original is good, and also entertaining, and the Light fandom isn't actually the Light fandom, they are a bunch of people who really want the power to kill people they don't like.
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jroa



Joined: 08 Aug 2012
Posts: 546
PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2017 1:38 pm Reply with quote
This was just another live action adaptation of anime/manga that neither gives fans what they want to see nor does it manage to successfully appeal to a more mainstream crowd in the process. It is enjoyable in the sense discussed here, I guess, but I'm not really a big fan of that approach myself.
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ParaChomp



Joined: 10 Dec 2010
Posts: 1018
PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2017 3:22 pm Reply with quote
This oozes sarcasm.
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Lostlorn Forest



Joined: 03 Apr 2014
Posts: 544
Location: USA
PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2017 3:56 pm Reply with quote
What set me apart from many other skeptical fans is that I didn't have a problem with the casting. Whitewashing/Westernizing aside, I actually thought the casting was spot on for the vision they were going for. That being said, what made the movie lackluster in every aspect was the script and how they wrote the characters. They abandoned everything that made Light's character. Light is no longer arrogant, megalomaniacal, or sociopathic, traits that define his character. Rather than the continuous lines he crosses in his pursuit to become a god, they've chosen to make him a regular guy who gets tangled in his own mess. The only similarity is his hair color.

A factor that made the manga so interesting was the public anonymity of Kira's identity and Light's mind games with L. But they cancel those out instantly when out of the blue L just calls him out as Kira. The journey is intended to be the meat of the manga, so much that spoiler[L's death is the actual endgame.]

More and more in movies it's being proven that the script is the most important factor, but is the one that's attended to last - the surface appearance is what they care about. Many filmmakers are no longer interested in putting effort into a good story, their main concern first and foremost is what will rake in the most cash.
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will.babe



Joined: 29 Aug 2017
Posts: 21
PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2017 5:06 pm Reply with quote
I thought the movie was really really good. the actors did a great job and I think I like this Light more than in the anime. you guys need to watch this without constantly reffering to the anime or else you're just biased
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CatSword



Joined: 01 Jul 2014
Posts: 1489
PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2017 6:11 pm Reply with quote
will.babe wrote:
I thought the movie was really really good. the actors did a great job and I think I like this Light more than in the anime. you guys need to watch this without constantly reffering to the anime or else you're just biased


Did you read the article at all? The authors clearly separated/looked at this Death Note multiple times in the context of being a standalone bad B-movie. Which is more respect than I can give it.
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BadNewsBlues



Joined: 21 Sep 2014
Posts: 6244
PostPosted: Tue Aug 29, 2017 10:46 pm Reply with quote
FackuIkari wrote:


Also, the Final Destination deaths were cool


Cool but silly and obnoxious enough the movie comes off as a dark comedy at times eventhough it's not supposed to be.
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Lady Multi



Joined: 11 Dec 2004
Posts: 675
PostPosted: Wed Aug 30, 2017 7:44 am Reply with quote
I liked the movie pretty Okay. It wasn't the most epic of all history but it was fine for what it was. Adaptions change stuff; I accepted that early on.

Ryuk being the constant thing of Death Note's entire iteration was the only thing I didn't really want screwed with and I think his representation was quite great.
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#838774



Joined: 27 May 2015
Posts: 158
PostPosted: Thu Aug 31, 2017 9:19 pm Reply with quote
It had good production value and a pretty good cast. The direction they went with Light and his subsequent script was just really poor, though. The whole scene with him meeting Ryuk was pretty hard to watch. His entire characterization was like the stereotype presented in /r/cringeanarchy... just really a pitiful deviation from the original source material as it added nothing in terms of connecting with the audience.

Some of L's mannerisms seemed pretty forced and maybe they would've been better off dropping or adapting some of that, too, but overall I feel like Light was definitely the worst part of this movie.

I'm pretty open to reinterpreting stories and enjoyed the recent Ghost in the Shell take despite the fanrage it triggered. But this? There just wasn't a lot to find praise for here.
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