I genuinely don’t understand why Western adaptations always have to make unlikeable characters sympathetic - it’s not like we’re incapable of rooting for antiheroes. Nobody has to convince him to kill people, and there was something wonderfully refreshing about such an openly immoral character.Īnnoyingly, the film warps Light into a bullied weirdo with a Batman-style motivation his mother was killed by a criminal, and Light’s rightful thirst for revenge sparks his killing spree.
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He is an egotistical sociopath who truly believes in the nobility of his actions, and will stop at nothing to achieve his agenda. In the anime, Light is popular, smart, and utterly ruthless.
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DEATH NOTE NETFLIX FONT SERIES
Of course, it’s impossible to distill a long, complicated television series into a single movie, so in the process, L and Light are simplified.īut I took issue with the way Light was depicted here. The anime series was a Machiavellian game of cat and mouse, with the two brilliant strategists constantly plotting to outwit each other, planning their moves several steps in advance. L is desperate to find out who Kira is and put a stop to the killings, and Light’s own father, a police officer, is also on the case, unaware of his son’s involvement. They operate together, killing criminals under the name of “Kira.”īut Light is hindered by a police investigation led by the enigmatic and eccentric “L,” teenage genius. From his initial uncertainty, Light slowly morphs into a mass murderer with messianic delusions, egged on by his sociopathic girlfriend Mia. You can even choose the exact cause of death, but there are rules and limitations. Write a person’s name in the Note, and that person dies. After all, it is a nation exceptionally good at producing disillusioned young white men who spend a lot of time on the internet before they decide to kill people.Death Note tells the story of high-school student Light Turner, who is given a “Death Note” by a shinigami (god of death), Ryuk. (After Light styles himself as the murder-god Kira, there's literally a forum where users post the names and photos of people they'd like Kira to take on next.) In that sense, maybe Adam Wingard's Death Note really is an American story. The American version of Light is an angry, disillusioned young white guy who might as well be a faceless Redditor who gains the power to kill people via forum posts. As a result, this Death Note is something far less interesting, but didn't have to be. It's worth noting that director Adam Wingard has explicitly acknowledged this, but the thematic underpinnings of an American Death Note just aren't as compelling, or at least, not delved into enough to make it so. In moving the setting to America, that cultural symbolism is lost. "The idea of spirits living in words is an ancient Japanese concept," Kaneko told Wired in 2008, directly referring to the Death Note's power to kill via writing. Multiple Japanese films based on the series have been produced over the last ten years, and the director of the first two, Shūsuke Kaneko, had this to say about the franchise: There's also a cultural aspect to consider.
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But in his desire to be seen for his actions, Light attracts the attention of L ( Lakeith Stanfield), a strange but brilliant private detective who has the backing of the FBI, and also is followed by Ryuk (Willem Defoe), a god of death who created the Death Note almost entirely to screw with humans.
Light, whose father is a cop, then uses his newfound power to begin imposing his own version of grim justice on the world, killing the criminals of the world with a stroke of his pen, and styling himself as Kira, an omnipotent lord of murder. The plot involves Light Turner (Nat Wolff), an angry young nerd who finds a supernatural notebook called the Death Note that-with extensive rules and conditions recorded on the first few pages-allows him to kill anyone by picturing their face and writing their name on its pages. Death Note is a letdown on both fronts-as an adaptation, it's mediocre, and as an Adam Wingard film, it's frustratingly straightforward. (Which you can also find on Netflix.) Second, it's the latest film from Adam Wingard, who has made a name for himself making critically acclaimed, subversive horror films that are consistently surprising and satisfying. The new film, now streaming on Netflix, has two really great hooks from two totally different angles: First, it's an adaptation of an extremely popular manga by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, which in turn was adapted into an extremely popular anime series.