The first controversy involving the production happened over a year ago when the cast of the adaptation was announced. The differences between the characterization of the characters in the anime and the actors selected are notable, which led many fans to protest and complain on the internet. I confess that I wasn’t too bothered by this, because I knew that the intention of this film was to bring Death Note to the West part of the globe and turn the story – a little bit – more “Americanized”.

A year has passed and finally the time for the premiere has arrived. As usual, I waited a day for my expectations to pass (thank goodness I did, phew!) and went to watch it.

Light Turner (Nat Wolff) is an intelligent student who finds a notebook with the following phrase, right at the beginning: “whoever has their name written on its pages will die”. Under the influence of a god of death, known as Ryuk (Willem Dafoe), a.k.a “the owner of the notebook”, Turner begins to kill the criminals that appear in the media, becoming a vigilante of the modern era.

It is impossible to watch the film without comparing it to the anime series, produced by Madhouse and directed by Tetsurō Araki – which had already been inspired by the manga version, written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata.

We can already notice the differences in the first few minutes, because the story now takes place in Seattle, United States, and is set in an American school that completely fits the known stereotypes: cheerleaders, and bullies who humiliate the “nerds” while stealing their money (that teen movie summary). In addition, Light’s mother is dead, he has no sister and most importantly: IT IS VERY EXAGGERATED. He has a crisis when Ryuk first appears that would make anyone cringe!

Does the film have its positive points? Perhaps the soundtrack and the dark photography deserve to be highlighted, but as for the plot itself… Well, nothing defines it better than “an adaptation that left something to be desired.”

The attempt to blend a new story with an existing one and the way the characters were explored in a shallow way with their essence changed made the film weak and somewhat predictable. Perhaps the experience was different for those who were not familiar with the anime and/or manga; however, I believe I represent those who had already watched/read it when I say, without a shadow of a doubt, that it was torture to watch it until the end.

Despite this general opinion, the authors of the anime praised the version of the work and said that now many people who had not yet heard of Death Note can have access to it. In fact, Netflix itself has the 37 episodes of the Japanese production available in addition to the film. It is worth mentioning that this story has also been explored in other live-action films (2006, 2008, 2016), video games, a drama (2015) and even became a musical (2015).

• This post was originally posted on the website Travessia Cult in 2017. You may check the original post clicking here.

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