Death Note: Post Mortem

I watched Death Note, the Netflix Original, and well it was not that bad. Save for the ending it was alright. If it hadn't been an adaption of one of the most famous and deep animes of all time, I would have written it off as just another movie with a good premise but poor execution.

The premise of the movie follows some of the shows cliff notes, save for some names, (we're in America now, for some reason, not that it affects the plot at all). Light Turner finds the notebook of the shinigami, (literal translations, death god, death spirit), Ryuk. Light decides he will rid the world of crime. He attracts the attention of interpol and the mysterious detective known as L.

My peers JBurns, and WSills gave their thoughts on the movie. While I agree with mostly agree with what they said and I suggest you read them. I'm going to look more at why I think this movie fails as an interpretation and will heavily pull on the anime for comparison.

Almost anyone who has read the manga, watched the anime, or watched the Wisecrack video on Death Note can tell you it focuses heavily on asking what is justice. Each character has a different take and understanding on what justice is. The show then heavily takes a Socratic take on the various perspectives of justice. Rather than telling us what justice is, the show rather tests the ideals of “justice”. It's obvious you couldn't put that much dialogue on such a topic in a less than two hour movie. The writers clearly understood that, but they went the wrong way about it. They hand waved it away instead of the better but slightly harder way of ADAPTING the themes. In case you're curious as to what the movie did with these deep ideas, they just gave one sentence on the topic with a very Original idea. “There is no such thing as good and evil, only bad and worse”, which we've never seen a Netflix Original ever.

In it's place for central themes we have, we, I don't really know. If you look online you will find a joke that says the central theme is “Don't give your crazy psycho girlfriend a book that can kill people”, as ridiculous as that sounds that is the strongest/most obvious theme of the movie. I embarrassingly forgot to take notes while watching the film, so I'm working from memory. I had three main ideas as to what the themes could be. The first could be that it was making a criticism on the U.S. gun safety laws. The only thing I have to go on is the prominence of the American flag in the movie, but this idea would fail since we have nothing to compare the usage of the Death Note to, the cops use state issued guns so maybe that's the theme. The other idea I had was maybe it was talking about how power will always corrupt people. This fails since only Mia (the American Misa) gets corrupted while Light (unlike in the original) stays a “good” person. The only other thing is a commentary on the abuse of authority. This one is the strongest, we actually have a few scenes that bring seem to talk about that idea, but it's not strongly conveyed enough to convince me of this theory.

In my opinion a good adaption that shows the writers really cared about the series is proper theming and characters. I feel like there is definitely more wiggle room on adapting a central theme, after all many people will have a different idea on what the central theme is. The characters however are something that should be kept very consistent to the original. How did the movie do? bad, really really bad. At the start of the anime and through the stint where Light gives up the notebook we can get a decent understanding of what Light was like before the notebook corrupted him. He was a logical, intelligent, character of a strong moral position, hesitant to even try the notebook, and had a great respect of the law. The movie version of Light is the exact opposite of this, and never changes. He runs heavily on emotions and hormones, quickly revealing the notebook to Mia because he has a crush on her. In the original series Light would plan several steps ahead and never second guess himself. While we did see movie Light use on or two clever tricks, he wanted to pull out of using the notebook as soon as things got out of hand.

I feel like we should talk about L now, he seems to have been ignored during this entire paper. L is probably the most accurate portrayal of a central character. We see him be weird and eccentric, but most importantly in this case, we see him make logical deductions and use critical thinking. That is until Watari dies and he becomes an irrational emotional character. Instead of losing to an unavoidable trap like in the anime/manga. He loses to a cook knocking him out because he was too stupid to not think that the person might support Kira.

Mia is most likely supposed to be based on Misa from the anime/manga. I can only guess this because she is Light's girlfriend shares a similar name. Personality wise she is nothing alike. I think like most people the writers hated Misa and decided to change her. While I have nothing against making Misa less annoying or less pointless I think they did it too much. Mia is far closer to the anime Light. Manipulative, driven, ruthless, and plotting, she even gets corrupted by the note instead of Light. To a point I think making her the main character would have been a better change of pace.

Interesting thing about these characters is how tightly the are tied to each other. If one of them changes they all do. Light and L are the clear rivals and the two sides of the same coin, while Misa/Mia is the foil to Light. I think by trying to make Light the hero and a “relatable character” they ruined the whole cast and the show as a side result. I don't think a character needs to be sympathetic to be likable or relatable. The anime Light was repulsive, but we all rooted for him while we also cheered at him losing.

I don't think the movie was awful, sure it wasn't great, it was rushed, and I don't think the team behind it cared about the franchise so much as how much money they could get fans of the franchise to pay. As an adaptation however; this movie is terrible. It changes things that don't need to be changed, and things that should've been changed were ignored. I think the root of the problem was a lack of love and passion more than a lack of talent.

Little Evil

This week I watched the Netflix original movie Little Evil, and I recommend it. It features Adam Scott from Parks and Recreation, and Evangeline Lily from Ant-man. I have to say that while the horror film centered around demon children and the antichrist are quite common, this doesn’t strike you as a true horror film, in fact it is listed as a horror/comedy. I can tell you that it is definitely more comedy than horror, and so even if horror isn’t your thing I think you would find it in you to like this movie.

What I want to talk about this week is the mise-en-scéne in a particular scene from Little Evil. As a reminder, because as students we all have too many things happening in our heads, mise-en-scéne is the staging of a scene. The scene below is what we are analyzing:

In this scene the main characters are at a birthday party for their child. Within this scene we see the normal signs of a birthday party: a child running in the background, parents talking and supervising their children, and presents on the table by said parents. Looking deeper shows the child all alone on the swing, isolating themselves from the party, implying that maybe they don’t feel comfortable there, or that they don’t have any friends there or even perhaps that they don’t actually know any of the children there.

The another thing is the parents with alcohol; maybe my birthday parties were just lame, but my parents never supplied alcohol to the parents of my friends at a get together that involved children. This could imply that whoever set up this party wanted the other parents to like them, or that they imagined that it would encourage more people to bring their children to the party.

If we look next to the parents we see a small pile of what look to be presents. I could infer from the little amount of presents that maybe people didn’t know what to get the birthday child, they were invited last minute, or didn’t know whether they were going. It is courtesy to bring a gift to a party you are invited to, especially a birthday party. 

If you look at the furthest background of this still, you see a cemetery. Throwing a birthday party next to a cemetery is not something you see very often. Mixed with the child who is playing alone, it gives this scene a very depressing feeling, even though it is supposed to be positive. I mean, who throws a party next to cemetery? Plus, if you look at the faces of the women in the foreground they look shocked, or like they were not expecting the location of the party perhaps, or something the man talking to them might have said.

There are many things that can be inferred from a single still of a movie or TV show. Not many people pay attention to the extra things that truly make up a scene in a movie because they are too transfixed on what is happening with the main characters. So if you decide not to watch this movie I at least hope you give the mise-en-scéne in the pictured scene a thought or two. Let me know what you notice, or what you think is happening in this scene. If you get the chance and are looking for a movie that is a comedy I would recommend this one, but that is my personal opinion and the fact that I thoroughly enjoy Adam Scott.