But the laziness of this adaptation, particularly in such a charged cultural climate, struck me in a different way. “The Departed,” for example, leans so hard into its Boston setting that it becomes a completely new thing altogether.
Neither does the implication that whiteness is synonymous with the American experience.įor me, that was what made this more egregious than a lot of remakes of Asian films. In which case, genre stylings notwithstanding, whiteness - and a lack of Japaneseness - become some of the only notable ways that this film differentiates itself from the previous iterations of this property. Sure, Light is a lot dumber in this version, and there’s something intrinsically American about how he can’t help but tell his crush about his magic book that kills people (intrinsic to the rules of American high school movies, at least), but the vanilla treatment suggests that race/culture/identity isn’t important to this story. There were definitely attempts to change the story for its new setting, and Light’s relationship with the (increasingly sociopathic) Mia character is an interesting way to shrink a mammoth mythology down to a feature-length installment, but the original “Death Note” is so culture-specific, and it seemed like Wingard and his team decided to ignore that altogether rather than grapple with what it meant, and how it might be altered. Setting the story in Seattle and not having anyone Asian American play the role of Light Yagami, now Light Turner, removed that context.ĭavid: Agreed. For example, “Akira” is about post-war Japan, even though it’s set in “Neo Tokyo.” In particular with “Death Note,” the concept of a death god is very common in Japanese lore, and therefore comes with a set of expectations or rules. This story, like many taken from the most popular anime or manga, has cultural significance to Japan. Hanh: This version of “Death Note” was frustrating, for many of the reasons you mentioned in your review, and the whitewashing just added that extra layer of insult. Hanh, am I off-base about this one, or did it bug you, too? Why go through all the trouble of setting “Death Note” in America if you’re not going to set it in the real one? It’s the most glaring symptom of a film that utterly fails to investigate its premise and wastes a handful of goofy performances and a gluttonous degree of hyper-violence in the service of a total dead end. The only reason to take such a uniquely Japanese story and transplant it to Seattle is to explore how its thorny moral questions might inspire different answers in an American context, so for this retread to all but reduce America to its whiteness indicates an absence of context more than anything else. In this case, it pointed toward an inability or unwillingness to meaningfully engage with the source material. Whitewashing is never a purely aesthetic act it’s always an indication of a deeper rot.
However, in the film, he is killed by Light in a car accident after L's funeral. During the 26th episode, the death of Yotsuba member Reiji Namikawa is depicted as either a heart attack or something that causes bleeding from the mouth.There is a new scene involving Light gloating over L's grave.There is a new scene where L shows Light the Second Kira videos in a private theater.The opening with Ryuk and the unnamed Shinigami is new for the film.
The film mostly uses original scenes from the anime, but it includes some additional scenes and changes, mostly to replace longer events with shorter ones to fit the content into a feature-length film. He then realizes that the Shinigami has left and tells him, "Go ahead, why not? Maybe you'll meet an incredible guy and see something you'll never forget for the rest of your life. After Ryuk is done telling the story, he tells himself (and reminisces to Light) that Light wasn't a god back then. Ryuk accepts a Shinigami apple for his tale, which turns out to be the first half of the Death Note anime series. In return for the story, he brings him a Shinigami apple.
The film begins in the Shinigami realm with an unnamed Shinigami seeking out Ryuk, complaining that the Shinigami realm is boring and in search of a good story.