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kira-sucks-lawlipops · 8 years ago

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My pitch for an American Death Note movie

And now I would like to take a break from angry posting about how shitty the upcoming noteflix movie is going to be to pitch my own, not perfect but less shitty, version.

WARNING: This is REALLY long. I was only gonna fix White Yagami and make up a few sentences of plot but then I got really into it. (Also I was just making it up as I went so if it’s good maybe Netflix should hire me.)

First up, I’m not trying to retell the story of the manga/anime, because there are already movies that do that. I’m pitching a story for an American audience, with some big changes. My intent is that this would work either as a standalone film (for an audience that is unfamiliar with the series) or it could exist in the same universe (for the existing fans/the new fans who go back to the source material because the movie is good.) More on this later.

Okay, so there is no White Yagami. In fact, there is no Light at all because I firmly believe that his character/story makes no sense if you take away his Japanese upbringing. And if I’m going to change Light, then I may as well change all of the characters/world around him. I have put like zero thought into naming or creating new characters tho, so for now I am just going to call our protagonist Proxy!Light. (Bear with me guys, there’s a lot of this.)

Act 1: The Fall

Proxy!Light is an African American student in his late teens living somewhere in the USA where there is a high crime rate, racial tension, religion and a corrupt police force. (I’m Australian so I don’t know the exact location. Maybe somewhere in the Bible Belt?) He is more likely to make an emotional decision than a rational one, he comes from a happy nuclear family and he is not an apathic genius. He is optimistic, caring, a bit naive but overall a genuinely good guy who wants to make the world a better place. He is in his senior year of high school and is trying to get his grades as high as possible to land a scholarship, because he has no chance of attending university without one. He wants to be a lawyer, but failing this will probably try for the police force. No matter what, he wants to be in the justice system, protecting and serving his community.

He finds the death note, and Ryuk or a Proxy!Shinigami (again, more on this later) explains what it is. He refuses to use it, because killing people is wrong, but keeps it so it won’t fall into the wrong hands.

This would be a good place to throw in some religious imagery: Proxy!Light attending church with his family, Ryuk and the power he offers are presented as being an evil, corrupting force, etc. But Proxy!Light hasn’t fallen yet.

One day, Proxy!Light’s father is murdered by the police. It’s the same story we’ve seen before: he was doing nothing wrong, but was racially profiled and the police used lethal force. Proxy!Light’s world is shattered. His father, a good man, is demonised by the media while the police force, which he has always seen as a protective presence, fabricates a case to make the innocent man they killed seem guilty in the eyes of the world. Proxy!Sayu places herself in the front lines of a social movement which demands justice for her father and is labelled as a criminal who incites riots. Proxy!Sachiko tries to go the official route and hold the officers who killed her husband accountable, but the case never even makes it to court. Eventually she is forced to drop it when she starts receiving threats against her children.

Proxy!Light is unable to cope with what happened. His grades drop and he loses any chance of a scholarship. Law school is out of the question now and he has been thoroughly disillusioned on the police force. Everything he believed in has been turned on its head and he knows that there is no way that it can be made right again. He decides to take justice into his own hands and uses the death note to kill all of the police officers involved in the death of his father.

And now we enter Act 2: the arrival of Proxy!L and Proxy!Misa.

We open in church again. The preacher (priest? minister? wizard? idk) is praying for the officers that died, and encouraging people to remain calm and sensitive in this difficult time. Someone asks if the heart attacks that killed all those officers was an act of god. The preacher says no, because god is a loving force, not destructive (or something to that effect.) Most people seem to approve of this message, including Proxy!Sachiko, but there are some in the crowd who disagree. They argue that the officers were murderers, and if god did kill them it would be good old-testament justice. Proxy!Light likes the sound of this.

Proxy!Sayu gets up and addresses the crowd. She does not care about the religious implications of the police officers dying of heart attacks, she cares about the facts that their deaths did nothing to solve the problems embedded in their community’s broken justice system. She will be continuing to organise peaceful protests until their concerns are heard, and she encourages everyone to stand with her.

Throw in some more religious imagery here. Proxy!Light has now fallen. The support of the crowd fuels his belief that he is doing the right thing, but when he sees that his remaining family are opposed to him he begins isolating himself from them.

And now the real fun begins.

Proxy!L is not the World’s Greatest Detective, and he is in no way similar to the Ryuzaki persona we all know and love and/or hate. He is an FBI agent and a complete fucking asshole. Maybe he’s a genius, maybe he’s just really good at his job, but he definitely arrogant as all fuck and a nightmare to work with. I am picturing him as older and surly. Like, he thinks he should have been promoted above field work a long time ago but it’s never happened because no one can stand him. But if you want to cash in on that sweet lawlight fangirl goldmine (yes pls) then he could be a young, attractive prodigy. Either way, he shows up to this terrified and racially divided town and takes over the investiagtion into the sudden and unexplainable deaths of several police officers.

Proxy!L is accompanied by his partner Proxy!Naomi. She is basically exactly the same and is definitely still Japanese or Japanese-American, because that will be important later. She is the only one who can stand Proxy!L because she takes none of his shit. These two care deeply for each other and are an unstoppable team, but things are tense between them right now because Proxy!Naomi just got married, and after this case is wrapped up she will be leaving the FBI.

The partners show up in the wake of some violent backlash from the police. The surviving officers are angry over their friend’s deaths and believe that Proxy!Sayu and the other protesters are responsible, so they declare the protest to be a riot and shut it down, placing Proxy!Sayu and as many other prominent protesters as they can grab under arrest.

Proxy!L and Proxy!Naomi arrive at the tail end of this mess. They berate the officers for their hysteria and over the top violent reponse, and immediately take over. All of the low-level protesters are let go, but the FBI agents want to interrogate any of the organisers that they have in custody.

This is where we are formally introduced to Proxy!Misa. She is one of Proxy!Sayu’s friends who has been organising protests with her. We have seen her participating in collective action with Proxy!Sayu a few times before but this is the first time we have spoken to her. The girls have not been treated well in the arrest and are already hostile. Their interrogations are cut together, and now it’s exposition time!

We see Proxy!L and Proxy!Naomi working together, using different strategies with each girl and we start to get a feel for their dynamic and the fact that they are a great team. They tell both girls that there have been more deaths than anyone realises. All over the country, police officers and other people in the justice system have been mysteriously dying of heart attacks. Everyone who has died has been accused of corruption and/or the unlawful deaths of POC. No one in the public has connected the dots yet, but it’s only a matter of time, and then there will be nation-wide hysteria and violent crackdowns on POC communities like the one we just witnessed at the protest. No one wants that, which is why these two are here where it all started trying to hunt the killer down. Proxy!Sayu reacts with anger and disgust. She knows that things are bad and wants to create change, but doesn’t believe it can be accomplished with violence and death. Proxy!Misa’s feelings are more complicated. She take the position that the deaths are the result of divine retribution, and while she doesn’t openly endorse the killing, she thinks that people who do bad things should be held accountable no matter what. During the interrogation she reveals her backstory; she survived a home invasion as a child. A criminal killed her parents and took her hostage, but the police managed to subdue him non-lethally because he was white. The fact the the man who terrorised her and destroyed her family is alive and in jail while POC are being killed by police for no reason is what drove her to join Proxy!Sayu’s movement.

Meanwhile, Proxy!Sachiko has learned from one of the protesters that were released that her underage daughter has been placed under arrest and she is furious and frightened. She and Proxy!Light head to the police station and demand that they be able to see Proxy!Sayu. The police are dismissive at first but when pushed become openly hostile. Proxy!Sachiko is torn between the need to protect her daughter and not wanting to escalate the situation and endanger her son. Proxy!Light doesn’t give a shit. From the way he starts spitting his new anti-cop rhetoric in this place full of armed cops you might think that he has a death wish (spoiler alert- he kinda does.) Luckily, Proxy!Naomi and Proxy!L arrive just as things are about to turn ugly. Proxy!Naomi smooths things over while Proxy!L just stares at his shiny new N#1 suspect. The girls are free to go, and on the way out of the building Proxy!Misa introduces herself to Proxy!Light and asks him to walk her home. When he agrees, there is a split second where her eyes flash red.

Proxy!L and Proxy!Naomi discuss the case. He wants to focus on Proxy!Light but she thinks their best suspect at this point is Proxy!Misa. This is where we can introduce some of the tension between them over the fact that Proxy!Naomi will quit and leave him soon. They come to agreement over how to proceed with the investigation. They are both encouraged by the fact that they seem to have zeroed in on the killer so quickly, but are frustrated because they have no ideas about how the heart attacks are being caused. Neither of them seriously consider the supernatural angle.

On the way to her home (I’m imagining that it’s night now, and the two have wandered into some visually interesting/appropriate location) Proxy!Misa tells Proxy!Light that she knows he killed the police officers who killed his father. He tries to lie his way out of it but he is a bad liar. She reveals that she has her own death note and was able to identify him by using the shinigami eyes (which she also explains.) Finally, she tells him that she has followed his example and started killing people all over the country. At first, Proxy!Light is opposed to this. It was personal for him, and he claims that justice has been done and she has screwed things up by attracting the attention of the FBI on to them. But he very quickly comes around to Proxy!Misa’s way of thinking. The two of them have been given a great gift, and they should use it to bring justice to everyone in the world who has been denied it up until now. He even pushes the rhetoic one step further. If they are re-making the justice system, then it will be their job to take over as judge, jury and executioner until things have re-stablised. They should start killing crininals too, and gradually remove all bad people until they have created a new world full of only good people.

It is clear that Proxy!Light has been building toward this for a while, and was just waiting for an excuse to go full-Kira. Having a willing partner is the catalyst which gives him the confidence to push on. I am trying to downplay the obsessive and stalkerish nature of Proxy!Misa, so let’s assume she is willing to throw herself into this cause like she threw herself into the protests. The two teens feed off each other’s bloodlust and we become aware that we are witnessing the creation of something terrible. More religious imagery, as we cut into a montage of several days worth of the two planning and creating their world together, scribbling in notebooks while the death toll climbs into the hundreds and dramatic orchestral music plays.

And from here I don’t have a detailed plan on how the rest of the story would play out. I know that I want to have Proxy!Light and Proxy!L interact directly and have a bit of chemistry (probably Proxy!L fixates on him as wants to get close to figure out how the heart attacks work.) How their dynamic plays out will depend on the age gap between them and some other factors which I haven’t put a lot of thought into. I have downplayed the genius aspect but I want there to be at least one big dramatic mindgame showdown between the two of them, as a shout out to what we all loved from the original story. Proxy!L wins the battle of wits, but Proxy!Light plays a trump card in the form of his supernatural advantage, allowing Proxy!Misa to kill Proxy!L at the end of act 2.

Act 3: Everything goes to hell

Proxy!Naomi is reeling from the loss of her partner. She has now been forced to accept that the supernatural exists and she needs to take down two meglomaniac teenagers who literally weild the power of death itself.

Proxy!Light and Proxy!Misa continue to go mad with power and try to reshape the world with death.

I want some more social/religious commentary around wether what is happening is right or wrong and some hints of a cult of followers building and meeting violent opposition from people who condemn the killings. This is going on in the background while most of the third act is focused on Proxy!Naomi and Proxy!Light trying to kill each other.

The twist is that Proxy!Light can’t kill Proxy!Naomi with the death note because, while she goes by her married name, the name that he needs to kill her is her maiden name. Proxy!Misa can’t read it with her eyes because it’s written in kanji characters (which is why it’s important that she’s Japanese!) I don’t know exactly how it plays out but the film ends with Proxy!Naomi killing Proxy!Light. Roll credits.

Okay, now remember how I said there would be more stuff about how this could possibly fit into the canon? That’s because I have two main ideas about how you could do this. 1. This movie is set post-canon. I definitely think this could work, with only a few tweaks. Proxy!Light and Proxy!Misa would be inspired by the original Kira, the police force would know that someone had a death note and was coming for them, etc. This would probably make the movie more rewarding for the fans of the original story, because we would see how things are in the post-Kira world and you could have cool stuff like the shinigami who drops the notebook being a reincarnation of Light Yagami. The disadvantage to this is that it’s more alienating to audiences who aren’t familiar with the original story. 2. The story is set pre-canon, probably 90s or earlier. I think this is the better way to do it, because we know from Ryuk that death notes have ended up in the human world before. In this case you would take away Proxy!Misa’s notebook, and bend the rules a little. She is just a supporter who makes an eye trade using Proxy!Light’s notebook. You would also have to dial back the scale of death, make it that all the murders happen in one place instead of nation-wide so it coukd feasibly be hushed up later (which is why it’s not mentioned in canon.)

OKAY WOW. This was a much longer ride than I meant it to be. I’ve really tried to tell an American-ised version of the Death Note story which is interesting and rewarding for fans and new audiences alike. (If we have to have one, at keast make it good, right?) I hope I’ve stuck to some of the core themes of the story while also making the adaption original and not compete garbage. I would love to hear other people’s ideas!!! Either for more changes/ideas for things we could do with this pitch or a pitch of your own! I’m going to track the tags:

#saynotonoteflix #saynotowhiteyagami

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