#its so funny in hindsight seeing all these talented actors and being like YOU DID THIS FIRST?????

[becauseiamarobot]

ok i know we all hate the jem live action movie, and i do too, but im a little bit obsessed with specifically the three minutes at the end of the film where girlboss eric raymond goes to a parking garage that is maybe also a junkyard that nevertheless has diagetic bisexual lighting and non-diagetic strip club music playing. its implied that for some reason nobody could find the misfits until her and that they've been in hiding since being dropped from the label like they're record industry john wick despite the fact that theyre in a big truck that stormer spraypainted their band name on the side, which you would think people would be able to identify very easily. erica spends the whole scene on the brink of hyperventilating and then pizzazz stumbles out the back of a truck hungover wearing a zebra fur coat and goes "jem has a BOYFRIEND????? im going to kill her" like i dont know what vibe the director was going for there but i think its my roman empire

[prizzierizzie]

Why you should watch everything, everywhere all at once

So I watched everything everywhere all at once and it was pretty fucking cool. Here are my thoughts.

Aka half genuine review half unhinged review brought to you by yours truly.

And raid shadow legends.

1. It’s a genuine cinematic masterpiece.

As if it wasn’t obvious enough already: I like this movie. A lot. I do not say this lightly. Yes I know what you are going to say. That you’ve heard this before, and that you’re tired of this phrase being used a billion times on tons of movies, many of which, are frankly streaming hot garbage. But trust when I say that this movie is not. It’s a genuine masterpiece of art, of storytelling, of well done character arcs and development, and is stunning from both a visual and artistic standpoint. You can tell that the creators poured their very heart and soul into this film and it really shows. It was created by truly passionate people who genuinely wanted to make something different, and it is. In fact, I believe theres nothing quite exactly like it. It’s honestly so good I can’t quite put it into words.

2. The acting is incredible

This movie and its characters are the centerpiece of this gorgeous work of art. The characters are lovable and you feel connected to them, no thanks to the incredible actors behind them. Michelle Yo is fantastic, but the one that really stole the show for me was Ke Huy Quan’s performance as Waymond. He manages to have such a charming and wholesome persona but he can switch on a dime to become serious and really hammer home the performance. He is absolutely incredible and is just such an underrated and talented actor and god damn this man is a gem and I love him please and thank you and goodnight New York.

You think you were going to get rid of me that easily..

You poor naive fool I have more shit to ramble about

3. Gay people

I needn’t elaborate this is tumblr and I know who you fucks are.

Oh and did I mention the costume designs???

Absolutely iconic.

Like l o o k oh my goddess i’m screaming

And the score?? Gorgeous.

Every time I listen to it I feel something. It’s just so vivid and colorful and alive.

4. It’s something new and refreshing

I won’t lie when I say that this movie is a little unorthodox. Which one may expect from a movie that deals with parallel universes, talking rocks, people who evolved with hot dogs for fingers, an extended ratatouille metaphor, talking piñatas, a literal everything bagel void, and more. It’s a strange movie in hindsight, but thats also part of its charm. The film has a kind of weird core aesthetic that may seem strange at first, but the deeper you go into it, the more you see its heart. And all of the crazy, wacky strange ideas all cone together in one culminating final act. And it’s absolutely beautiful. There are brief glimpses, minor interludes of this film that create such a strong feeling of motion, of color, and an overwhelming sense of euphoric bliss and a pure celebration of life that is almost indescribable with words. It’s something that has stuck with me long after I finished it, and something I won’t be able to ever forget.

Also it’s pretty god damn funny. I wasn’t expecting to laugh as much as I did man it had moments that were very funny. But it was equally balanced in its seriousness. It’s quite the contemplative film. This movie makes you really think about some pretty deep shit and I think thats cool as fuck and more people should be talking about it because it’s criminally underrated and a true masterpiece.

Have I not convinced you to go see it yet?

Still on the fence about it?

Well fuck youuu

Anyways reblog you fuckers for I crave attention and validation from the internet

[skarchomp]

How much of the mcu was good and how much of it was us getting caught up in the excitement of seeing comic crossovers in the big screen

i was actually just thinking about this 

iron man: i liked it when i was 14 but, to be fair, i was 14

incredible hulk: christ alive how come nobody can make a movie about the hulk, a nerd who turns into the tazmanian devil, even a little entertaining

iron man 2: imagine watching iron man without the benefit of being 14 and knowing what bad movies are and you have iron man 2

thor: tom hiddleston was the first actor to give some kind of actual performance in the mcu which is great and i absolutely hate him for it

captain america the first avenger: this one is actually a fun little pulp action film that i think would work best as a standalone thing

avengers: we really went and let joss whedon get away with calling himself a feminist huh

iron man 3: i thought it was pretty fun but in hindsight every movie after it trying to ignore it and do a different more boring tone really was the first sign of disney tightening its grip on the mcu

thor 2: did you know christopher eccelston was in this movie? i wouldnt blame you if you didnt

captain america the winter soldier: okay yeah this is probably one of the most overhyped films ever made but id being lying if i said i wasnt on board too when it came out. there's a scene where captain america beats up a plane.

guardians of the galaxy: i would love this movie if it starred someone other than chris pratt

age of ultron: WE REALLY WENT AND LET JOSS WHEDON GET AWAY WITH CALLING HIMSELF A FEMINIST HUH

ant-man: nothing amazing, but i appreciated a more comedic and visually interesting superhero film that was fairly small-stakes and just about a guy and not a cop

captain america civil war: well it's sure the best avengers movie

dr strange: who the fuck saw dr strange

guardians of the galaxy vol 2: you know how "the chain" is a really well-made, emotional, captivating song made by talented people, but "hooked on a feeling" is funnier? anyway,

spider-man homecoming: terrible interpretation of spider-man but i was willing to give them a chance, like maybe they just had to work out the kinks in the first movie and the second one would be better

thor ragnarok: breath of fresh air, easily one of the best marvel movies and arguably one of the best superhero movies ever made

black panther: it was nice to have an mcu movie that wanted to have an actual message, it's just a shame it feels like the disney family-friendly wide audience appeal version

avengers infinity war: if a superhero movie is gonna be bad, it should at least have the decency to be funny and boy oh boy i cant tell you how much i laughed at this flick, i mean i literally can't

ant-man and the wasp: super underrated, basically took all the good parts of the first movie and played them up more, these guys are so fucking small lmao

captain marvel: people had to make up discourse about this film because there's nothing actually interesting about it

avengers endgame: when i saw this a dude in the theater laughed out loud when it cut to iron man in the hospital and that guy is all i care about

spider-man far from home: the second one was not better

[theaterdisneynerdsunite]

A (Controversial) Ranking Of 2010’s 10 Tony Winning Best Musicals

Remember when I thought this blog would be full of original theater content? Oops. Anyways here’s my list. Keep in mind some of these were incredibly close. I kept switching around 7/8, 5/6, and 3/4, but this is what I ultimately settled on. There’s a certain placement that I’m sure a lot of people are going to say is way too low, I’m not saying this is the definitive ranking or “correct”, just my personal opinion based on my individual taste. There are a bunch of musicals from this decade that I love that didn’t win the Tony, but that’s an entirely separate list lol.

10: Memphis

Tbh I know nothing about this show. It could be fantastic, but I’ve never heard the soundtrack, know nothing about it, and am unfortunately unable to listen to the soundtrack until 2020. Nothing against Memphis, I just don’t know anything about it which is why I put it at the bottom

9: Dear Evan Hansen

Put down your pitchforks. This is why I put controversial in the title. I’ve listened to this show multiple times, I’ve read the plot a bunch of times, I’ve had DEH Stan’s try to change my mind, I really, really wanted to like this show. The actors are incredibly talented and have great voices, no complaints there. I have anxiety and other mental health conditions and I was ecstatic at hearing about a show getting popular being about those things. I wanted to like this show. I wanted to connect to Evan, I really did, but the way the story is written makes me deeply uncomfortable with what it says about mental illness, and the music is fine but doesn’t distract from the story for me. It’s sort of generic music wise in my opinion. The way they portray both Connor’s and Evan’s characters makes me actively dislike the show, and it is really, really hard to make me actively dislike a show. I feel ambivalent sometimes, I have mixed feelings sometimes, but I actively dislike this show and that almost never happens. Also NPATGCO1812’s score and staging was phenomenal, Come From Away was sentimental and moving without feeling corny, and Groundhog Day surprised me by being better than I expected. I literally preferred every other show in the category from that year, I know a lot of people love it and that’s great but this is where it falls for me.

8. Once

I love the song Falling Slowly, and I think the actors dancing with instruments on stage was really cool. I think it was one of the first times it was done on Broadway, but I’m not sure. Other than the plot being a bit contrived and flat for me, there’s nothing I really dislike about this show. I just...feel nothing about this show. It’s fine, the music is good background study music, it just didn’t leave much of an impression for me.

7. Book of Mormon

So the songs in this show are absolute bops, and some of the wordplay is fantastic. I can appreciate this show for what it was trying to do. But ultimately, this show comes down to the humor, and you either like this style of humor or you don’t. I never personally found South Park to be my taste in humor. If you like South Park, you’re going to love this show. Even though I don’t find South Park funny, there were parts of this show I laughed at. But there were also parts that I cringed at and the cringe parts increased in hindsight. The songs are my favorite part: Hello, Sal Tlay Ka Siti, Turn it Off, Baptize Me, Mostly Me, I love those songs.

6. Fun Home

This show may have three Alison’s, which are all really good, but it felt like two plots to me. There is the story of Alison and her relationship with her father, and there’s the story of Alison’s self discovery and realizing her identity. These stories intertwine, but I personally find the self discovery and realizing her sexuality story much more interesting and compelling, and I also prefer the songs that are a part of that journey. Ring of Keys and Changing My Major are my favorite songs from the cast album. I read the graphic novel and it seems like it is really true to the spirit of the book. This and Memphis are the only ones I haven’t seen or seen a bootleg of, so I’m not really able to comment on the costumes, acting, choreography, setting etc, but for the most part I like what I’ve heard.

5. Band’s Visit

Another show that really comes down to taste. I liked this show when I saw it, the person who came with me didn’t. Part of the point of the show is rather than go to a big exciting city, they end up in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere in a desert where nothing happens. There are multiple songs dedicated to how nothing happens. And there are a bunch of mini story arcs with varying degrees of focus put on them, the focus shifts to much for anything to really happen. Which is the point, and it’s interesting, you just have to know what you’re in for. It feels like Waiting for Godot set to music, which if you like waiting for Godot like I do is a good thing. The romances are sweet. It feels like it should be in a more intimate off broadway setting, but I like it. The music is hit or miss for me, but the hits nail it out of the park. I like a lot of the songs but I love Omar Sharif, I could listen to it on repeat for hours.

4. Kinky Boots

This show is absolutely fantastic and I love everything about it. The fact that it’s at #4 for me was a shock, because this show is so good. This shows how strong the top of the list is in my opinion, because this show knocks it out of the park. This show has so much heart and sole. The costumes, especially for the drag queens, are stunning, the choreography like the boxing match and the conveyor belt dance are really cool, the acting is phenomenal, and the songs. The songs are so good. If they want to make you laugh they make you laugh, if they want to make you cry they make you cry, if they want to make you dance along belting out at the top of your lungs they are going to make you do that. Seriously, this show is so good.

3. Gentlemen’s Guide to Love and Murder

This just barely edged out Kinky Boots, because I feel like most people like and appreciate Kinky Boots, and I feel like Gentleman’s Guide is severely underrated and ranking it higher is going to let me talk about it even longer. This show isn’t as deep as Kinky Boots but it doesn’t try to be. What this show is, and why I think it’s underrated, is pure comedy. There are a lot of comedic Best Musicals sure, but the comedy is only part of it, but this one is wholeheartedly a comedy, which I feel is kind rare. A lot of things have comedy but it seems like not many are straight up comedy anymore. And the thing is... I’m not usually a fan of straight up comedy, like there are very few straight comedy movies that I enjoy, so the fact that I love this so much when I expected to only like it makes it even better. And as much as I call it a pure comedy, it’s got beautiful love song, great commentary, and a couple of twists that are fun even though you see them coming. The murders are really creative and funny. The characters are great, I love the gag with the Dysquiths where all of the murdered people are played by one actor. The acting, costume quick changes, and everything involved in pulling it off is so cool. I love the songs so much, I don’t think there’s a weak one in the bunch. And one scene may have one of my favorite bits of choreography of all time. It only needs three people, a doorframe and a chair. It’s not flashy or involves a million moving pieces like the costume bit does, but it is ingenious in its simplicity and comedic timing. This show seems largely forgotten by people, maybe because it’s not trying to be deep, but it 100% deserves more love than it gets.

2. Hadestown

If Gentleman’s Guide is one of the funniest shows I’ve ever seen, this is one of my favorite modern cast albums. This also hits a lot of my personal interests, so that definitely helps. I love Greek mythology, I love the anachronistic but also roaring 20’s setting, I love the genres of music they pull from, I love the oral tradition storytelling feel it has, it hits so many of my stylistic favorites that I naturally feel pulled towards it. I love the music, if you asked me to pick my top five, no top ten songs from this show I couldn’t do it. The casting fits the characters perfectly, and the songs match the characters so well. The lyrics are fantastic and the themes are both timeless and incredibly relevant. It feels like it was written in the past year or two, especially the song Why we Build the Wall, but it was written way before ‘Build the wall’ was ever a thing. And the design of the show is so incredibly effective, everything contributes to the feel of the piece and the function of the show. Everything seems so well thought out and crafted, from the costumes to the choreography to the script to the music, there is so much attention to detail and is so intricately tied together even though it feels simple, earnest and straightforward. Which to me is an incredibly difficult needle to thread. Like the famous Dolly Parton quote “it takes a lot of work to look this cheap”, it is such a complex show that looks so simple. And it’s so immersive, you fall into the story. You know how it ends, it tells you from the beginning how it ends, but that doesn’t stop you from feeling exactly what they’re feeling, from believing wholeheartedly that it could end differently despite knowing how it ends, it’s a masterful piece of art.

1. Hamilton

I doubt this comes as a surprise to anyone, even if I did technically make you Wait For It. I feel like calling it a cultural phenomenon is underselling it’s impact. There’s nothing I could possibly say about this show that hasn’t been said hundreds of thousands of times already. This show is a piece of lyrical genius, of musical genius too but a lyrical masterpiece. This show was like Rent was in the 90’s or Wicked in the 00’s, not only an instant classic that permanently affected the modern theater world, but outside of theater as well. I have loved theater long before Hamilton, but this show spoke to so many people outside of theater, made so many people fall in love with theater that wouldn’t have otherwise. It might not be my favorite show by Lin Manuel Miranda, it might not even be my personal favorite one on this list to see live, but nothing else could possibly take the top spot of this list for me. Who would have thought a hip hop inspired rap musical about a relatively ignored founding father would become the juggernaut it is. I don’t know what else to say that other people haven’t said already. It’s Hamilton, what else can I say?

[j-watched-something]

J Watched Netflix’s Death Note 2017 [SPOILERS]

Introduction

When it comes to adaptations, viewers for the most part fall into two groups: fans of the original source material who want to see the adaptation do the original justice and viewers who have either no or some passing knowledge of the source material and are there to enjoy a movie. With Netflix's Death Note, the recent American film adaptation of the Japanese manga of the same name, I find myself in the second group.

Now, I'm not a complete Death Note virgin. I've been in fandom circles for the past 12 years now and with a series as iconic as Death Note, you can't not know at least a little about it. Personally, I've seen the first two episodes of the anime and the first Japanese live action film that came out. I saw these probably when I was fourteen or fifteen which dates my exposure to this series by about nine or ten years (I feel old...). The rest of what I know comes from the billions of internet memes, listening to one of my mega-fan friends talk about the series (these conversations also taking place nine or ten years ago), and whatever I happened to come across on my dashboard while scrolling through Tumblr.

I'm writing this introduction part out before I watch the movie. I wanted to jot down what I knew about the series and my position in relation to it so that everyone could know where I was coming from when I gave my review. So to establish a starting point for myself, here's what I (think I) know about the Death Note series (potentially inaccurate spoilers up ahead):

Death Note is about a genius high school student named Light Yagami who comes across a book, the titular Death Note, that has the power to kill a person if you write their name down in it. The book will even allow you to specify the time and details of the person's death and you can plot out their actions for quite some time leading up to their demise. Light sees the Death Note as a way to become a god and starts using it to rid the world of those he deems evil. Multiple deaths start occurring and somehow people come to the conclusion that a person is behind it and this person becomes known as “Kira.” A task force is organized with the purpose of bringing in Kira and Light's father is one of the people on this task force. Enter L, a detective who is very reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes. His mental abilities far surpass the people around him, he displays strange quirks (a love of sweets and the strange manner in which he holds his body and how he sits), and his social skills are lacking and perhaps unimportant to him. L and Light are equally matched intellectually and a cat and mouse game begins to take place as they try to outsmart one another. Light's ego and increasing paranoia from being pursued by the police leads him to sometimes stray from his original intentions with the Death Note as he tries to destroy the people in his way.

Other characters I know about are Misa Amane and Ryuk. Misa has feelings for Light and has a Death Note of her own. She has an ability linked to the Death Note that Light finds useful and he treats her as a pawn in his bigger plan, keeping her around only because of this ability and not because he returns her feelings. Ryuk is a Shinigami, or Death God, and is connected to the Death Note. Only people who've touched the Death Note can see him and he spends a lot of his time snarking at Light and his plans. Also he really likes apples.

There's a scene in which L manages to trick Light into revealing his general location by limiting a news broadcast to a specific area and another scene where Light uses a potato chip to throw off the police and that's about all I know for plot points.

As you can see, I know probably about as much as one would get by reading a summary slapped on the back cover of a book, and I'm not even sure if some parts of my information is accurate. I'm pretty removed from the source material as I head into this movie. I've noticed that a lot of the fans of the original are very unhappy with the movie (to put it lightly) and I'm curious as a non-fan if I'll enjoy it. Are the problems with this film strictly as an adaptation or does it fall flat as a standalone as well? My review will look at the film first and foremost as a movie, but I will set aside some time at the end to reflect on it as an adaptation as well (though I'm not sure how much I can contribute to that conversation).

I'll see you all on the other side!

Review [Spoilers Ahead!]

There is so much to talk about.

This movie is bad. The lead is atrocious, the leaps in logic are ridiculous, and the movie can't for the life of it figure out what tone it's going for, but damn if I did not enjoy every minute of this movie.

I watched it with my dad, who knew absolutely nothing about Death Note going in, and we laughed our asses off. I'm reminded of the first time I watched Maximum Overdrive, and how the over the top ridiculousness of it just made it even more fun. It felt as though at every moment where they should have taken things seriously, someone in production tripped and dropped cheese onto the project.

There is a part in this film where, during what's supposed to be a serious and tragic moment, everything goes into slow-mo and “I Don't Wanna Live Without Your Love” by Chicago starts playing in the background. That is all I need to tell you for you to understand what kind of movie you're getting yourself into.

Let's start getting into the specifics of this beautiful disaster.

Everything about this film is over the top. A lot of the deaths are super gory in the film. Everyone's head has to explode, or their body has to explode. Human beings in this universe are one hard push away from gooey destruction. One guy in the film has a heart attack, but he couldn't just have a heart attack, he also had to fall down a flight of stairs. Mia's death at the end of the film wasn't gross, but it was still over the top. Homegirl fell down onto a display from a flower shop, petals erupting from her crash site in slow motion as an 80s love ballad played on in the background. Good lord.

Speaking of slow motion, there's a lot of it in this film, or at least it feels like there is. I wouldn't say that they use slow motion more in this movie than what is typically normal these days, but it's how they're using it. There aren't any complex choreographed action scenes in this film, the only times they use slow motion is to enhance a serious moment or to show off the aforementioned gore, and in the case of the former, it really doesn't work out. The use of slow motion to make things more dramatic reminds me of slow motion in 90s movies where I'm sure everyone at the time thought it was really enhancing the impact of the serious moment but in hindsight it's unintentionally funny.

The over the top nature of the film really hurts it. Everything is taken a step too far and because of that, what's supposed to be taken seriously becomes comical. Yes, I'll say that it's because of this that I really enjoyed the film, but that wasn't the intention here. This film wasn't supposed to entertain me in the way it did.

There were some good ideas in this film that never went all the way through. The soundtrack has a lot of 80s soft rock in it and even the score seems 80s inspired with its use of synthesizers. A lot of the important conversations and confrontations between characters take place with the actors lit up by a nearby neon sign. The chase scene towards the end of the movie where the characters are running through alleys and across construction sites, through a diner, also features a lot of neon lighting. It felt like the film was trying for an homage to 80s detective thrillers but they never fully committed to it. While I'm not sure an homage to 80s detective thrillers would have worked out, they shouldn't have just stopped halfway through the concept. Another good idea that went nowhere was the possible moral dilemma that naturally comes along with the nature of something like the Death Note. Being presented with the power to kill anyone with a low chance of getting caught is an Ethics professor's wet dream. We get some talk here and there of whether or not Kira has the right to do what they do, but it's in passing conversations that never go anywhere important.

There are certain things that I will say were genuinely good in this movie aside from a couple of the actors. I thought there was a lot of well shot scenes in this film, I thought the lighting at certain moments was good and as a fan of 80s music, I liked the soundtrack and score.

On to the characters. The ones I'll be focusing on are Light Turner, the person who receives the Death Note at the beginning of the film, Mia Sutton, Light Turner's crush, then girlfriend and partner-in-crime as the serial killer Kira, Ryuk, the Death God who gave Light Turner the Death Note, and L, the FBI detective determined to bring Kira in to answer for their crimes.

Light Turner. Dear God. First of all, besides Ryuk and L, all of the other characters from the series that I'm aware of got westernized names and honestly they should have done that for Light, because “Light Turner” is way too ridiculous for me to deal with right now and I'm probably going to say it as many times as I can in this review just because it makes me laugh. I guess the creative team thought that the fans might be mad if they changed Light's name, but man that is probably the last thing they should have been worried about and I'll get to that later.

I honestly have no idea what they were going for with Light Turner, because nothing they try sticks its landing. I haven't seen the actor, Nat Wolff, in anything before this, so I can't speak about his talents as an actor in general, but this didn't seem to be the right role for him. Most of his line delivery fell flat, there were times when Light Turner was supposed to say something sarcastic and he never got the timing or the tone right, and it seemed to me that every time he had to say a swear word, he'd fumble over it like he wasn't comfortable with saying it. It doesn't help when he has to act alongside established actors like Willem Dafoe and in general, a lot of his costars outperform him.

There wasn't any charisma or intensity to Light Turner. There's a part at the beginning where he's trying to defend his crush from a bully and his “threat” to this bully is telling him that because he was held back in school and is 18, if he hit Light Turner, it would technically be child abuse and he could get in tr-*punch* And yes, it was funny, but it was also kind of lame and it doesn't help Light Turner's character when added to what I have to believe is the now infamous “screaming scene” where he spends a full minute screaming like a goat and hiding under desks after seeing Ryuk for the first time. He's never able to shed that image of him during the rest of the film, making his more serious moments hard to take seriously.

Throughout the film, there are times when other characters will speak about how smart Light Turner is, but we're never really shown anything to suggest that he's smarter than the people around him, in fact, he does things that are very, very stupid. I'm not kidding when I say that this guy is probably the worst serial killer I've ever seen, and it's kind of troubling that I know I'd be able to pull it off better than he does. Right off the bat, he shows the Death Note to Mia the day after he kills his first two victims and goes as far as to kill another person to prove it to her that it actually works. This is stupid for many obvious reasons and he doesn't stop there. He and Mia decide to use the Death Note to rid the world of evil, he chooses the name “Kira” then acknowledges that in some languages Kira means “Light.” When Mia smartly points out that that would make it easier for people to connect to the killings to him should they look hard enough, he tells her that it's okay because Kira also “kind of means 'killer' in Japanese,” and then uses that point to throw people off but even that is seen through eventually (by L, but the fact remains that he saw through it). His father, James, is investigating Kira, and Light Turner is cartoonishly suspicious whenever he tries to get information on how the investigation's coming along from his dad. At the end of the film, Light Turner pulls off some genius plan using the Death Note, but let me tell you, nothing in the movie leading up to that point led me to believe that he was smart enough to do that. This point actually brings me to Mia.

Mia Sutton starts out as Light Turner's love interest but then becomes, in my opinion, the head of the operation when it comes to their activity as Kira. She's more cold and calculating than Light Turner, and enjoys the god aspect of being Kira more than he does, referring to the people of the world as sheep. Mia would go as far as she needed to go to keep Kira a secret, which is something Light Turner wouldn't do. She's so ruthless that I honestly found her a more interesting character than Light Turner, she definitely made a smarter killer than he did and sometimes I felt as though L should have been pursuing her rather than Light Turner as the person behind Kira. At the very least, L, as smart as he's supposed to be, should have been able to deduce that Kira was not one person, but two. The script pushed so hard for it to be between Light and L (probably because they had to, but that's a point for later) that even though Mia's doing a lot of the driving as Kira, her involvement is basically ignored by the plot at certain points. I will say that as much as I enjoy her character, this is still Netflix's Death Note, and she doesn't escape the fate the other characters suffer. She doesn't do anything ground breaking, and really, it's hard not to outshine Light Turner in this movie. She also falls victim to the idiocy that plagues most of the characters in this film, like using the testimony of random people on the internet as good enough evidence that a person deserves to die (though honestly I'm not sure if she particularly cares about the guilt of the people she kills, but we're not allowed to learn anything about who she is and what drives her), and eventually getting outsmarted by Light Turner, which is super embarrassing.

Ryuk is...fine? I mean he's just sort of there. Willem Dafoe does a good job with his voice work here but the character honestly isn't given much to do. I liked how they presented Ryuk in the film, always keeping him partially in the shadows. His glowing eyes peeking out of the darkness was really cool, and judging by the effects on him that I could see when he moved a little further in the light, I do think the shadows help make up for the limitations of what they could do. He looks more real this way, and yeah it's bad that the CGI's quality requires this sort of trick, but honestly it's better than parading poor effects around in the light.

L was pretty interesting in the first half of his screen time. Lakeith Stanfield is a good actor and he played his part well. His obsession with candy, how he carried himself, and his weird way of sitting in chairs fit well into the movie, but I'm not sure if this was a good thing. It was definitely ridiculous to watch and at times it was hard to take him seriously, but when I think about it, Light Turner was hard to take seriously so it kind of works out fine in this ridiculous movie. One thing that bothered me about his character is the insane leaps in logic he had. He jumped to conclusions quite a bit in this film and he  doesn't really explain himself very well if at all. Yes, most of his deductions turned out to be right, but that doesn't excuse the writers for cutting corners. There's a point in this movie where L's associate and father figure, Watari, is in danger and is ultimately killed, and after that L's character goes off the rails. He becomes angry and reckless. He ends up getting his hands on a gun and the final confrontation between him and Light Turner is a chase scene. I'm honestly very split on the shift in L's character. It's obvious from Lakeith Stanfield's performance earlier in the film that he did some homework and tried to stay true to the L from the anime. He nailed his idiosyncrasies to the point where it's hard to view his performance without thinking about the anime. With everyone else so divorced from the characters that they're supposedly playing, he was the one character that was still pretty faithful and it's hard not to take note of that. So then comes the character shift. From what I know about the anime I don't think L would act like this, but just looking at the L that appears in this film who's under the control of a different creative mind, maybe he would. It's also hard to deny that there are moments when Lakeith Stanfield does a good job of getting across the anguish, anger, and grief his character is experiencing. I guess ultimately what disappoints me about the turn L takes in this film is that I wanted more of an intellectual confrontation between him and Light Turner, and then what follows that is the deeper disappointment of realizing that Light Turner doesn't seem smart enough for that kind of confrontation. Maybe they had to make L into a last minute action character to make the confrontation with his adversary work.

One scene I just have to talk about in full is the chase scene which has to be my favorite scene in the movie as well as a perfect example of everything wrong with the film. The chase starts off with L in a police car armed with a gun and driving like a maniac through the streets trying to catch Light Turner, who's currently escaping on foot. At several points, L nearly runs down pedestrians and at one point crashes through an ironic sign about safe driving because this movie can't help itself. Eventually, L leaves his car and begins to pursue Light Turner on foot and I swear to God these two run through specific places just so that they have people to push out of the way and stuff to knock over. The movie is so convinced that watching them push people over is super cool and action-y and wow that at one point they show Light Turner running through a back alley that just happens to have a group of twenty people standing there and positioned so that they block the entire way through and Light Turner has to push them aside. The boys take a turn into a stereotypical action diner, entering through the back so they have to run through the kitchen and then they go out to the seating area and through the front door. Again, because this movie just can't help itself, as L runs through the seating area of the diner, he bumps into one of the patrons and accidentally shoves the man's face into his bowl of soup. The whole way through this, L is shouting after Light Turner and Light Turner is letting out little high pitched yelps. It's so dumb, so cheesy, and so beautiful. I love this scene.

For the most part, I've tried to avoid talking about this film in comparison to the original source material, but the rest that I have to say about it only makes sense if I talk about it as an adaptation so I'm going to head into that now.

Light Turner's character is a really dramatic departure from his anime counterpart, and in some respects I feel like this is kind of insulting to the western audience this adaptation was made for. Light from the source material was a mastermind, a megalomaniac, a genius. Light Turner is a stereotypical high school loser edgelord with a crush on the popular girl. The only thing the two Lights really have in common is that they're high school students and their fathers are in law enforcement. None of the original Light's character traits were carried over. It makes me think that the creative team or the marketing team didn't think we could be invested in a story with a complex character like Light Yagami, that our dumb western minds weren't ready for the intense intellectual cat and mouse game of the source material and that's why we got the lazy Hollywood trope for our lead and ended the movie with a chase and a sequence on a collapsing ferris wheel. Not to mention the changes they made for Light Turner really reminded me of how they adjusted Goku for an American audience in Dragon Ball Evolution. It's just about as lazy as you can get when westernizing a concept. The westernization is so predictable that they jammed a school dance into this. Really.

Mia, from what I can gather, is supposed to be the American version of Misa Amane, and the difference is even greater in this case than it was for the two Lights. It's funny how in this adaptation, the relationship dynamic between Light and Misa seems to have completely flipped. By the end of the film, Mia seemed more like the Light from the original than Light Turner did.

One of the thoughts that I came out of this movie with was that this might have been better off as a spin-off of Death Note rather than an adaptation of the original story, and my reasoning all comes down to the nature of Kira. Light as Kira in the original was an egotistical, calculating killer, taking careful steps to not get caught. Light Turner and Mia as Kira in the adaptation was more reminiscent of teenage couple spree killers. They make reckless mistakes, killing people too close to home, they seem to make a date night out of choosing their next victims, and the killings fuel their romance, especially from Mia's side. These different types of killers with different motivations will naturally make for different types of stories, and it feels like the creators in the adaptation's case really didn't want to make it. With how dramatically they changed Light and Misa, it seems to me that they liked the concept of the Death Note, not the story, but the book itself.

This movie focuses on the “what if” scenario of two dumb, jaded, pretentious kids suddenly having the power to kill whoever they want and what happens afterwards. That's not what the original Death Note was about, true, but it's still a story that could have been interesting. It's just that it wasn't the story the adaptation was supposed to tell, and I don't think it was right to try to tell that story with characters that weren't theirs. Even with original characters, this film still doesn't work, but it's not as insulting.

Final Thoughts

In the end this is a really bad adaptation, and possibly an entertainingly bad movie so long as you don't have any strong feelings for the source material. I feel kind of bad for enjoying this film as much as I did, especially when I think back on all the horrible comic book adaptations I've seen in my life, but I can't help but recommend this movie to the So Bad, It's Good crowd, so long as you don't know anything about Death Note. To all the Death Note fans, I'm so sorry.

(And a final tidbit I couldn't find anywhere else to bring up: The calculus book that plays a crucial role in this film is the same textbook my dad used in college back in 1972, and he got very excited about it. This book has been out of print for a long time, so I have no idea why Mia has it.)