#that also gives me an excuse to partner up misa and Light

[frigidlyauthorial]

dancing with the stars au. fuck it.

[babypunter3000]

The only good things about Netflix’s Death Note Movie

1. Willem DaFoe Green Goblining it up as Ryuk. 2. L for the first half before Watari got Death Noted. 3. The rockin’ soundtrack. 4. The time that-Okay, you know what? No, I can’t even leave just one fully positive post about this you know how much goddamn BULLSHIT it was that Mia/Misa and L were adapted as waaaay more in the wrong than Light was? In the manga and anime, Light was CLEARLY the main bad guy, careening himself farther away from “well-intentioned” and “maybe he has a point” and into “irredeemable soulless fascist dictator” with every chapter and episode. Hell, in the FIRST BOOK AND EPISODE, he clearly states that he will be “the God of this new world,” and his general “I don’t give a general fuck about other people” attitude could already start to be seen. In this adaptation, Light’s all just love and an old soul wise beyond his years who wants to HELP the world out of the goodness of his heart and sense of justice. And at first, it’s not to bad, you think to yourself, “hey, this could be alright. A narrative about how absolute power corrupts absolutely with a kid who only wants to kill the really bad guys, and even then is super freaked out about it. sure, whatever” But no. NO. It NEVER turns that way! Light ALWAYS only kills for “the greater good” and is constantly portrayed throughout this movie as this well-meaning kid who’s just in so much over his head you gu-uys! 

Meanwhile, Misa has been taken from her canon form as a devout Kira worshiper who was used and abused by Light to his own ends without a shred of emotion for her and has been turned into the love of Light’s life and THE REAL VILLAIN OF THE STORY! You see, Light didn’t really want to kill all those people and usher in a new era of Kira rule! It was all MIA’S influence and hen-pecking that drove Light to kill all willy-nilly! I mean, there’s this scene in the movie where Mia is showing Light a pro-Kira website where people are suggesting new people for Kira to kill, and Light brings up a point where some of the criminals could just be regular innocent people that have a beef with the poster. Mia basically tells him “Who cares? Any kind of petty crime or personal slight is good enough of a reason to kill for me! Let’s make out!” and they both go on their merry ways writing in the book. Like, fuck the writers for tossing out Light’s original characterization and motives to turn it all into a sexist, lazy, “It was all the EVIL WOMAN’S fault for tempting that poor boy!” narrative. And then Mia is killed off by Light on screen right after they have a fight where she is portrayed in the most clingy, shrewish way possible. She even says that she only killed all those people to get closer to Light. She had no justice-dog in this fight like the original Misa had. She was just in it so that Light would date her, and she somehow turned out to be the most murder-happy one after Light introduced her to the whole thing. And I’m sure that the neanderthal who wrote this drivel is patting himself on the back for writing such a great fucking script. And you’re supposed to feel bad because of course she dies by falling into a giant flower display and of course she has to be pretty when she dies. Fuck you. And while we’re on the subject of this movie going out of it’s way to justify and excuse A MASS MURDERER, let’s talk about how the movie treats L. For the first few minutes of his screen time, I honestly thought they did a good job. True, all he was doing was copying L’s mannerisms from the show and being deductive, but it was nice to see something from the books being portrayed accurately in this tire fire of a movie. But you know how everyone loved the original manga and anime for Light and L’s high stakes game of cat and mouse and how they would constantly one-up the other using their wits and intelligence and plenty of insanely thought out plans? Yeah, that’s also tossed right out the goddamn window in this one. Instead, we get an hour of L and Light basically shouting “Come at me, bro!” and emotionally lashing out at one another until one of them finally does something stupid enough to lose. It’s a race to the goddamn bottom, like the mental version of watching a drunken fistfight in a back alley. There’s no finesse, there’s no skill, just watching two guys shouting, “I KNOW YOU’RE KIRA!” and, “YEAH, WELL, FUCK YOU, KIRA’S THE GOOD GUY AND WHAT DO YOU KNOW ANYWAY?!” at each other for an hour. And L gets such a raw deal in this movie. I think he technically lives at the stupid non-ending (you don’t see Light die in the film, btw. You see Mia die, of course, because she’s an EVIL WOMAN!1! who DESERVED IT!!1, but of course not fucking Light), but even then he has even less dignity than in the manga and anime where he dies halfway through. L, in the manga, anime, and this trainwreck of a film, is the eccentric big-time elusive detective who picks up the task of finding out the identity of Kira to stop him. The only difference is that the manga and anime didn’t go out of their way to fucking destroy him. And I’m not just talking about the plot point in this failure of a motion picture that has Light easily put Watari’s name in the Death Note (yes, Watari is his real name in this and they just parade his name and face around without a worry in the world, I mean, what did you expect to happen?) that puts L into a tailspin. I’m talking about how the narrative treats L, the guy who’s trying to stop A MASS MURDERER from killing, as another bad guy, clearly in the wrong, because Light’s just trying to make the world a better place, yannow? First, he falls apart because Watari is missing and is in the hands of Kira, which okay, I don’t blame him, but he never gets past that. For the rest of the movie, he’s on the verge of tears, he can’t think straight, he’s blinded by emotion. He only manages to figure out a key point at the very end, and this was after Light openly confesses to what it is. Secondly, L is never able to officially out Kira. In light of this, his higher-ups unceremoniously fire him, leaving him an even bigger wreck. This happens around the exact same time Light is explaining to his dad what his master plan in the climax was, which is the only kind of smart thing that ever happens in this movie and is almost reminiscent of it’s source material. Point being, the narrative wants you to believe that Light is competent, L is incompetent. But you know what scene was the ultimate “fuck you” to L’s character as well as containing a horrible implication and clearly demonstrating a crucial flaw in the movie? Near the end of the movie, L has a gun pointed to Light’s head in a back alley. He’s desperate, and Light is shouting about the page of the death note stuck in Mia’s textbook that’s the key to saving Watari (because he’s such a GOOD GUY, you guys!) Since L has no goddamn idea what Light is talking about, and just knows that he’s the guy who killed 400 people and possibly his only friend, he ignores him, and turns to a man who just walked out of his shop, begging him to help and shouts, “He’s Kira!” The man stops and gets clarification that yes, Light is Kira, and then proceeds to knock L unconscious with a wooden plank to the head because he’s a fan of Kira as Light runs off to safety. Did I mention yet that L is black in this movie while Light is white? A black detective who’s implied to be the best of the best and is completely in the right is struck down because the bystander was a fan of the white mass murderer he was trying to stop. It doesn’t matter that “Oh, but Kira was only killing bad guys!” because fuck you, the movie itself established that Light and Mia were killing people on a whim and not bothering to check sources for libel. I will repeat, THE MOVIE POINT BLANK HAD A BLACK PROFESSIONAL STRUCK DOWN TO PROTECT THE WHITE MASS MURDERER THAT THE NARRATIVE TRIES TO PLAY OFF AS INNOCENT. Seriously, this whole movie exists around the premise that a greasy white boy who murders people needs to be cared about and protected from a woman and a black man who somehow convince him to commit more murder against his will because boobies or want him to stop committing murder at all costs. Ryuk, the death god that patiently walks Light through how to kill someone, doesn’t even get as many “DANGER! THREAT TO LIGHT’S SAFETY!” vibes as Mia and L do. The narrative is like, “Yeah, he’s a death god, what do you expect? BUT THIS WOMAN AND BLACK GUY ARE GONNA BE THE DEATH OF THAT POOR NAIVE BOY!” This kind of shit belongs in a trump rally, not in my movie based on a story where the main, privileged, young man was portrayed as an honest to God mass-murdering dictator who yes, must be fucking stopped. And you wanna know the dumbest thing about this movie? There are no stakes. None. The narrative wants you to care about the lives of a couple of murderers because they make a cute couple and are a pair of “good kids” who have glitter on their tongues (yeah) and are white (or at least, that’s what I’m guessing, since the only black character in the movie is treated as a hindrance and a joke even though he was in the right the entire time). Everyone in the movie’s world that isn’t a cop LOVES Kira. The movie is forever showing you pictures of people at Kira shrines, or holding, “I Love You, Kira!” or spraypaint on the walls that says “Kira Lives!” We never see the dystopian hellscape that ultimately was Kira’s world, where everyone was scared fucking shitless because Light was killing anyone who so much as looked at another guy funny. And don’t tell me that there was no crime ever in that world, there was just unreported crime. And we never see any followup to the scene where they just decide to kill people because anonymous sources online told them to. We never see any distraught partners breaking down on the news because their husband died of a heart attack for a crime he didn’t commit. We never see any innocent people die, or at least innocent people who are quickly brushed off as “cannon fodder” and are never mentioned again after they are killed (ie, the twelve FBI agents). Kira is just worshiped by EVERYONE to the point where if he just came out as Kira, nobody would be able to touch him because they’d be coming out of the woodwork to protect him (as demonstrated in the paragraph above). The only reason he DID possibly die in the end is because Light gave L the means to. If he never mentioned the Death Note, he would basically be unstoppable, because everyone in this movie is either SO DUMB or SO IN LOVE WITH KIRA. And while this movie is so bad it’s hilarious to watch and deserves a good MST3K-ing, it’s also so fucking infuriating with it’s fucking worship and embracing of this fucking white boy mass murderer to the point where they had to make characters from the original work into worse versions of themselves to prop him up while decrying anyone who opposes him as “the real bad guys.” These writers are the kind of people who pass a gang of white kids vandalizing a car to call the cops on a black kid sleeping in one. These writers are the kind of people who would say, “Well, of course she got raped, she constantly teased boys with her short skirts!” The writers are the kind of writers who would describe a white male shooter as, “teen genius suddenly snaps! Unfortunate incident for former varsity football player. His friends talk about what a great guy he was on page six.” Seriously, the next time someone scoffs at you for suggesting that white male privilege exists, show them this goddamn movie a bunch of grown ass adults made and went, “Yep, this’ll do!”