Hard to believe but yes—the original creators of the Death Note manga namely Takeshi Obata and Tsugumi Ohba have praised the live-action film adaptation of Death Note produced by Netflix.
To quote Ohba, “It was more interesting that I expected. Every bit of it is high quality and very fashionable, it’s definitely Hollywood’s Death Note. I think a wide range of people can enjoy this movie, not just fans, because there are parts that follow the original work but also changes too.” He then continued that, “I hope people overseas who did not know Death note until now can enjoy watching it on Netflix”. As a way to show their praise on the Western adaptation, Obata released a drawing of Nat Wolff (Light Turner) and Ryuk.
When the Netflix live-action film adaptation of Death Note was previewed in San Diego Comic Con, there were a lot of mixed opinions most especially to those who have read the original manga series as well as those who have followed the anime. When the trailers were streamed, online commenters have reacted mostly negative due to the plot change and the character name changes.
The movie is slated to premiere on Netflix on August 25.
For those who are expecting much for this adaptation, this has a lot of major changes and differences from the original manga series. The names of the characters have changed like Light Turner played by Nat Wolff (instead of Light Yagami), James Turner (Shea Whigham), and Mia Sutton (Margaret Qualley). The film will also star Paul Nakauchi playing the role of Watari.
Trailer for film can be seen below:
In the original Death Note manga, Light Yagami was just an ordinary boy living a normal ordinary life. Everything seemed to have turned different when he found the Death Note, a supernatural notebook that kills anyone by just writing their name. The time that he found the notebook was also the time he was acquainted with the shinigami named Ryuk.
Light uses the Death Note to put criminals and unlawful people to their death. This took the attention of L, a detective who does what he can to investigate on the mysterious deaths caused by this person being called as “Kira”.
With the live-action film to be released in just two weeks, let’s hope that this would be something worth watching regardless of the major changes from its original content.
Source: Comic Natalie