Death Note: The 2010 American Remake

Aion

Time-Traveller
For ages now there has been a listing on IMDB, in English (not 'Desu Note'), for a new Death Note release in 2010. Because there have already been three Japanese live-action flicks, the first two covering the manga story and the third being 100% filler, it's doubtful that it's going to be a Japanese release. I think it's actually been confirmed that it is in fact an American production.

There have been a fair few rumours about it, the most amusing being this: http://www.crunchyroll.com/forumtopic-2 ... confirmed/

My question is, what do you expect - fail or win; better than the failure of a first live-action Death Note film?

I really, really don't know what to think. I'm quite interested in it because it's most likely going to be Death Note in name alone - names will have to be changed and cultral differences edited out, and all of the original dialogue will most likely be replaced with lesser quality chatter. As a Death Note adaptation, I fully expect it to fail, like pretty much every Hollywood adaptation does, but I do also think it might turn out to be an interesting American take on a Japanese story.

If it's any worse than the first Japanese attempt then I'll cry - that much I do know. While the sequel was actually pretty good, changing a lot for the better and including a better ending than the proper story, the first managed to transform the best section of the story into 5-6/10 crappiness. Even the Americans will struggle to ****-up more than the Japanese did with moralistic Light and a filler girlfriend for him to be lovey dovey with.
 
If it turns out anything like Speed Racer it will be **** but keep in mind a Death note on it's own is pretty interesting plot so it should go down fairly well in the box office as long as they don't spend half the movie explaining how the Death Note works.
 
Fail, Americans are already bad at converting anime/cartoons to live action, and when you do it was an already bad series your doomed

oh well they may make it worth watching if it turns out like resie evil did ;)
 
I actually liked the JP DN films (the first half of the first one annoyed me for similar reasons to those Aion mentioned but by the end I got into it). I don't see this really appealing to the same audience but will try to keep an open mind. I wonder if they'll go with cheesy CG shinigami too or try for another way of representing them?

I expect the look and feel of the thing will be completely different, including the designs of the non-human characters. Memories of ADV's live action Eva concept designs are flooding back.

R
 
Ryo Chan said:
Fail, Americans are already bad at converting anime/cartoons to live action, and when you do it was an already bad series your doomed

oh well they may make it worth watching if it turns out like resie evil did ;)

It's not just Americans that are bad to adapting anime to live action, the Japanese are pretty awful at it too ;]
 
CitizenGeek said:
Ryo Chan said:
Fail, Americans are already bad at converting anime/cartoons to live action, and when you do it was an already bad series your doomed

oh well they may make it worth watching if it turns out like resie evil did ;)

It's not just Americans that are bad to adapting anime to live action, the Japanese are pretty awful at it too ;]

that would have to be a bias view from my point though as i'm yet to see a Japanese live action show

though i can imagine what you mean from the trailers of the live action Sailormoon and Negima :D
 
Ryo Chan said:
CitizenGeek said:
Ryo Chan said:
Fail, Americans are already bad at converting anime/cartoons to live action, and when you do it was an already bad series your doomed

oh well they may make it worth watching if it turns out like resie evil did ;)

It's not just Americans that are bad to adapting anime to live action, the Japanese are pretty awful at it too ;]

that would have to be a bias view from my point though as i'm yet to see a Japanese live action show

though i can imagine what you mean from the trailers of the live action Sailormoon and Negima :D

Watch the trailers for the live action Fate Stay night and Higurashi it's complete ****.
 
Gacha said:
Watch the trailers for the live action Fate Stay night and Higurashi it's complete ****.

Live action Fate Stay Night? surely you can't be serious? The Higurashi one i've heard about but Fate Stay Night?
 
BlackWolf said:
Gacha said:
Watch the trailers for the live action Fate Stay night and Higurashi it's complete ****.

Live action Fate Stay Night? surely you can't be serious? The Higurashi one i've heard about but Fate Stay Night?

It's on youtube somewhere it's god awful Shirou is over weight and has a sex scene..
 
The Japanese suck at making films. Live-action and animated, most of them are horrible. Even Battle Royale, which somehow has a rating of 8/10 on IMDB, is woeful - I stopped watching after an hour and gave it a generous rating of 5/10 on IMDB.

I tried watching Casshern the other night. It was impossible to take seriously when metal things fell from the sky without explanation, causing body parts to join together and form a new species. I'd had enough by the time the new species found a castle in he snow and, without explanation, created an army of robots and took over the world. The crappy camera work and 'special effects' during a fight was the final straw.

As much as I like a lot that the Japanese created, film making is not one of their talents. I'm wary when I go near any film created by the Japanese.
 
Gacha said:
BlackWolf said:
Gacha said:
Watch the trailers for the live action Fate Stay night and Higurashi it's complete ****.

Live action Fate Stay Night? surely you can't be serious? The Higurashi one i've heard about but Fate Stay Night?

It's on youtube somewhere it's god awful Shirou is over weight and has a sex scene..

I've just had a look and found one of the reasons why i've never heard ofi it, its an unoffiicial movie adaption, in japan it was called Faith/Stay to avoid the copyright issues, so as far as i'm concerned its little more then a fan production.

But regardless, the fault with adaptions, isn't nessrcarily with those who make it but the adaption process itself, admittedly Amercia have only recently gotten better at making comic books into movies and i've only seen one really good video game adaption.

As for japanese movies themselves, i've only really seen Godzilla movies so i couldn't possibly comment on the style.
 
I personally couldn't stand the Japanese Death Note, increased by the terrible CG Ryuk. Saying that I don't think the Americans can do much better though, if they do better at all.


Oh, and I hope there isn't a live action Fate/Stay Night =P
 
I'm gonna be brave and suggest that maybe the reason things like Dragon Ball Z, Death Note and Saikano have had bad adaptations is that the source material itself is pretty substandard. There seems to be a tendency among anime fans to praise something (or just ignore its deficiencies) more than it deserves simply because it's anime. Then when it makes the move to Live Action suddenly they become really critical.

Just to take an example I've seen anime fans be really snooty and critical towards Avatar just because it's an American cartoon. However they don't judge any of the similarly themed anime shows (Naruto, DBZ etc) by anywhere near the same standard even though 90% of them are blatantly much worse.
 
My two pence worth, the Deathnote concept on it's own is excellent and could make for a great movie, it would just have to be very different to the manga. The first two or three volumes had me totally hooked, but soon began to enter the realms of the ridiculous and downright stupid: from the tennis match onwards.....L builds a skyscraper? WTF. As long as they don't get too bogged down in the whole transfer of ownership thing, get rid of most of the characters from the second half and Misa (eurgh), then this could be a good movie. What would be cool is if in this film Ray Penber's girlfriend isn't killed off by Light. Still don't understand why she was so ruthlessly killed off, as she was one of the few characters I actually cared about!.

As a disclaimer, I should say as silly as the Deathnote manga is, I did really enjoy it. :)
 
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To be fair she was a threat to Light and since he killed all the other FBI agents that were poking around, what was another body to him? Letting her live may prove to be his undoing because of what she knew or what she could potentailly figure out. Though i'll agree that the second half should be left alone since to me the first half is the best half.
 
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Ark said:
I'm gonna be brave and suggest that maybe the reason things like Dragon Ball Z, Death Note and Saikano have had bad adaptations is that the source material itself is pretty substandard.
You're a braver man than me. I'm not sure whether to microwave some popcorn or take refuge in my underground bunker.
 
BlackWolf said:
To be fair she was a threat to Light and since he killed all the other FBI agents that were poking around, what was another body to him? Letting her live may prove to be his undoing because of what she knew or what she could potentailly figure out. Though i'll agree that the second half should be left alone since to me the first half is the best half.

Oops, sorry I wasn't being clear!

I understand why Light killed her off ...what I don't get is why Tsugumi Ohba chose to have her killed! :wink:
 
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Battle Royale failed because all of the character development was discarded, the focus being 100% on deaths. A simple concept and story was butchered. It also had some of the worst acting I've seen.

The first Death Note film failed because everything was simplified, Light's character was changed for no reason, key scenes and pieces of dialogue weren't included and it had the usual poor Japanese acting. The irony is that, had it copied the manga as much as possible, it would've been great, yet it became nothing more than average because the movie makers thought they knew better. I could understand them cutting the Naomi sequence because of all the thinking parts on Light's part, but it worked in the anime and it could've workd in the flesh.

The second DN film actually had a scene that was near enough identical to the same scene in the manga - the Light/Misa conversation in his room. The only change was the removal of an important line, which made Light seem stupid. Even the usually awful actor who played Light got the look for the scene right - calm, with an undercurrent of anger. That scene showed how great the first film could've been had it copied the manga and not had so much filler rubbish.

As for Dragonball Evolution, it's obvious why that failed without even watching it. It was transformed from a light-hearted and amusing martial arts story into a more dark (and generic) fight to save the planet from an evil person. It had none of the charm of the manga and wasn't at all faithful. DB fans hated it for being such a terrible adaptation, and non-DB fans hated it for being a crap film... I have no idea what the point of creating a film like it was.

So, no, anime adaptations sucking is down to the adaptations being poor; nothing to do with the source material. If people love the original story, they'd have no issues loving a faithful adaptation, but that so rarely happens because of time and/or budget restraints, as well as the movie makers thinking they're smarter than whoever came up with the original story - arrogance in other words.
 
Aion said:
The irony is that, had it copied the manga as much as possible, it would've been great, yet it became nothing more than average because the filmmakers thought they knew better.

How can you squeeze the entire Deathnote manga into a 2/3 hour film though? I don't want this turning into yet another 9 hours+ ******** trilogy.

Also, Battle Royale (the movie) is freaking awesome.
 
The Battle Royale film is awesome depending on your IQ and if you've read the novel or the manga. It doesn't hold a candle to the novel.

And, considering the first DN film went on for two hours and didn't get very far because of the huge amount of filler material, with the sequel also ending the story at around the chapter 50-something mark, it was very possible to do a good job of not butchering the story in around 4.5 hours.
 
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