Blog:What if a Death Note movie was produced by Disney?

What if a Death Note movie was produced by Disney?

Death Note is an American-Japanese animation film based on the manga/anime series of the same name, produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. The film is directed by Micael Esli in his directorial debut, written by Paul Tibbitt and Jhonen Vasquez and starring Eric Idle as Light Yagami, Kevin Kline as L Lawliet, Leslie Swan as Misa Amane, Mike Pollock as Ryuk and Jen Taylor as Rem. The film was first announced along with the conceptual catalog of other animated films planned by Disney in 2003, and its original release date was planned for 2005, but was postponed twice, being released in 2007.

Thanks to a questionable cast, troubled production and a lot of executive meddling, the film received mixed reviews after its release, with many criticizing the strange and somewhat unusual decision of a company like Disney wanting to bet on manga and anime adaptations, which is not it would be a big problem if it wasn't a manga like Death Note, which caused big problems and had to be rewritten several times to satisfy the executives, the fact that an anime is being produced almost at the same time as the film, making it useless, plot almost inappropriate for a children's movie (Light Yagami is seen killing people by writing their names in the notebook as in the original manga, uncensored, although the deaths have comic effects to try to balance the heavy atmosphere of those moments), bizarre humor, although funny and intelligent in a few moments here and there, characters with personalities changed to adapt to the new target audience, and strange and excessively childish dubbing, although it has been praised for its smooth and detailed animation, good soundtrack that captures the protagonist's spirit of vigilance and plot that reasonably follows the origin story, which is rare in an adaptation like this.

Despite its many mistakes and the fact that it was unattractive to parents and children, the film was a modest success, earning US$ 150,000,000 from its US$ 80,000,000 budget. The reason for this is unknown, but it is very likely that fans of the anime that was released almost at the same time as the film came to watch this.

Why it Sucks

 * 1) Let's get the elephant out of the room: Adapting this to children is a horrible idea! Especially because it has the word "Death" in its name, which parents would want their children to watch a man who believes he is God and kills people with a notebook? To be fair, Disney has done something like that years ago several times, as surprising results, but Death Note is simply difficult or even impossible to adapt, besides being a rather silly and useless choice, because if we analyze it well, Light Yagami is an uninteresting and dangerous character when shown to children, his strategies to prevent L from discovering that he is Kira may simply go unnoticed and his slogan "I Am the God of the New World" may cause controversy with Christian families, as the protagonist is calling itself God, which can also be a bad influence at worst. Making an animated film based on shonen anime would be a better idea, as the film's production could do whatever it wanted.
 * 2) The anime was also being made during the production of the film, which makes it even more useless.
 * 3) Strange dubbing and stranger casting choices: Eric Idle is just as bizarre as Light, giving the character a voice like a 50-year-old guy trying to voice a college student. Just to get a sense of how strange his voice is, it's almost like listening to a mix of Christopher Columbus from The Magic Voyage with Sonic the Hedgehog voiced by Roger Craig Smith. Light's dubbing gets even worse when he's talking about his utopian New World, getting too hoarse and almost pedophilic, although it gets a lot better at the end of the movie, when he goes insane and starts laughing wildly, where Eric was able to provide a extremely scary laugh, followed by an eccentric speech that perfectly fit the character in the scene. Leslie Swan as Misa is okay, but her voice sounds a little forced and resembles a generic genki more than a gothic occult girl who lost her family and falls in love with Light after discovering that he killed the killer behind the death of his family. Mike Pollock as Ryuk is certainly the most terrible part of the film, as his voice is strangely too thick even for a shinigami, and more like a slightly choked and demonic version of Dr. Robotnik. He is also very loud when eating apples, acting as if he is eating a burning pepper.
 * 4) Inadequate plot, although it is to be expected, since it is Death Note that we are talking about. Things get a little worse with the changes made to make the film more "family", like L returning after having his name written in the notebook. Although this is not a bad idea, the way it occurred (Misa writes L's name after watching Light fail several times when trying to do it on her own and then starting to cry like a baby, because he didn't want to kill her "friend", and then sleeping on top of his Death Note from crying so hard for L) is laughable and pathetic. L returns after "dying" and explains that he had created that scenario to prove that Light is Kira. Another bizarre plot is the scene where Light is at a convenience store testing his notebook, when he notes that a woman is struggling to escape from a group of men. As the original version featured an attempted rape, a gross change was made to the film, which was to change the intentions of the group of men to simply be an assault, but with the woman still acting as if they were trying to rape her. Worst of all, she starts running in circles waving her arms in the air, screaming for help. If that's not stupidity at its best, we don't know what is. As in almost all scenes, Light Yagami is the worst part: He tests the notebook taking advantage of this action by sending the group of men to the middle of the road distracting them with a slightly more attractive woman, and running them over with a truck. Before that, he had thought to entertain them with a balloon seller!
 * 5) The characters are completely nerfed or profoundly modified:
 * 6) As noted in the previous topics, Light should be a rather above average student (and he really is in the film), however, he does appear a little stupid in certain situations that involve his "New World", such as: Wanting to kill television reporters and his own sister (although he actually considered doing so in the original story) before finally deciding to kill criminals. To add a lot of salt to the wound, the reason he wanted to kill his sister was simply because she was playing with several toys on the stairs that lead to her room, causing Light to slip into a purple ball and fall down the stairs. Sometimes, his eccentricity gets in the way of his plans and makes him more suspicious of being Kira, for example, in a scene where L says he suspects this, and instead of being silent or simply saying that he wasn't, Light begins to laugh without stopping, making L increase his suspicion by 50%. After that, Light instantly stops laughing and gets serious. Another demonstration of stupidity and eccentricity is in the scene where he sees L for the first time, starting to mock his appearance after L claims to be a detective. In this particular scene, Light's personality is said to literally cease to be himself and become an anime version of Gaston LeGume, nicknamed "Gaston LeLight" by the Meme Community.
 * 7) L is just a shadow of your original self. Despite maintaining a calm attitude, L's greed for food is almost like Garfield's passion for lasagna. He cannot work without eating sweet things, usually tiring his assistant Watari, who apparently has to make food for L almost 24 a day. If Watari fails to bring something to L, he begins to suffer some kind of "abstinence" from sweet food. His deduction is also a bit bizarre: He suspects that Light is Kira because he is just suspicious, with no logic or reasoning behind. Even when he sits in his iconic position, his reasoning can fail when he starts thinking about food. L sucks at putting puzzles or surfing the internet, and he doesn't even mind changing his voice on phone calls to preserve his identity. He doesn't even take care of his hygiene, having some lice in his hair.
 * 8) Ryuk is unlikely. Every time he appears (except the first time) it is to mock Light whenever he fails or to eat his apples by making a very irritating noise. It is hardly useful, but it appears little, to our delight.
 * 9) Mello has the same level of obsession with chocolate as L has for sweet things, and acts much more irritated than usual, literally putting his emotions in front of rationality. In fact, one of their rage attacks is the one that leads Light Yagami's father and sister to escape from your lair, where they held them hostage, and would only release them if Light handed him his Death Note.
 * 10) When Ryuk first appears in Light's room, he is startled by his appearance, falls to the floor, gets up and then hides in the place where he claims that Ryuk "will never find him": Under the bed. The scene is even more pathetic when Ryuk raises the bed and finds Light sucking his finger and laughing, without noticing that he found him in his hiding place.
 * 11) The way the plot of the film was written was thanks to the conflicting style of Jhon Vasquez and Paul Tibbitt. Jhon is best known for creating the cartoon Invader Zim, and previously a book called Johnny, the Homicidal Maniac, while Paul is best known for being involved in the production of SpongeBob episodes. In addition to both not being the best options for producing a film like this, their writing styles constantly collide in very dark or very happy scenes. Thanks to this, the atmosphere of some scenes, for example, Light writing names on the Death Note or having a relaxed conversation with L is very messy and chaotic, and it is almost impossible to get involved in the plot. This choice was purely due to Disney's executive intrusion, as Micael wanted to hire writers who had knowledge of the manga, but he had to make do with this choice because Disney believed that this Tibbitt and Vasquez hiring could balance the film and make it more friendly for young children.
 * 12) Some strange humor involving death.
 * 13) The film manages to introduce Near after L's false death, but he remains there when L returns. After L meets Near, the film becomes a real mess, because now we have two detectives who want to catch Kira and seem to be competing with each other to see who has the strangest manias! Speaking of manias, Near liking toys is also a bit of an exaggeration, as he brings a big box full of them on his first day of work beside L, and starts playing with his food while deducting! Just let the sweet food fanatic work or work together, Near!
 * 14) The helicopter scene is a little painful to watch: Light seems to be afraid of heights and avoids getting in there anyway, until he is dragged by L into it. When they are flying in search of the person to whom Light passed his Death Note to deflect their suspicions, they are able to find him surrounded by the police on a highway, next to his car. However, upon landing the helicopter, Light retrieves half of his memories with the notebook, and then realizes that it is time to carry out the next step in his plan, which is to write that person's name on a piece of paper inside a small compartment on your watch. However, to try to lighten the heavy atmosphere of the scene, Light presses a button on the watch three times to open the compartment, but it is stuck, causing him to press that button more times. After several attempts, the compartment finally opens, but the worst part follows: By sneaking a needle to penetrate his arm, the needle also gets stuck, making Light feel some pain, but tries to disguise it for L. Trying removing the needle from the wrist, Light almost breaks a vein and a bone, but successfully manages to remove it. Although he is not seen writing the name with the tip of the needle in blood, as Light is being seen from the back as a kind of poorly made censorship, when he finishes writing, the name written in blood on paper is seen in a close-up for a brief time in a slightly frightening way, with blood dripping from the paper and lightning in the background to make it more visible, before Light put the needle in the compartment of his watch and closed it.
 * 15) Light's slogan in the film sounds like he is drunk when he manages to temporarily get rid of L. To make matters worse, he looked tired as he posed like Jesus on top of the building where he was being watched daily. His voice bizarrely returns to "normal" when he says "This is what happens when challenging the God of the New World."
 * 16) The production of the film was quite chaotic due to the intrusion of Disney executives in the film, constantly changing the objective and making its production difficult in the script phase, resulting in postponements until 2007, when it was finally released.
 * 17) At the end of the film, Light is arrested for trying to escape and is sentenced to death, however, we see him die on the screen when Ryuk writes his name in the notebook! Misa, despite having learned about the dark side of her beloved fiancé (yes, they become engaged), goes crazy after he dies and goes to live in a dump, which is a very bizarre and insane ending to a kids' movie (or something that should be one). In the post-credit scene, however, Light's family is seen honoring him, which is somewhat comforting.
 * 18) The scenes where Light starts writing the names of criminals is, although very funny and epic, one of the most inappropriate things in the film. The comic fates that criminals suffer before they die were made in an attempt to soften what could be a heavier atmosphere for a children's movie, as Light is killing criminals and we can see them having cardiac arrest or some other type of death when someone is involved in your plans. In addition, sometimes he lets out a scary laugh when he realizes that he has already killed a lot of people. Despite that, these scenes are well put together and the deaths are quite funny, like a person throwing himself on a wall and then getting dizzy and falling out of the window, a janitor drowning with soap in his mouth, a criminal running to the bathroom, slipping on the wet floor and falling to the ground after suffering cardiac arrest and the death of Ray Plember, although it is also very tragic, since Ray was not doing anything wrong and just wanted to catch Kira, like many others. Light certainly saw this as a "challenge" and decided to use it to his advantage, putting the names of several Interpol and FBI agents on a piece of paper (Ray failed several times and dropped several papers on the subway floor where was due to his nervousness), and after that, Light kills him, only in a very terrible and comical way: Ray screams love phrases to Naomi Misora ​​before falling to the ground and dying.
 * 19) Naomi crying for losing her husband is a very heavy scene as it was shown. It gets more intense when she swears revenge on Kira (and she manages to do that in the film).
 * 20) Light's family dinner scene is almost meaningless: L is just invited (under the name Ryusaki) by Light's mother to have dinner with them and things get worse even before the scene itself begins: Light is forced for his mother to wait for L outside his house, because L was not sure where Light lived, which is bizarre, because by this point security cameras had already been installed in his house to see how he would act with no one around. When L finally arrives at his home after seeing Light, they both go to dinner, and Light's family had prepared a surprise for L celebrating the simple fact that they were together, which they interpreted as "friendship". After they sit down, L starts talking about how they are "great friends" (which irritates Light) and even talks about how he felt alone before meeting him, which makes Light hit his head on the table. When dinner is served, L demonstrates logical reasoning to pass a test for Light's parents, using his iconic pose, which makes Light embarrassed. Despite this, they both receive applause for working together in a way considered "impressive", L gets emotional (yes, he gets) and says how much he likes Light (which contradicts the original character in many ways) and hugs his "friend". To be fair, although L left the character completely after he was moved, the way he says he likes Light very much and hugs him, followed by Light also moving, but then disguising and moving L away is comical and at the same time comforting.
 * 21) Misa wanting to have a gothic pajama party with Light at her house is just bizarre and doesn't make any sense.
 * 22) Rem's introduction is too quick and bad: He appears at night, when Misa is sleeping in her room, inside the closet. Upon leaving, he is startled by Misa screaming after waking up and noticing him and falls from the window, but teleports to his side after Misa realizes that he is "harmless".
 * 23) Light and Misa laughing together is a funny scene, but a little scary due to the hideous coloring of red and dark blue and forced facial expression of Light laughing. The luck is that there is no close-up of Light's face in this scene.

Neutral Qualities

 * 1) Light Yagami really cares about L in the film, although it contradicts his original personality, which would never allow empathy with those who "challenge" him. He is also shown to be a supportive student, despite being bored with his life and position in college, and has also come to care for Misa and his own family throughout the film. This possibly explains his expression of disgust at the top of the building, which should have been some kind of celebration, as Light finally got what he wanted at the beginning of the story thanks to Misa.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Jen Taylor plays Rem very satisfactorily, acting calmly, as Mike Pollock should have done with Ryuk.
 * 2) Some scenes of Mike Pollock as Ryuk are so forced that they are worth watching, like the scene where he explains how the Death Note works, which is so bad that it’s funny thanks to Mike trying to force a thick and intimidating voice, but it ends up coming out too thick.
 * 3) Eric Idle surprisingly manages to deliver a great performance at the end of the film, when Light Yagami is briefly consumed by madness when Near corners him in a factory and leaves him with no choice but to admit that he is the original Kira. His voice bizarrely approaches Light much more than before, coming to be very similar with the Japanese dubbing of the anime.
 * 4) Kevin Kline also delivers a great performance as L Lawliet. He has a calm voice and hardly gets out of tune.
 * 5) Vivid, detailed and beautifully done animation, similar to the Disney standard of hand-made animations in the 90s.
 * 6) Even though the characters are horribly nerfed in this film, some interesting things happen to them: Light manages to fulfill his dream of building his New World for a short period of time, L works together with Near to prove that Light is Kira (and they do), and Misa's plan to get Light's attention works because it's done well.
 * 7) Seeing L and Near working together is really cool to see.
 * 8) Misa's past is really touching and is treated very well in the film.
 * 9) Some scenes in the film have intelligent humor.
 * 10) Incredible and epic soundtrack that recalls Light's thirst for justice and his illusory claim to "God of the New World", courtesy of Alan Menken.
 * 11) The scene where Light tries to get rid of Naomi Misora is particularly so bad that it is funny. As suicidal illustrations could not appear in the film, Naomi deceives Light by giving him two false names, as she suspected that he was Kira by chance. When writing the second false name, she walks to the end of the street and pretends to faint, which Light initially celebrates, but then gets confused, because that was not what he had written. Naomi gets up, scares Light and says he is Kira, so Light runs off while Ryuk laughs at him.
 * 12) Some of Light's strategies and L deductions are very good.
 * 13) The film could be much better if it were a parody where a notebook revives people instead of killing them, making it more suitable for children and being a funny parody of Death Note and other animes.

Curiosities

 * 1) The Walt Disney Animation Studios intro features Ryuk instead of Mickey Mouse whistling while driving the boat, which is somewhat unusual and fun.
 * 2) Light's family pays homage to him similar to a kind of worship of some god after the credits, which although strange, is at the same time comforting.