Can 'Death Note' Live-Action Adaptation Rise Above the Premature Bad Press?
Months before its scheduled release date, the American adaptation of the popular supernatural manga series "Death Note" has already been embroiled in many controversies. Can the upcoming Netflix live-action movie overcome the negative press already surrounding it, or will the premature impressions completely rob it of a chance to set itself apart from its highly successful source?
Much of the negative reception that the live-action movie has been getting stems from the alleged whitewashing of its cast. Simply put, whitewashing is the casting of a white actor to play an originally non-white character in a film or television adaptation of a source material that comes from another culture.
But while this criticism has put some people off from watching the upcoming Netflix movie, others are still holding out hope that film director Adam Wingard will deliver a decent, if not spot-on, version of "Death Note" that is set in America.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Producer Roy Lee has since responded to the whitewashing backlash in an interview with BuzzFeed News, saying that since the movie is an interpretation of the same story but in a different culture, alterations to certain elements of the narrative are in order.
"Some people will like them, some people may not," Lee said.
However, the whitewashing criticism was really not something that Lee has anticipated, having already adapted several other movies from all over the world in the past without ever encountering this kind of problem.
"I can understand the criticism ... if our version of Death Note was set in Japan and [featured] characters that were Japanese-named or of Japanese ancestry," Lee said. But since this is not the case — the upcoming movie will be set in Seattle, for one — the producer believed there's no reason for such negative press.
The Netflix original movie, which is set to debut on Friday, Aug. 25, features Nat Wolff as Light Turner — Light Yagami in the source material — a young man who comes into possession of the Death Note, a supernatural notebook that possesses the power to kill anyone whose name is written on its pages. Light decides to use this to kill criminals and try to change the world, but his actions will soon lead him down a dark path, where he will eventually have no qualms about killing innocent people, only to keep his identity a secret.
His intoxication for killing quickly catches the interest of an enigmatic detective named L (LaKeith Stanfield) and thus begins a rivalry that previously gave rise to an international phenomenon. Can Wingard's adaptation give its predecessors a good run for their money? Only time can tell.
In the meantime, fans can check out a short trailer for the upcoming Netflix original movie below. "Death Note" also stars Margaret Quailey, Paul Nakauchi, Shea Whigham, Masi Oka, and Willem Dafoe as the voice of the god of death, Ryuk.
