'Death Note' Director Adam Wingard Defends Culture Change in Netflix Remake
When it was announced that there is going to be a new live-action film for "Death Note" on Netflix, it drew excitement from the manga's long-time fans. However, criticisms poured when the casting was revealed.
"Death Note," the manga, originally tells the story of a Japanese schoolboy, Light, who found a notebook that allows the owner to kill anyone by simply writing their names in it. The supernatural notebook was owned by the "shinigami," a reaper, who later visited Light when he started using it to rid the world of evil. However, because of this, Light also got hunted down by a genius detective named L.
As further details about the film were made public, some were not delighted to find out that the characters will no longer be played by Japanese actors and the setting has been moved from Tokyo to Seattle.
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With "whitewashing" become a big issue in Hollywood nowadays, the film was bound to be criticized for choosing an American cast, especially with the recent box-office flops of "whitewashed" films that are "Ghost in the Shell," which starred Scarlett Johansson, and "The Great Wall," which starred Matt Damon.
On Twitter, director Adam Wingard defended his upcoming "Death Note" movie from criticisms by saying: "Just clearing up misconceptions. No one has seen the film outside of 2 test screenings. Criticisms at this point are based on assumptions."
Moreover, with criticisms that he is not sticking to the original manga, he expressed that he never intended to remove the Japanese culture from "Death Note" as this Netflix adaptation is a new version of the story. He tweeted: "There is no conspiracy to remove Japanese culture from Death Note. It's a fresh version of the story set in Seattle."
He also motioned people to refer to "The Departed," which was a film released back in 2006. It adapted Hong Kong's "Internal Affairs" to Irish-American Boston. Despite the change of culture and location,the film was actually well-received by the audience, according to Inverse.
Wingard also clarified in another tweet that the story will be different, and not just a "copy and paste situation," adding that when they moved the story to America, they "made the movie about America."
"Death Note" premieres Aug. 25 on Netflix. It stars Nat Wolff as Light Turner, Keith Stanfield as "L," Margaret Qualley as Mia Sutton, Willem Dafoe as Ryuk, Paul Nakauchi as Watari, and Shea Whigham as James Turner.
