Is Death Note (2017) As Bad As Everyone Says?

I’m sure we all remember the uproar and backlash of last years’ live action rendition of “Death Note”. Before the film had even released, the IMDb page had already been filled with hundreds of negative reviews. Die hard fans of the manga and anime had their pitchforks at the ready and began to tear the film apart. It currently has a rating of 4.6/10 user score on IMDb. As a person who at the time had not read or seen any of the source material, I decided to give it a try.

I thought the film started off relatively well, setting up some of it’s characters quite quickly and didn’t waste time getting on with the story. I assumed that eventually the pace would slow down, giving the story space to breathe and time for things to settle, allowing for realistic character development and cohesive writing. This didn’t happen. The film jets through it’s 90 minutes, never really stopping, allowing plot holes to arise, and for things to seem like they’ve been written all too conveniently. When the film had finished, I felt like I had just wasted an hour and a half on a poorly written film that I couldn’t care less about.

As the initial concept of the film seemed relatively interesting to me, I decided to then watch the anime. Straight away I was aware that the film had deviated from the source material big time. The anime was well written, clever, along with having characters that felt real. Ironically, the characters in the film seem to be more 2D than their anime counterparts. The motivation of Light Turner (Nat Wolff) seems meaningless, his intended battle of wits with “L” (Lakeith Stanfield) is non-existent, and the characters unrealistically leap to conclusions, almost as if they themselves have read the script. The anime itself sometimes suffers from this problem, but at least it tries its best to flesh out coherent thought and make the character’s conclusions seem realistic.

Ultimately, Death Note (2017) is a terrible adaptation, and leaves a lot to be desired.

4/10

Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoiler Free Review

The next installment of the new Star Wars trilogy is finally here, and after an intense 2 year wait I was finally able to feast my eyes on the film. At a jam packed double bill midnight showing, where The Force Awakens would be played before The Last Jedi, I was surrounded by people dressed as Jedi and Sith. I was truly in the Star Wars zone. I couldn’t help but become swarmed in the hype and ultimately switch off the critical section of my brain and let my inner Star Wars fanboy-ism take over. So with that being said, I had an absolute blast watching The Last Jedi.

The newest Space Opera is far from perfect, it has many problems both tonally and plot wise. Some story arcs feel relatively out of place and it feels as though some characters that you really care about are ordered to take a back seat. There are also elements in the film that are blatantly designed to sell toys, but not anywhere near as bad as the stupid Ewoks. However, with this being said, not once was I pulled from my immersion into the Star Wars universe. The film is still relatively solid with good action and CGI and progresses the story of the new trilogy in a satisfactory way. All in all if you simply switch off and have a good time, you will enjoy The Last Jedi thoroughly. If you decide to be critical – which there is nothing wrong with – you will find yourself having less fun with the film. Personally, I’ll choose to switch off, which ultimately comes down to the fact that I can’t resist enjoying some Star Wars, it just makes me too happy.

7.5/10.