Forum - View topicLive-Action Death Note Film's Light Poster Revealed
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Puniyo
 Posts: 271 |
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L's poster was kinda rubbish, but I like this one a lot. He's finally starting to look like Light.
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Yuza
Posts: 36 |
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Now it just looks like an dude standing in a black void, and I have no idea who the actor is so I know they're not banking on star power here. Having the graffiti around him just looks random to me. I think they should have the names written in the Death Note written there instead. I don't think these posters don't really sell the characters or the film very well, they just look like random stock photos.
Something that's bothered me since I saw the trailer was that the Death Note's new design is how it's designed to look old and tattered. I heard the guy behind this film is supposedly a fan but even if he is I think he has a very different interpretation of the source materiel than most, especially me. I know the notebook is an old-ass book but I liked the sleek, modern design of the Death Note because it looked so inconspicuous, and it was my headcanon that the design changed to match human progress while still looking timeless. The writer Ohba Tsugumi said that could even be a possible explanation for it's modern look, but it might be just one of those details he never thought through completely until someone asked him, so he had to improvise an answer). I can't imagine the thought process behind the set designer to change it into a half-assed Necronomicon - did they think that because they thought it should look old? Or are they going with a different angle to it completely? I hope they are because it's just kind of annoying if they tried to fix the source materiel when they didn't understand it, but it's a fairly minor detail. |
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AnimeLordLuis
 Posts: 1626 Location: The Borderlands of Pandora |
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I thought this film was going to be Death Note not Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
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niji9t
 Posts: 18 |
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Brilliant! I was thinking the same thing. While I do like the artistic direction they're taking I can't help but feel like Light was horribly miscast. I have nothing against a Black person playing L though. They could do something interesting and new with the character. Light is the only problem I see in this adaptation. Oh well, I guess it won't be as horrible as the Japanese drama series :'D |
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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So Light is a school shooter and L is a Mr. Robot
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FilthyCasual
Posts: 2315 |
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Wow, Light actually sort of looks like Light now.
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Puniyo
Posts: 271 |
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I barely ever watch films, and I know what this guy was in (Fault in Our Stars, for one thing). They're definitely banking on his name selling it to the normies. While I sort of agree on the Death Note's design, I don't think it's a big deal. Ohba just seems like that kind of guy to me. Even a detail you'd think would be kind of important, like L's nationality, is something he thought of on the spot when asked one time. Anyway, I think he's kinda grown on me as Light a bit. He's not perfect, but nowhere near as bad as I thought he'd be. ...Misa on the other hand... |
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Yuza
Posts: 36 |
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Makes sense, I don't watch many films either so I guess it's just my lack of knowledge. Still, it's not as if it'd hurt for him to be in a poster that was actually visually interesting to interest people other than people would have gone to see it anyway. I'm not going to cream myself just because he's holding a Death Note. They just put two famous things next to each other and called it a day. I'm not too stressed out about it, I just hope it's not indicative of how they treated the source materiel as a whole. I can't understand why you would change such a minor detail unless you were trying to correct it or heading for a completely new direction in terms of the Death Note's origin. I'm fine if it's the latter but I can't tell what it is. |
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Woomy
 Posts: 110 |
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All this over the minor changes to the design of the actual notebook? And when you think about it, why would the Death Note look like a sleek, modern notebook? The worn parchment kinda emphasizes this book as some ancient tool Death Gods have been using for centuries to kill people with. I don't get how that angle is suddenly telling you they just don't understand Death Note. And I never got the impression that keeping up with human sensibilities was any kind of intention because humans getting their hands on Death Notes wasn't a regular thing. Ryuk acted of his own accord when he dropped it. Shinigami don't really do that very often at all. Last edited by Woomy on Tue Jul 18, 2017 10:24 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4513 Location: New York |
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Ryuk's is still my favorite. But this isn't bad.
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Yuza
Posts: 36 |
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Like I said, it's a fairly minor detail. My problem is that they changed an iconic piece of the franchise that didn't need to be changed, and I don't understand why. I preferred the original design because it looked timeless and otherworldly, as if it belonged in the Shinigami Realm. It has less personality now and looks more like a generic horror movie prop. They could have changed the origin of the notebook (there's no other Shinigami in the trailer other than Ryuk and the rules, which were supposed to have been written in by Ryuk, are also shitty parchment) but I don't know if they did or not. I don't think it should look old without a change to the story, partly because of the headcanon about it changing forms over time but also because it just looks more interesting and more mysterious. It's not a huge deal but if they changed it without a reason that's just a little bit a potential lore that's gone now and has been replaced with something underwhelming. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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I like it artistically, but the one problem I feel it has, as are the others, is that it does not sell the story's premise very well. If you look at other movie posters around this day and age, you'll see they are VERY simplistic but are carefully angled and framed to tell you what you can expect in the movie. Regardless of the movie's quality, this telling a lot with a little is something Hollywood can do consistently well. Spider-Man Homecoming has Spidey resting in front of the NYC skyline with a Dutch angle. Girls Trip has one of the main characters (or sometimes all four) looking with sassy joy between the legs of what looks to be a male stripper. Dunkirk has an exhausted but determined man in a cold place. Despicable Me 3 has Gru and his brother standing next to each other, their facial expressions telling you what their relationship is like. And streaming companies are doing it too, like the poster for Dumb being a hunched-over blue guy and that's it, or how the new season of Veep is a parody of the Iwo Jima flag photograph but with the characters in the show. Here are the six posters I've mentioned. Notice that all of them have one or two elements at most (even if said element is a group of people), and they all have either focus lines or highly contrasted colors (or, in the case of Veep, both) to draw your attention to where the designers wanted. And what they all have in common is that it takes a very short amount of time to mentally process the contents of each poster--they can be understood near instantly. 
What they could've done was have the background be, as you mentioned, a list of names, and I think the tagline they originally used, "The human whose name is written in the notebook shall die." Still simplistic, with few elements, but now someone totally unfamiliar with the premise can understand, "This man has killed a lot of people" and the further suggestion, "This man must be stopped." Heck, the same background can be used for each character too.
Is it not Diary of a Wimpy Kid for angsty teenagers looking for wish-fulfillment? |
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13589 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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If this was an alternate universe version of "Death Note" and the news announcements had mentioned that, then casting controversy might have not been as bad. If the manga had Light was as a white American (though most anime characters look Caucasian) but he's played by a black or Asian guy, the controversy still stands.
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