As someone who loves the Japanese movies, this does look like a clear step down, but honestly, it could have been worse, and I expected it to be worse. That doesn't mean it looks good by any means, though.

Damn straight, she was a babe in the JP films.

Lmao the apple comment. In a youtube video the director I think said he wanted to make it edgier and darker tha the original anime....lmao first step in failure.

Seriously. Do Americans need makeout scenes and violence in every damn movie?

If I remember correctly, Light questioned himself and his actions after his first couple of kills.

All of this. I want to give this thing a chance, but the bolded sentence is always an easy way to fastrack an adaptation to failure.

Jury's still out on the original story though. I'm with you; don't try to take all of the same plotlines of the anime and bastardize them. Make a new story with the same themes of the original. and to capture the "soul" of it.

I'd say the part I'm most curious about is if Light (or his equivalent) will be portrayed as a tragic hero or a villain. I felt that the original anime somewhat dropped the ball there, as the manga made it pretty blatant that he was a villain, while the anime gave him a much more "noble" ending (I recall reading that even the author of the manga was a bit annoyed with the change). I guess I can understand why that would be changed, since it makes the character more sympathetic, but I generally prefer see adaptations at least be consistent thematically.

I suppose I'll wait and see about this one...but I'm not very optimistic right now. At least it's not Dragonball: Evolution.

Yup, they effed that up.

And as usual American movies featuring high school kids have the main character being bullied. Can't have the kid be both an athlete and someone with good grades who lives an otherwise normal life. Nopes - he has to be bullied.

Thirded. The Japanese film adaptions showed how to do it well IMHO; two films of about two hours each.

If you make that many changes, why not just make it a spin off where new characters get the Note? Nothing about this felt like Light, Misa, or L to me.

Ryuk looks great, but I don't expect much from this.