Language : English
Director : Jon S. Baird
Writers : Noah Pink
Cast : Taron Egerton, Mara Huf, Miles Barrow, Rick Yune, Nikita Efremov
Genre : Biography | Drama | History | Thriller
Streaming on Apple TV.
Spoiler Alert: This review contains slight spoilers regarding the nature and ending of the film.
A love letter to gamers.
Tetris is a blend of 80s retro vibes with gaming. Transitions, actions and even the whole structure of the film are set like a game with levels and players. For those who grew up with the likes of Gameboy and other consoles, the film is a trip down the lane where it all began, a time you wished you were alive in.
But the film is not just pandering to gamers, it tells the story of a young determined entrepreneur stuck between the devil and the deep sea. A battle of political and economical ideologies. A fight to win the license for the most addictive game. Taron Egerton can do anything it seems. What a performance.
As the film is told from an American perspective there could be historical inaccuracies.
However, all that doesn’t matter during the big boss fight when ” Holding out for a hero” hits, the moment where the average person feels like a hero after saving the day in their favourite video game.
Seems like content pertaining to games in any form is growing, Last of Us, Dungeons and Dragons and now this. I can’t wait for Super Mario!!
Verdict: 6/7 stars
Brilliant.
Trivia
The real Henk Rogers and Alexey Pazhitnov reviewed the script, and Rogers said much of it was embellished, “It’s a Hollywood script; it’s a movie. It’s not about history, so a lot of [what’s in the movie] never happened. But the filmmakers asked us a bunch of questions about what it was really like… They tried their best to accept our changes when they had to do with authenticity. But when it started getting into [creative flourishes like] the car chase and all that, it was like, ‘OK, now it’s all them.’ We couldn’t change anything.”
Early in the movie, Henk talks about how when he sleeps he can still see the Tetris pieces in his dreams. This is actually a real phenomenon called the Tetris Effect. The term was coined by journalist Jeffrey Goldsmith in 1994 to describe when something that one focuses on for extended periods of time starts appearing in their thoughts, perceptions, and dreams.
Tetris (1984) was the best-selling video game of all time from 1993 until 2020, when it was surpassed by Minecraft (2009). However, it should be noted that that count includes all ports of the game, which vary technically from one version to the next. The now-defunct mobile version developed by EA had alone sold over 100 million copies, making it the third best-selling game after Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto V (2013). The Tetris franchise as a whole has sold nearly 500 million copies, making it the second best-selling game franchise after Mario.
Fifth collaboration between Taron Egerton and producer Matthew Vaughn, after Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014), Eddie the Eagle (2015), Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017), and Rocketman (2019).
Inspired by The Gaming Historian’s The Story Of Tetris on YouTube. An hour long historically accurate documentary of the story of Tetris.
When selling Tetris to Nintendo’s president, Mr. Yamauchi, Rogers (Taron Egerton) mentions the power of collaboration giving examples like Mario and Luigi, Link and Zelda and Mike Tyson and whoever he was beating up In Punch Out!! The Super Mario Bros. and Punch Out!! References are follow by recreation of the original 8 bit games, but the Zelda one is in 16 bits. This is because in the original game, The Legend of Zelda, you could only play as Link. Zelda becomes a playable character until much later installments of the franchise.
