Tetris (Film)
The game you couldn't put down. The story you couldn't make up.
Director: Jon S. Baird
Platforms: Screen
First Release Date: March 31, 2023
Alright, everyone move your desks, one at a time now. We're going to watch a movie today! And yes- you can all have a Yoshi's Cookie. But just one, and no one's leaving class until we clean up, okay?
Tetris (Film) is not a documentary. It doesn't need to be one! I went into this telling myself not to nitpick on that regard. I wouldn't envy anyone who had to adapt the Tetris licensing story into a film. I think it's an interesting story, but not an easy one to adapt for mass market appeal. I'm honestly impressed at this film for being made in the first place- but sadly, that didn't transfer to me actually liking the movie. To me, it feels confused in what it's trying to say- It's too stuck between the real events and the exaggerations to be satisfying either way. It's not the worst movie ever made or anything, but it may be one uniquely suited to tormenting me.
Henk Rogers, as played by Taron Egerton, is a very earnest, nice man who by golly, just wants to share this beautiful Tetris game with the world. He's almost a little cloyingly innocent, but he's fine. Meanwhile, we're introduced to Alexey Pajitnov, played by Nikita Yefremov, who we learn is the saddest, most beaten-down husk of a man. His beautiful creation was taken from him, and his days of playing with pentominos are long behind him.
In order to establish his building entering abilities early, they have Rogers storm into the Nintendo headquarters with no appointment. He tries to convince Hiroshi Yamauchi to help him get the Tetris rights purely through listing a string of Nintendo character duos. That's great. They show some very accurate images with each one. Beyond this one scene, this film is very fond of pixel art cutaways that every video game adaptation uses. I don’t think it’s an inherently bad idea- it could be cute flavor in moderation- but they really go in hard on it. There are some nice looking pixel art screens for different locations, mixed together with really ugly pixel filters on real buildings. Whenever consoles, computers, handhelds, or arcades are mentioned in regards to licensing rights, a cutaway to pixel art of those always plays. It feels like something added late with the hope of making things less confusing, but it started to feel like sensory videos the third time a scene was interrupted to show a pixel animation of coins entering an arcade cabinet.
We meet more characters, we establish a rival in Kevin Maxwell, we see Henk communicate in Nintendo references like he’s talking to a baby again, and then Henk is whisked away to the secret Game Boy lab. He looks at the prototype with lust in his eyes, and in a couple minutes casually whips up Game Boy Tetris onto it to demonstrate his idea. Yes, yes, this is a movie storytelling convenience, it’s still funny. He convinces them that Tetris is for everyone, and after a couple more scenes of setup, he's sent on his mission into the depths of the Soviet Union.
Welcome to cartoon grey Russia! After our tour of shady surveillance centers and tragic food lines, Rogers meets a quirky translator character named Sasha, who tries to warn him to not use his iconic walking into buildings ability, but it's too late. He gets off on a bad foot by showing the Famicom Tetris box, and is told to come back tomorrow. He gets pulled aside by a intimidating man and told to leave if he knows what's good for him. He doesn't leave. We'll need a more intimidating man for that.
Let's talk about the villain of the Tetris movie. Valentin Trifonov is a movie original character, a KGB guy who is... I guess supposed to stand-in as a symbol of the dying Soviet Union as a whole? And who seems to have a bone to pick with Pajitnov over lost productivity or something. I skipped over his first scene earlier, where he stops by to see Pajitnov and be vaguely threatening to him and his kids. Trifonov is kind of the most entertaining part of this movie. Just imagine the legal history of Tetris, but picture that offscreen there was cartoon evil Russian guy grinning and kicking his feet at the prospect of throwing Alexey Pajitnov's kids out of a window. He's really a strange addition to the film and I don't think the intended menace of him lands at all, but he's pretty funny.
Between recounting the actual dealings, they build up the friendship between Rogers and Pajitnov to mild success. They go out to the club, they work on Tetris together, and it's almost getting somewhere. Of course it gets derailed by a third-act bestie breakup that gets resolved five minutes later. But it's the closest thing to an emotional core of this movie, so I'll be generous to it.
I'm not going to recount the entire movie- from here on, things continue to escalate. The actual deals still happen, but random characters are running up and getting in fistfights with each other. Robert Stein runs back into the movie and punches Kevin Maxwell! Sasha the quirky translator was a spy and she kissed Henk to blackmail him! Henk gets beaten up! Belikov gets beaten up! Alexey starts a small fire in a trash can! But no one is worse for wear, because they have to follow the plot of an actual video game licensing story. There's a needless subplot about Henk missing his daughter's concert- after the Russian Embassy in Japan just threatened Henk's kids a couple scenes ago. There's a comical amount of threatening kids scenes in this movie. Trifonov gets three with Pajitnov's kids! Really, Trifonov is the closest this film gets to justifying its heightened Cold War thriller angle, and I wish that they had just leaned in and made it 100% a schlocky exaggerated parody of the actual events. When I list what happens in this movie, it feels like it should already be that! But tonally, it never sticks the landing for that to feel satisfying. To me at least.
Skipping ahead a lot here, but eventually Rogers returns to Moscow to make the deal for console rights. Robert Maxwell is there too, and he tries to use his connections to complain directly to Gorbachev, but nothing comes of it. Maxwell did actually try to get Gorbachev to intervene on the Tetris deals in real life to similar results; it's not solely an exaggeration of the movie, funnily enough. But in the movie, Maxwell instead turns to the cartoon evil guy standing on the other side of the room, and everyone realizes he's been bankrolling Trifonov the whole time! Not very well though, because he can't pay him. Trifonov gets a quick moment to get angry about that, and call Sasha a whore out of nowhere, which way pay off like a scene later.
I knew there was a car chase going in, and I was bracing for it the whole movie. Nothing could prepare me for Alexey Pajitnov, creator of Hatris, being the getaway driver. A Russian cover of “Holding Out for a Hero” starts blaring, and as they knock into cars they start putting the pixel filter effects over the scene. They barely escape through a tiny little gap, in a way that I guess is supposed to be reminiscent of playing Tetris? I think this did me in and the rest is kind of hazy. They make it to the airport, and hide on a plane, and Trifonov gets on a plane too, but it’s the wrong plane. They’re playing Korobeiniki so I smiled and let that wash over me.
Trifonov runs back but is apprehended by Sasha, who's good now, or loyal to the Soviet Union in a different way, or something. Trifonov asks if Sasha is doing this because he called her a whore a couple scenes before, and she smirks. I didn't realize writing was this easy! Everyone else goes home and it's all good. A scene of two news reports parallels the success of Tetris with the fall of the Iron Curtain. It's all a little too self-congratulatory for me.
It's not that bad a film, as much as my gut reaction told me that. Sometimes I think I'm too critical on things, which probably doesn't show well through a website where I gush about old puzzle games no one has played. It's got some fun moments, and again, I'm impressed at the gumption to make a film out of this in the first place. It's just something that I feel could have been better focused in either direction. Either as a drier film about a bunch of businessmen screwing each other over and all thinking they're on top, or as the full on over-the-top parody this felt like it wanted to become. But in the end, I just can't see it any deeper than what's on the screen. Henk Rogers really did save that beautiful intellectual property from the KGB and we should all thank him.
Okay, there’s one more thing that I skipped over, because it’s by far my most nitpicky criticism. Henk and Alexey are working on Tetris together, and Henk leans over and says that something has always bothered him- why can't you get rid of more than one line at once? Alexey pauses, and says he didn't think about that. Now... I completely understand why they did this. They wanted to have Henk suggest something big for the game to show that he really gets it, and he's not just in it for the money. And there's a limited number of potential mechanics that you could use for that in Tetris. But the implication that every Tetris game before this left full lines on the board if you filled more than one at a time is hilarious to me. Do they just stay there? Are you actively punished for it? Has Tetris just been kind of terrible up until now?
Oh god wait they edited some earlier footage to have full lines. They went to so much effort for this and it would only ever be noticed by people who would get irritated by it. Surely they could have come up with something else for Henk to contribute, right? I guess I don't know what though. I'm not saying they should have Henk invent T-spin setups. To use an analogy he would, it's like if Super Mario World was being developed, and someone walked up to Shigeru Miyamoto and suggested "Wait... What if Mario could eat a mushroom to grow larger?" and then they went to the club and got chased by the KGB or whatever. Okay this doesn't matter I'm sick of talking about this movie now
Thank you for watching!
