On March 31st AppleTv+ released a movie Called Tetris, featuring the story of how Tetris came to the world at large, which we are sure has taken some creative license with the story. 

The story of how one of the world’s most popular video games found its way to players around the globe. Businessman Henk Rogers and Tetris inventor Alexey Pajitnov join forces in the USSR, risking it all to bring Tetris to the masses. The game you couldn’t put down. The story you couldn’t make up.

IMDB

The Storyline: 

The storyline follows Henk Rogers, the owner of a video game company that has obtained the rights to a new game made in Russia, Tetris. What follows is a movie full of political intrigue, corporate intrigue, and some genuinely heartwarming moments. 

Our Thoughts:

Tetris was a fun movie. It feels a bit like the best parts of Argo and Oceans 11 combined. With a nearly 2 hour runtime, this film does a great job of pacing the story. In addition, the storytelling does a great job of making you truly begin to care about the characters. 

The director’s choice to break the movie into “Levels” created a fun way of breaking up the story to help audiences keep up with the story. The level structure was necessary with the rush of the political confusion of all the back and forth between the gaming industry and the USSR. The film did a great job of recreating that 80’s feeling; days when you could walk up to a terminal and see a plane fly away and when using fax machines was the quickest mode of communication across international spaces. These elements helped ground the film in its time frame.

The score was also a big bonus for this movie as it contained elements of Tetris music in the background of most scenes. This detail added a bit of delight to an otherwise tense situation. This movie is labeled as a thriller, and it truly holds up the thrill part of the movie. The most unrealistic section to me, other than the scene where the cars turned to pixels, which was very well done and also a nice touch, was how quickly the fax machines sent faxes. I use fax machines daily in my job and let me tell you, you are lucky if they send within 30 minutes and you do not have to redo them. 

Content: 

This movie is rated R for its strong language. If you do not have a problem with cursing in intense movie scenes, then this movie will not cause you issues. If you do have issues with those, perhaps skip this movie. 

Final Rating: 

Overall this was a fun movie that kept me engaged and told a fantastic story. While I would not recommend this to families with young children because of its R rating, here at Geek Devotions, we give Tetris a 5 out of 5 Glix.