With The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the film adaptation of the most successful Nintendo franchise is currently in cinemas. The animated film already broke numerous records on the opening weekend. You don’t even have to leave the house to see the best video game adaptation of the moment. Tetris is clearly the better Nintendo film.
It’s certainly no coincidence that the Apple TV+ streaming service launched Tetris almost at the same time as the Mario film at the end of March. However, this is about not a classic video game film adaptation. Instead of 2 hours of block-dropping, director Jon S. Baird’s film tells the incredible Origin story of how the successful puzzle game from Russia was able to take over the world – and what was the risk involved.
Tetris on Apple TV+ explores the incredible story behind the puzzle game
In the late 1980s, businessman and bon vivant Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton) wants to bring the addiction game developed by Soviet programmer Alexey Pakitnov (Nikita Efremov) to Japan, where he lives with his family. For him it is also the ticket to the sacred halls of Nintendo.
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Tetris star Taron Egerton
For this he has to deal with the shady middleman Robert Stein (Toby Jones) and the British media mogul Robert Maxwell (Roger Allam) and his arrogant son Kevin (Anthony Boyle). But then things get complicated.
It turns out that neither party owns the lucrative handheld license for Tetris – which Rogers needs for Nintendo’s forthcoming Game Boy launch. Now Henk has to himself behind the Iron Curtain to Moscow go to secure the rights there. Here he not only becomes friends with Alexey Pakitnov, but also gets involved in an explosive bidding war.
The communists laugh up their sleeves when the western capitalists tear each other apart and get a good deal for the USSR in the process. Amid heated backroom negotiations, opportunistic politicians and KGB spies, the situation escalates a political crisiswhich eventually even gets President Gorbachev on the scene.
Spy thriller meets Nintendo nostalgia: Tetris delivers 2 hours of fantastic entertainment
The oppressive Cold War atmosphere collides with the confusing confusion of licensing around Tetris. This forms a highly suspenseful espionage thriller in which Video game rights treated as state secrets and Nintendo offices exude the same grandeur as Russian state buildings.
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Tetris creators Alexey Pakitnov and Henk Rogers
Thanks to the gripping and playful staging, the wild twists and last but not least the rousing performance of the moustached Taron Egerton Tetris is never boring and remains extremely entertaining over the 2 hour runtime.
Henk’s unwavering optimism and passion for Tetris translates directly to viewers. Kids of the ’80s and ’90s are sure to shed at least one nostalgic tear when they first set eyes on a prototype Game Boy.
At times the film overshoots the mark of adapting true events – in the best sense of the word. When 8-bit cars chase each other through the streets of Moscow and Tetris is perhaps even partly responsible for the fall of the Iron Curtain, this “video game film” is just a damn lot of fun. And to make the double feature perfect, Nintendo plumber Mario also has a guest appearance, of course.
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