Tetris
Year: 2023
Rating: R
Length: 118 minutes / 1.97 hours
Every time I hear a movie is being made based on a video game that doesn’t have any story, I always wonder what those movies are going to be about. With Tetris (2023), the plot centers on the distribution rights for the titular puzzle game. While it’s interesting to see what happened to bring Tetris to its status as a worldwide cultural icon in gaming, the film really just boils down to the legal and international gymnastics that needed to occur. The Cold War setting did much of the heavy lifting for the suspense, but we already know how things turned out.
I’m still confused about who this film was for. It seemed like they were trying to appeal to gamers by showing the history of one of the founding games of the industry. However, providing little pixel art cuts to explain how distribution rights for a video game were different between the arcade and home console versions seemed more patronizing to gamers than something that added to the movie. Even if this movie was meant to appeal to people who like legal drama, there was a lot of back-and-forth and waiting around as people “raced” to bring this game to market.
The only interesting development that this movie showed was the legal loophole that was found when Nintendo started making handheld video game systems. And if you want to glorify the man who leaned forward and ignored the rules to get this game out of the USSR, then this movie is for you. For me, it didn’t seem as interesting as I was expecting it to be, and my expectations were already pretty low for a movie about a 1980s puzzle game.
A legal drama with a slight video game veneer, I give Tetris 3.0 stars out of 5.
