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Tetris (the movie)


Ashley

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When I first saw this I thought it was a joke/parody trailer what with all the Nintendo and Mario trailers. But it's real, which I now am sure I remember hearing about it. Anyway it seems like it could be decent. Interesting to know how much is based on real events and how much will be glorified.

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This trailer actually looks... good?  Yamauchi looks spot on as well! Great job!

Legit looking forward to this one :)

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When I first saw this I thought it was a joke/parody trailer what with all the Nintendo and Mario trailers. But it's real, which I now am sure I remember hearing about it. Anyway it seems like it could be decent. Interesting to know how much is based on real events and how much will be glorified.

It does look like it veers much more to the dramatisation side, rather than the documentary side of docudrama.  Probably will be more of a drama than an accurate/realistic interpretation of the real story...

If you want more of an accurate account of the Tetris story, might I recommend the BBC documentary? It's pretty good! Well worth a watch...
 

 

Edited by Dcubed
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  • 1 month later...

So I've watched the Tetris movie...

It's... pretty heavily embellished from the real story (unnecessarily I'd say, since the real story is already pretty dramatic as-is), and there's some pretty ridiculous contrivances and some inaccuracies here and there, but I still enjoyed it.

The best bit was that they wove in parts of the Robert Maxwell story in with the movie.  That was really cool.  Obviously it's all very much dramatized, but it's really cool to see their perspective on the story.

Some parts of the real story are shuffled around for the sake of drama, but it's mostly believable enough to get the point across.  It's not an accurate telling of the real story, and there are some pretty eye rolling moments which are pretty ridiculous, but it's a fun movie with enough of the real-life story intact.  I'd say it's worth a watch :)

To speak a bit more specifically... spoilers, obviously!

Spoiler

Was a bit disappointed to see that Yamauchi only makes one appearance in the movie, and it's the clip we'd already seen in the trailer.  There was enough of a story here to make for plenty of screen time, particularily with him befriending Yamauchi over Go; and him presenting the Famicom version of Go that he made... Actually, the movie pretty much glosses over the entierty of Henk and BPS' history prior to Tetris, which is a shame (So you won't see anything about The Black Onyx here, outside of a T-Shirt cameo); but I suppose the movie really wanted to push the All Or Nothing angle with Henk and the rights to Tetris, so they kind of pretend that none of BPS' games exist outside of Tetris.

Also was a bit disappointed to not see more from the Atari side here.  They already touch on the feud between Atari and NOA (That's a really fun part of the movie BTW!), so it's a shame that they don't delve more into how Atari got their commuppance over Tengen Tetris.

One thing about the movie that I really liked though is how they wove in the Robert Maxwell story into the plot.  That was really cool, especially since they were such a big part of the real-life Tetris story that we never really got much clarification on.  But they use Maxwell's crumbling finances and the pilfering of his pension fund as a great motivating backdrop for the "villains" of this story... So it's all the more surprising that they didn't do what I expected and end the story with the real-life suicide of Robert Maxwell! Like... come on!!! That was right there for the taking!! He essentially killed himself because his media empire went bust after he lost the rights to Tetris FFS! If you're already making outlandish embellishments, how could you miss that trick!? What a missed opportunity there!!

Naturally there are also some ridiculous contrivances throughout as well, such as Henk Rogers managing to Magic Code™ a complete copy of Tetris GB in about 20 seconds for the guys at NOA; as well as the car chase scene (which definitely didn't happen IRL), but I can forgive that stuff because it's not meant to be an accurate account of the story.  It's a Hollywood movie, so you need to be able to forgive small artistic license stuff like that.  Gotta admit though, it was pretty fun to see Henk Rogers, Minoru Arakawa, Alexey Pajitnov and Howard Lincoln performing an epic car chase getaway as they run from the KGB :laughing:  The plot-line about Henk's translator turning out to be a KGB spy is also a bit of an eye roller, but it's not outlandish enough to completely ruin the belivability of the movie, so I can forgive it.

I think the best bits are the parts that are actually taken from the real-life story though, like where Henk gets a sneaky look at Mirrorsoft's contract (and informing the Russians that they were being screwed over by Steins/Mirrorsoft) and where Henk manages to wrangle Arakawa and Lincoln into actually coming to Moscow with him to make the offer in person (which DID actually happen).

Overall though?

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Edited by Dcubed
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Watched it last night myself before @Dcubed's cheeky free trial ran out.

Very much enjoyable, but yes, some of the more Hollywood esque thriller embellishments were a bit much. But I guess you can't just have a movie be 90% boardroom meetings, huh? It never got too outlandish. So it didn't detract from the movie too much.

Spoiler

The car chase was proper pushing it though. I get it, climactic finish and all, and I did enjoy the method of how they got away with that by getting on a plane not going to Tokyo, but it did get a little silly. I can forgive it for giving me the hilarious mental image that Howard Lincoln was a part of a high speed car chase though, even if I know it's not true.

One of my favourite scenes was Henk Rogers being shown the Game Boy prototype. Hollywood coding moment aside, you can feel the weight of Rogers' realisation that this was going to be huge. I also appreciate that they got his comment about how only 10-year olds would buy it if it was packaged with Mario, but everyone would buy it with Tetris in there. It's not word for word, but it's close.

Still, the script was apparently approved by Rogers and Projitnov, so if it's good enough for them. Hell, even Kevin Maxwell said he liked it overall, and he's not exactly portrayed positively in the film.

There's a neat site that delves into what was accurate and what was fiction if you're interested. Spoilers there, though.

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