But Baird adds flourishes that save the film from cynicism, most notably the 8-bit animation interludes introducing characters as players and chapters as levels and using Europe’s “The Final Countdown” as a musical motif. Like the earlier movie, Tetris, with its dour visual palette, menacing score and jittery camera angles, plays like a thriller. By truncating the early part of the game’s origin story, the film pushes interesting questions about its underground distribution (Pajitnov copied it for friends, who copied it for other friends, etc.) to the margins.īaird’s approach is similar to David Fincher’s in The Social Network, another film that uses a protracted legal battle to frame inquiries about greed and capitalism. But Baird is more interested in the bizarre events that subsequently made the game a runaway success internationally and eventually secured a credit for its creator. Tetris efficiently covers this history in its opening moments through Henk’s voiceover narration and expository sales pitch to his bank manager. It linked, however tenuously, people around the world to a place they had been taught to fear. The game gained notoriety within Russia and then the rest of the Soviet countries before its license was acquired by Robert Stein (played by Toby Jones), a shrewd businessman who created a market out of shoddy license acquisitions. Tetris breached the digital walls of the Iron Curtain as the Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse. I suspect timing also played a large part in the game’s early success. Tetris inspired you to build something it was, in Pajitnov’s words in the doc, imbued with the “spirit of constructing.” In the 2004 documentary Tetris: From Russia with Love, Pajitnov and a gallery of talking heads attribute the game’s widespread appeal to how it tapped into a more creative part of the human psyche.
The brief thrill of incremental problem-solving kept them hooked. The simple aesthetic and straightforward goal (to create a complete row, which then disappears) drew players in. The game, invented by Russian computer engineer and game designer Alexey Pajitnov (portrayed by Nikita Efremov) in 1984, was unlike anything on the market at the time. He impulsively buys the computer and arcade rights for Japan (a move he clumsily rationalizes to his impatient bank manager, played by Rick Yune).Įveryone who encounters Tetris feels like Henk. What he finds just a few feet away is an addictive puzzle game, an enthralling composition of multicolored blocks.
Like any good businessman, Henk nosily investigates the competition. Release date: Friday, March 31 (Apple TV+)Ĭast: Taron Egerton, Nikita Efremov, Sofia Lebedeva, Anthony Boyle, Ben Miles
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