Hacker Cinema
Tetris
2023 · Film · 118 min
Directed by Jon S. Baird
In 1988, American video game salesman Henk Rogers discovers the video game Tetris. When he sets out to bring the game to the world, he enters a dangerous web of lies and corruption behind the Iron Curtain.
11 positive1 negative9 neutralfrom 21 commenters
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21 comments on Hacker News
I think the "anything computing was seen as state secrets thing" is also possibly easiest to see in any documentaries and books on the history of Tetris (including the 2023 movie on Apple TV+). It's weird to say that Tetris was one of the most innovative software programs in USSR history and that the USSR almost crushed it before it had a chance to soar in the minds and dreams of millions of players, but that's basically what it was.
Even accepting the counter-narrative that the story of Tetris was "evil" capitalists taking advantage of the USSR to "steal" Tetris from the people of the USSR and the output of their socialist labor, the USSR was never in the position to offer Tetris to every worker in the country as a gift for their hard work because it was a state secret and computing wasn't something everyone had access to.
It is interesting to ponder if the USSR had made different decisions on the usefulness of general computing for the masses rather than the military what would have happened to Tetris as one interesting microcosm of the USSR's relationship to computing.
Ever seen the tetris movie? Its great fun
I've seen this story in the Tetris movie, he came off as a terrible businessman who was stealing people's money to save his company from bankruptcy
Fun fact, he almost got the worldwide console rights to Tetris back in the 80s, and tried going to Soviet officials to get those rights. To the point he's the antagonist of a recent "Tetris" movie that came out.
So I watched the "Tetris" movie and it was amazing!
I got itchy to build the tetris game in php and see how fast we it can turn out and specially the line clearning and the algos used, how can this be better? I am not a fluent PHP developer I used PHP mainly from high-school and recently been building apps using Laravel for clients (I am a experienced dev though)
So feel free to roast it.
I've enjoyed quite a few movies from the past 5 years, but I don't know what you like, so who knows.
Baby Assassins - japanese movie about two teenage girls who are assassins. Very weird and funny movie and the fight choreography I found fascinating. I can only describe as "floppy".
Tetris - this was on Apple TV. A fictionalized retelling of the story of getting Tetris out of the USSR and licensed to distribute in the US.
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story - A music biopic of Weird Al Yankovic, in true Weird Al style
Nobody - action / revenge flick with Bob Odenkirk
I could go on. No need to limit yourself to the past 5 years though. Surely you haven't seen every movie from before 2020?
Lots of great shows too, and you don't need any subscriptions on the high seas...
I suggest you read up on the history of capitalism, specifically the Inclosure Act [1]. The only difference between feudalism and capitalism is who is doing the rent-seeking.
We extend all of this to intellectual property too. It's rent-seeking all the way down [2]. Have you seen any of the documentaries (or the movie) about how Tetris came to be? Some enthusiasts in the USSR made it. The contribution of capitalism was just whole levels of sublicensing and distribution agreements.
Or maybe you think capitalism is responsible for innovation? Take drug research. Almost all novel compounds come of the education sector using government funding. The "innovation" here is for-profit companies marking that up 8000% and then lobbying for laws that forbid the government from negotiating prices or anyone from importing the same thing from overseas for 1% of the price. That's c apitalism.
Maybe you believe capitalism is about "free markets". First off, there's no such thing. Second, markets exist in every economic system and existed thousands of years before capitalism did.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_act
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down
This is in my queue as well. I've watched several of the TechBro movies and enjoyed several of them. Things like The Social Network and Super Pumped, they've all had interesting takes on the situations. The Tetris movie was decent as well. Recently watched one on the history of Google Maps that I was not familiar with the back story, but the name is slipping at the moment.
https://www.youtube.com/@Honeypotio has a couple of good documentaries (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtEPUaeDclku1ECmuN3IsUimHApukWIOf) interviewing open source developers.
For more fun, fiction and action have a look at the Tetris movie on Apple TV.
> which honestly, what’s the technical difference
According to the Tetris movie, it's that they don't have a keyboard and they are expected to stay in one spot.
I agree, but at the same time I used to think, let the US rate it first, but overtime I've learnt the US is not always right and when it comes to films, its only the PR red carpet shenanigans that prevent the instant global roll out.
Movie stars cant be in two or more places at once "promoting" their films.
Tom Cruise or any other movie star turning up for a country's premiere is not going to sway me either way, the trailers either look good or not.
Sometimes Rotten Tomatoes may also sway me.
The British press dont sway me.
Comments from strangers in the street who rave on about a film sway me more than the press do!
And this is why Netflix and Apple TV have an advantage at eating into both the Hollywood pie and a country's own terrestrial offerings like Channel 4 or BBC films. Carving out a niche in the middle which is where the money can be found especially considering the low cost of CGI.
Hollywood could do more if it embraced iMax more, for example I've yet to see the latest TopGun:Maverick film, because I want to see it at an iMax theatre for that whole AV in the thick of the action experience.
I have this Blackberry film on my list of films to see though because it looks funny, I want to see how reality has been altered and I dont think some of the tech companies get enough Hollywood treatment considering how pivotal they are or have been in our lives. Tetris is another on my list to see.
Le Man's 66, and Joy are other examples of pivotal things in our lives, even if some of us dont shop on QVC, they still fill in that gap of how did these things come to be, even if not historically 100% accurate, its the sort of history lesson no one else is giving to the masses.
Most history taught at school is just battles and wars, its like the state has an obsession with fighting, so to have Hollywood give us some history is refreshing and I encourage them to do more please.
And if you like the Tetris movie I also recommend "Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game". About the guy who got New York City's long-time ban on pinball machines overturned, by proving that pinball was a game of skill, not chance.
I might be late to the party but I think if you watched BlackBerry you’d like the Tetris movie too.
It’s a bit silly but in a good way.
The problem there is that it's incredibily difficult to prove copyright violation / plagiarism; a recent example, there's a Tetris film on Apple TV and the author of a book is suing because they believe it lifted their story after he sent a pre-production copy to the company currently owning the Tetris brand: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/aug/09/the-tetris-effect-author-says-film-makers-copied-his-story-brick-by-brick
The recent Tetris movie seems somewhat similar ? It was surprisingly pretty good !
It's a real movie review (though pretty short):
> BlackBerry has everything Apple's Tetris film lacked: human drama grounded in actual history, without the need to spice things up with car chases and fantastical storytelling. On the face of it, the rise and fall of Research in Motion's keyboard-equipped smartphone may not seem inherently compelling. But the brilliance of the film — directed by Matt Johnson, who also co-wrote it with Matthew Miller — is that it makes the BlackBerry's journey feel like a genuine tragedy.
After watching the Tetris and Mario films I really hope Sega makes a comeback and brings more playable games like the 80s and 90s, rather than all the first person stuff you see on the top end consoles.
A new movie about Tetris is out this weekend, as such I wanted to find this old BBC doc about the rights battle for the game. Worth a watch.
The other commenters have already given you some good responses, so I will leave you to the classic response to the question "When will we see the Citizen Kane of games?" - "When will we see the Tetris of film?"
Well if we're posting links to documentaries here one from the BBC about Tetris. The Tengen vs Nintendo suit comes up. I haven't watched it in a while but IIRC the editing makes the Tengen guys look like that had some really bad luck thinking they had a legit license and it also makes Nintendo seem like a bunch of jerks for being so mean about it, as if there was no way to figure out any kind of mutually beneficial outcome. Also IIRC Tengen's version is considered better than Nintendo's
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ohCy4ktA5w
that game was tetris, and youtube has a fascinating documentary about it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn9dO_iL7lo
sillysaurus2: this has some of yamauchi being a ruthless sumbitch.