Happy Wednesday internet! This is Pop Culture Wednesday, the place where any and everything pop culture related is analyzed and critiqued with gusto. Today’s topic is a heavy one , so let’s jump right into it.

Would you believe me if I told you that the classic and phenomenal video game Tetris was being made into a movie? I imagine your reacting would be mix between being upset and confused. Video games being turned into movies is not a new concept, while it has never been an entirely successful one. However, most of those video game movies have narratives that would work in the medium of film, such as Rachet and Clank or Assassin’s Creed. Others, at the very least, are vague or broad enough conceptually that the can be easily molded into a movie, such as Mortal Combat or Street Fighter. Tetris, though, has none of those qualities and exists wholly as an entity that can only be expressed through the medium of video games. So, of course Hollywood is not making a Tetris movie, they are making three of them.

The first entry in the project is currently three years in development, has an eighty million dollar project, and will begin shooting in China shortly. I am not excited for this movie. I generally try to give every film or creative idea the benefit of the doubt, but I anticipate this film to be extremely, extraordinarily, intensely bad. Which I am upset about, not because I have a deep attachment to Tetris, but because it could stall a lot of other films.

Nintendo has recently been making some noise about bringing a few of its properties to the silver screen. This could actually be incredible, as many of the House of Mario’s properties,  Metroid, like Star Fox, and F-Zero, would be a perfect fit for film. There is even an ongoing bidding war over the rights to make a live action Pokemon movie, which is already a franchise that has transcended the video game medium to become a multi-media juggernaut.

However, if the classic game Tetris does poorly in theaters, I could totally see Nintendo no longer wanting to bring their classic franchise to the new medium. Granted, this is mostly speculation on my part; but it would be a shame if awesome movies were not made because of an ill advised bad movie. In summation, video game movies have the potential to be good, despite their track record, but the Tetris trilogy will most likely be bad.

BaddaBing, BaddaBye