Tetris feels more like an ’80s buddy-cop movie than a typical video game story, and director Jon S. Baird very much wanted it that way. The Apple film follows Russian mastermind Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Efremov) and American game developer Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton) on a wild ride through the inner workings of the KGB.
Along the way they confront both Mikhail Gorbachev, the final president of the Soviet Union, and Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine Maxwell. Tetris fits neatly into Baird’s oeuvre of stories inspired by real people, from the film Stan & Ollie to episodes of HBO’s ‘70s rock drama Vinyl.
MovieMaker spoke with Baird about how he avoided angering fans of the game in his Tetris adaptation, intellectual IP, and, of course, playing Tetris.
Joshua Encinias: I have to know, what’s your favorite Tetris shape?
Jon S. Baird: [Laughs.] It’s always good when you get an original question to start. It keeps you on your toes. So, you know what, I’m gonna show you something here. This is actually from the movie. This is the pentomino, which is the five-block shape that Alexey sees in the window in the movie. This is a prop for it. I don’t know why, but it just seems to be my favorite shape.
Joshua Encinias: There’s a few established ways to make video game movies. There’s Sonic, which is a straightforward story. The Lego Movie is a satire. And now you and writer Noah Pink are taking an autobiographical approach. Was there ever a Tetris story about talking blocks starring Chris Pratt?
Jon S. Baird: Well, if there was, I wouldn’t direct it, trust me. The thing that interested me is Noah’s script is an unconventional way to tell a story about a very famous game. Because I’m a politics graduate, the backstory of the Cold War and the circumstances in which Henk had to put himself in jeopardy for this particular goal was the interesting thing for me. I’m definitely more interested in the political socioeconomic nature of the story rather than the game.
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It just so happens to be about this computer game which may be just as delightful as 슬롯 사이트. I mean, for me, it could have been about a guy going to the Soviet Union to get the rights for something else and this weird and wonderful tale unfolds. But for me, it was always a buddy movie between Henk and Alexey set in a Cold War.
Joshua Encinias: So, Tetris is a Cold War buddy movie wrapped in the history of the game. Why do you think stories that used to be adult dramas are finding their way into big commercial properties?
Jon S. Baird: I think the world’s a more complex place now and I think the audiences are more
sophisticated. They can handle more than studios probably previously thought. I think that’s why you get something like Squid Game, which is a huge hit all over the world. I think most people watched it with subtitles rather than the dubbed version, right?
I think there was a lot of surprise there because your average person in the U.S. or U.K. or Australia that we thought couldn’t be asked to read the subtitles are doing it, because it’s a really well-made, incredibly engaging piece of art and it’s complex. I think that as audiences are evolving and the speed of thought evolves as well, I think that films that use to sit in one kind of genre is not the case anymore.
Joshua Encinias: Why do you like directing movies based on real-life events?
Jon S. Baird: I love filmmakers like Sidney Lumet and the way he told the bizarre tale of Dog the Afternoon. Obviously, they took a little bit of license here and there, but those kind of movies have always been the ones that influenced me. You hang onto things from your formative years because that’s what pulls you through to your career.
Joshua Encinias: It’s very easy to anger the fanbase of big projects, but it seems like it might be harder to anger Tetris fans since the game doesn’t have a story. Still, were there things you needed to include as fan service?
Jon S. Baird: What I learned by making shows based on real life stories is you have be very respectful and responsible with the story you’re telling. Ours was more about making sure that the real Henk and Alexey were okay with the version of the story we told.
It’s not a documentary, so we’re not expecting everybody to believe there was a car chase, but obviously the KGB was involved and Alexey risked everything for this. Once you get that right with the real people, then you just have to follow their story and get details right.
For example, the code Alexey would have used to make Tetris in the 1980s. He didn’t have give us the exact code, but he gave us something believable. The point is you have to be true to stuff like that when it comes to gamers. The key word is authenticity. If you try and make every tiny little detail authentic, then you can’t go wrong.
Joshua Encinias: But to your point, Henk told Canary Media in an interview, “Alexey Pajitnov (the creator of Tetris) and I got to look at the script. It’s a Hollywood script; it’s a movie. It’s not about history, so a lot of [what’s in the movie] never happened.” What are some things you had to make up or embellish for the movie?
Jon S. Baird: I think timelines are always a thing. When you’re telling a story that’s based over several years or months, you have to dilute and distill that timeline. You have to merge characters. But again, if you want a documentary, there’s a one out there called Tetris:
from Russia with Love.
We made is a movie to entertain. So for example, the car chases, that is very much the Hollywood interpretation of their fight against the Soviet state. That’s a metaphorical representation of it. But I think we captured 85% of the story as it happened and then we took license with remaining 15%.
Joshua Encinias: Will you talk about using 8-bit graphics in the big chase scene? It’s one of the most creative ways you integrate the game into the story.
Jon S. Baird: Noah wrote about the 8-bit graphics in the script, but I didn’t concentrate on that so much when we were shooting a movie. I wanted to get the dramatic performances down and then we would mold it in post. The whole car chase was CGI.
Apart from the actors sitting in a car against a blue screen and the interiors when they’re talking to each other, all the exterior views of Moscow are CGI. We had a lot of license within post-production because we were building the concept from scratch and it was all trial and error. At one stage, we didn’t have enough of it and then we had way too much of it.
Then we ripped it back and got the right balance of 8-bit graphics.
Joshua Encinias: Most of Tetris is shot wide. Is that because it’s mostly going to be seen on people’s home televisions?
Jon S. Baird: I think you made a really good point there. Twenty years ago there was a difference between how you shot TV and how you shot movies, right? A lot of it was because of the size of the screen. Nowadays, the line is blurred and whenever I’m doing a film, I will shoot it for the big screen because this film will play on the big screen as well as on Apple TV+.
Moscow is a huge, quite vast place, and to show Henk as this character lost in the middle of this foreign world, I think it really helped to have more expansive shots.
The film, directed by Jon S. Baird, includes confrontations with Mikhail Gorbachev, the final president of the Soviet Union, as well as Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine Maxwell. It fits neatly into Baird’s oeuvre of stories inspired by real people, from the film Stan & Ollie to episodes of HBO’s ‘70s rock drama Vinyl.
MovieMaker spoke with Baird about how he avoided angering fans of the game in his Tetris adaptation, intellectual IP, and, of course, playing Tetris.
Joshua Encinias: I have to know, what’s your favorite Tetris shape?
Jon S. Baird: [Laughs.] It’s always good when you get an original question to start. It keeps you on your toes. So, you know what, I’m gonna show you something here. This is actually from the movie. This is the pentominoes, which is the five-block shape that Alexey sees in the window in the movie. This is a prop for it. I don’t know why, but it just seems to be my favorite shape.
Joshua Encinias: There’s a few established ways to make video game movies. There’s Sonic, which is a straightforward story. The Lego Movie is a satire. And now you and writer Noah Pink are taking an autobiographical approach. Was there ever a Tetris story about talking blocks starring Chris Pratt?
Jon S. Baird: Well, if there was, I wouldn’t direct it, trust me. The thing that interested me is Noah’s script is an unconventional way to tell a story about a very famous game. Because I’m a politics graduate, the backstory of the Cold War and the circumstances in which Henk had to put himself in jeopardy for this particular goal was the interesting thing for me. I’m definitely more interested in the political socioeconomic nature of the story rather than the game.
It just so happens to be about this computer game. I mean, for me, it could have been about a guy going to the Soviet Union to get the rights for something else and this weird and wonderful tale unfolds. But for me, it was always a buddy movie between Henk and Alexey set in a Cold War.
Joshua Encinias: So, Tetris is a Cold War buddy movie wrapped in the history of the game. Why do you think stories that used to be adult dramas are finding their way into big commercial properties?
Jon S. Baird: I think the world’s a more complex place now and I think the audiences are more
sophisticated. They can handle more than studios probably previously thought. I think that’s why you get something like Squid Game, which is a huge hit all over the world. I think most people watched it with subtitles rather than the dubbed version, right?
I think there was a lot of surprise there because your average person in the U.S. or U.K. or Australia that we thought couldn’t be asked to read the subtitles are doing it, because it’s a really well-made, incredibly engaging piece of art and it’s complex. I think that as audiences are evolving and the speed of thought evolves as well, I think that films that use to sit in one kind of genre is not the case anymore.
Joshua Encinias: Why do you like directing movies based on real-life events?
Jon S. Baird: I love filmmakers like Sidney Lumet and the way he told the bizarre tale of Dog the Afternoon. Obviously, they took a little bit of license here and there, but those kind of movies have always been the ones that influenced me. You hang onto things from your formative years because that’s what pulls you through to your career.
What’s Made Up in Tetris
Joshua Encinias: It’s very easy to anger the fanbase of big projects, but it seems like it might be harder to anger Tetris fans since the game doesn’t have a story. Still, were there things you needed to include as fan service?
Jon S. Baird: What I learned by making shows based on real life stories is you have be very respectful and responsible with the story you’re telling. Ours was more about making sure that the real Henk and Alexey were okay with the version of the story we told.
It’s not a documentary, so we’re not expecting everybody to believe there was a car chase, but obviously the KGB was involved and Alexey risked everything for this. Once you get that right with the real people, then you just have to follow their story and get details right.
For example, the code Alexey would have used to make Tetris in the 1980s. He didn’t have give us the exact code, but he gave us something believable. The point is you have to be true to stuff like that when it comes to gamers. The key word is authenticity. If you try and make every tiny little detail authentic, then you can’t go wrong.
Joshua Encinias: But to your point, Henk told Canary Media in an interview, “Alexey Pajitnov (the creator of Tetris) and I got to look at the script. It’s a Hollywood script; it’s a movie. It’s not about history, so a lot of [what’s in the movie] never happened.” What are some things you had to make up or embellish for the movie?
Jon S. Baird: I think timelines are always a thing. When you’re telling a story that’s based over several years or months, you have to dilute and distill that timeline. You have to merge characters. But again, if you want a documentary, there’s a one out there called Tetris:
from Russia with Love.
We made is a movie to entertain. So for example, the car chases, that is very much the Hollywood interpretation of their fight against the Soviet state. That’s a metaphorical representation of it. But I think we captured 85% of the story as it happened and then we took license with remaining 15%.
Joshua Encinias: Will you talk about using 8-bit graphics in the big chase scene? It’s one of the most creative ways you integrate the game into the story.
Jon S. Baird: Noah wrote about the 8-bit graphics in the script, but I didn’t concentrate on that so much when we were shooting a movie. I wanted to get the dramatic performances down and then we would mold it in post. The whole car chase was CGI.
Apart from the actors sitting in a car against a blue screen and the interiors when they’re talking to each other, all the exterior views of Moscow are CGI. We had a lot of license within post-production because we were building the concept from scratch and it was all trial and error. At one stage, we didn’t have enough of it and then we had way too much of it.
Then we ripped it back and got the right balance of 8-bit graphics.
Joshua Encinias: Most of Tetris is shot wide. Is that because it’s mostly going to be seen on people’s home televisions?
Jon S. Baird: I think you made a really good point there. Twenty years ago there was a difference between how you shot TV and how you shot movies, right? A lot of it was because of the size of the screen. Nowadays, the line is blurred and whenever I’m doing a film, I will shoot it for the big screen because this film will play on the big screen as well as on Apple TV+.
Moscow is a huge, quite vast place, and to show Henk as this character lost in the middle of this foreign world, I think it really helped to have more expansive shots.
Main image: (L-R) Taron Egerton, Sofya Lebedeva and Nikita Efremov in Tetris, directed by Jon S. Baird. Courtesy of Apple.
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