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By Jamie Burton
Senior TV & Film Reporter (Interviews)
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Soviet-born American investor Alexey Pajitnov says Russia is in a "dark situation" and admits that things are looking "hopeless."
Best known as the creator of the video game phenomenon Tetris, he moved to the United States in 1991 and later co-founded The Tetris Company with Dutch video game designer Henk Rogers. The story of how both men met and managed to distribute the intellectual property rights worldwide is told in Tetris, the new Apple TV+ movie arriving Friday.
Pajitnov settled with his family in Washington state, but his experiences in Soviet Russia are fresh in his mind, and they're laid out in the new biographical drama Tetris.
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"This is a retro movie, and shows a totally different time," Pajitnov told Newsweek. "We had the very dark years of communism in the movie and you could feel it."
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Tetris the movie is set in the late 1980s as games developer Rogers (played by Taron Egerton) travels to Russia to try to secure the rights to distribute Tetris on the Game Boy for Nintendo. The time period portrayed hints at the coming end of the Soviet Union.
While we know change was coming to the Soviet Union, which was dissolved in 1991, Pajitnov doesn't know if there's a change coming for modern-day, Vladimir Putin-led Russia.
"It was a Perestroika time, the times of hope and the time of the changes, they [were] coming," Pajitnov said. "Unfortunately, now we have a much more hopeless time, and much more dark situation for Russia, and that is very unfortunate."
In March 2022, Pajitnov issued a statement to multiple outlets that condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine. He called Putin a "soulless crazy dictator" and a "war criminal." One year into the war, he thinks the movie Tetris gives us hope for modern-day Russia.
"The movie for me is about how the future gets through all the kind of layers of bureaucracy, and strange kind of business intrigues, and that's what gives you hope," he said. "So this is a very hopeful movie, in my perspective. And that kind of gives small hope to my country as well."
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Sitting alongside him is Rogers, co-founder of The Tetris Company.
"For me, this movie transcends the politics. It's about friendship between two human beings," Rogers said. "We came from different backgrounds, and we have different personalities, but we're still friends. And ultimately, all people in the world can be friends.
"We need to tell the politicians up on top, who order our children to go to war or whatever, to take a hike. No more war."
After Pajitnov created Tetris in 1984, a battle for the rights began with players like Rogers, Robert Stein and British media mogul Robert Maxwell getting involved.
Tetris the movie stars Egerton, Nikita Yefremov (as Pajitnov), Toby Jones, Ben Miles and Roger Allam. It was directed by Scottish filmmaker Jon S. Baird, his first movie since 2018's Stan & Ollie.
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"I've been very vocal to say that you should never compare the plight of what was happening in a movie to what these people in Ukraine, and all the people who are fighting in Ukraine, are going through at the moment in this horrible tragedy," Baird told Newsweek.
Baird thinks a retrospective look at 1980s Russia, and considering Russia's actions in Ukraine recently, show the danger Rogers put himself in when he arrived in Soviet Russia all those years ago.
"He put himself in a lion's den," Baird said. "And maybe two years ago, when we were making this film, the jeopardy wouldn't have felt so great to people who hadn't been around then, or who didn't know, or had forgotten how dangerous the Cold War era was.
"So I think now ironically, this conflict in Ukraine has educated a generation who weren't around then to the fact of how dangerous it was back then for people to venture into that kind of world. So weirdly enough, it's probably became more relevant. Yeah, just in a real sort of tragic backdrop."
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Because of the laws in Soviet Russia at the time, Pajitnov didn't receive any royalties for creating Tetris, and didn't receive any until he and Rogers created The Tetris Company in 1996.
Recalling an interview he gave decades ago, Pajitnov gave credit to Newsweek for being one of the first on the scene.
"Your newspaper Newsweek was one of the first who made an interview with me and an article about Tetris," Pajitnov said, laughing. "And I remember the very nice picture of mine, they tortured me for a couple of hours to make this picture. So that was very great. Thank you very much."
Tetris will premiere globally on Apple TV+ on March 31, 2023.
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