Why Tetris is the ‘perfect’ video game

Rather than wanting to make a film about Tetris the video game as such, Baird was fascinated by this human story that pushed the game into existence. “The original title of the film was actually Falling Blocs, just like the Eastern blocs that dissolved when the Soviet Union collapsed. I thought it was a really great title. To me, Tetris is a buddy movie and this Cold War thriller, but at the heart of it is this human story between two guys who come from polar opposites of the world and are incredibly different, yet manage to create this magnificent game.

“The only reason Henk found Tetris was because it was pirated illegally out of the country,” Baird continues. “It wasn’t even supposed to leave the Soviet Union. Pirating something back then meant it had to be smuggled out of the country on a floppy disk. It shows you the power of gaming and how it has a global language that transcends political differences.”

In the movie, Rogers is depicted as someone who believed Tetris would not only be a hit game, but, the film goes as far to suggest, a trigger for Russia to cool off the Cold War and embrace global capitalism. In one scene, he cockily asks a KGB officer: “Don’t you want to show the world the Soviet Union is about more than missiles and military might?” —BBC