Pixels is a Love Letter to Gamers

Let's hit it!

(tires screeching)

I became intrigued with Pixels

'cause I love the idea of the story.

Basically, about three video game enthusiasts

who win the World Video Game Arcade Championships.

And in 1982, a space capsule was sent into space

with all the current events, one of them was

the World Video Arcade Championships.

The aliens saw that and took the games

as a declaration of war, sending down huge live-action

versions of those things to destroy our planet.

Well, the military's helpless against these things.

The only people who can save our planet are these

three video nerds, and that's what I loved about it.

We got him!

He's got nowhere to go!

(car honking) (tires screeching)

(pulse booming)

Oh god, no.

Brenner, get out!

He's going to eat you!

Yeah, I was excited because the script had a

Centipede sequence and a Pac-Man sequence.

What the first draft of the script

did not have was Donkey Kong.

After months and months of meeting with

the board of Nintendo, they agreed that we were gonna treat

Donkey Kong with respect and the proper gameplay,

which is very important, and bringing Donkey Kong

into the film was the slam dunk for us.

(dramatic drum music)

(imitating monkey chatter)

The visual effects in the film, really,

were the most difficult part of making this film.

They wanna create something the audience

has never seen before, and at the same time,

we had to push ourselves to a new place

in terms of visual effects.

We had to create interactive effects, that were CGI,

that existed within a realistic environment.

I wasn't interested in creating an all CGI environment.

That feels a little false to me.

What I loved about a movie like the original

Jurassic Park is that you have tangible things.

So when we do the Pac-Man car chase,

we did all of that practically.

We added a Pac-Man later.

Donkey Kong was an amazing, amazing set.

You'd walk into this giant green screen stage,

and the Donkey Kong set was built.

The girders were life-size.

We'd put the actual actors on there in harnesses,

jumping over where the barrels would be,

and it was physically exhausting,

but it made the sequence much more exciting.

(dramatic drum music)

Something interesting is a lot of our audience,

probably not born when Pac-Man or Donkey Kong

first released, are becoming obsessed

with going to see this movie.

They found a way to fall in love with these characters.

That's very exciting.

So now you've got adults who played the games.

The parents can take their kids to the film,

who are interested in the games, and they have this

shared bonding of learning about these games.

Uh, good boy.

(screaming)

Somebody kill this stupid thing!

I love the fact that this is a love letter to gamers.

You know, the fact that these guys, who everybody thought

were losers at the time, suddenly become heroes.

(cheery whistling music)

(dramatic drum music)

Don't tell anybody I killed a Smurf.

♫ We will, we will rock you