Pretending I’m a Superman: The Tony Hawk Video Game Story, 2020.
Directed by Ludvig Gür.
Featuring Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Rodney Mullen, Chad Muska, and Eric Koston.
SYNOPSIS:
The story of how skateboarding became a part of the mainstream by focusing on the success of the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater video game franchise.
There are few video game franchises more emblematic of the early 2000s zeitgeist than Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, which launched in late 1999 and became a pop-culture phenom for most of the decade that followed. On the eve of the original two games receiving glossy new remakes, Ludvig Gür’s documentary breezily examines the series’ formation, its impact on both sports and video games, and its lasting legacy.
Gür’s film wastes not a second of its 73-minute runtime, quickly tracing the modest origins of the skate scene in the 1980s, which serendipitously coincided with the advent of VHS – a prime marketing tool for up-and-coming skaters.
However, skateboarding was in major decline by the early ’90s per the closure of skate parks, before everything changed with the launch of the corporate extreme sports event The X-Games in 1994. And though a modest assortment of video games followed throughout the rest of the decade, it wasn’t until the release of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater that the genre truly had caught the attention of a blockbuster-sized audience.
With access to a diverse assortment of sport and game industry talent alongside Hawk himself – including Rodney Mullen, Chad Muska, Eric Koston, Aaron Snyder, and Neversoft co-founder Mick West – Gür details the means through which Hawk came to work with Activision on the game, and how it exploded into a mammoth hit despite low expectations.
Hawk, ever an affable and likeable subject, is a treasure trove of entertaining anecdotes about those unsure early days, and comes across as humble and grateful despite his colossal success. In one jaw-dropping story, Hawk explains that Activision offered him a royalties buyout of $500,000 early in the series’ life, one which he ultimately didn’t take, and one which evidently paid off handsomely.
Despite being “just” a skateboarding game, the original THPS was a fortunate collision of conflict and compromise, with many skaters expressing skepticism that it would represent their culture authentically, creating a divide between those who saw it as an act of “selling out” versus those who appreciated it normalising skateboarding in the wider sphere. Ultimately developers Neversoft delivered a game which ditched rigorous realism – injuries were removed during development – but was faithful to the heart of the sport.
Anyone who grew up playing the franchise will also remember the games for their eclectic, iconic soundtracks, and Gür briefly speaks to talent from the likes of Goldfinger and Primus to examine how their music’s inclusion helped boost their popularity. If video game soundtracks are so often forgettable pop jukeboxes, in the case of the Tony Hawk’s series, they have been an inseparable part of its essence, with Neversoft taking uncommon care to consult with skaters and find music they themselves were fans of.
The original game was of course only the beginning, with its immediate sequel ending up the most critically acclaimed entry into the franchise. More eccentric follow-ups arrived in subsequent years – including the edgy Tony Hawk’s Underground spin-off series – before a creative decline began to set in as other worthy rivals to the skateboarding game mantle showed up, namely EA’s Skate.
Activision responded with the critically-panned Tony Hawk: Ride, which featured a clunky, plastic skateboard peripheral, though the coffin was well and truly closed on the series – for a time, anyway – with the release of 2015’s universally-reviled Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5.
Oddly, however, that game receives little mention here, and indeed if there’s any flaw to this documentary, it’s the glaring lack of a majorly critical perspective. There aren’t much more than passing nods to the series’ lesser entries, which given the doc’s short length it clearly had room to expand upon.
But these flaws will at least be known to most players, and the film instead trains much of its focus on the series’ lasting influence beyond dew-eyed nostalgia, of boosting the appeal of the sport, to the extent that it’s set to make its debut at next year’s Summer Olympics.
Beyond inspiring youngsters to take up skating, several of the film’s subjects cannily argue that it’s aided in educating skaters and influencing the creation of tricks, of pushing athletes to do more, and also representing both women and minority skaters long before the more vocal recent calls for diversity.
Though it could certainly be more in-depth, Pretending I’m A Superman is a reverent tribute to skateboarding and its most beloved video game series, tracing how both have been shaped over the decades.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more film rambling.
