Directed by Ludvig Gür
Featuring Tony Hawk, Rodney Mullen, Steve Caballero, Chad Muska and Jamie Thomas
Running time: 1 hour and 13 minutes

by Ian Hrabe

The year is 1999, and I could care less about skateboarding. The doorbell rings, my mom hands the Pizza Hut delivery driver a check and cash for a tip, and he gives us our pizza. Nestled on top of the box is a compact disc of some sort. Upon closer inspection I can see the Playstation logo. I don’t personally have a Playstation, but my younger brother does and we can’t eat our pizza fast enough to see what’s on this thing. This was a time before free to play and on demand, a time before the peak of the Internet Age when finding information about upcoming video games was a full-on endeavor. We worked our way through the games one by one. Crash Team Racing was fine. Ape Escape was lame. Final Fantasy VII, despite going on to become one of the most heralded video games of all time, was incomprehensible to my 13 year old brain who had never encountered a JRPG. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater came last, and watching Pretending I’m a Superman unlocked this moment that had been filed away in my brain. I can vividly remember playing the game’s opening warehouse level on that demo disc and how right it felt. I had never been on a skateboard in my life but there I was, doing kickflips and nosegrinds. I had never played a game that was that intuitive, and I haven’t played one since. To this day, there are few things I am better at than Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. I will absolutely crush you in that game if you step to me.

All of this is to say that it’s hard to think of a movie more perfectly suited to my interests. Pretending I’m a Superman is what I like to call a pocket documentary. It’s a film that chronicles an incredibly niche subject designed for an incredibly niche audience. It’s a bit of a double edged sword because while I was ALL IN on this movie, reveling in my early teenage heyday where my friends and I would stay up until four 4 AM trying to get Tony Hawk to land the 900 in the game (I remember the first time we did in the Chicago indoor skatepark level, few things in life have ever matched that euphoria). Yet for the outsider, the one who didn’t spend vast swaths of their youth stringing together virtual skateboard tricks, I could absolutely see this being a snooze for those folks once you get past the fascinating brief history of skateboarding in America featured in the film’s first 20 minutes. Once the game designers and producers started talking, I could see my wife’s eyes starting to glaze over. While that is on director Ludvig Gür, who could have done a better job making this a more universal effort than something that feels like a DVD special feature doc, I still really enjoyed going behind the scenes of one of my favorite video games of all time. 

One thing that is fascinating about this film is the sheer awe that you can see in the game’s creators, skateboarders and musicians featured on the soundtrack. Nobody expected this game to capture lightning in a bottle. It was just supposed to be a simple skateboarding game to cash in on Tony Hawk’s and the X-Games’ surging popularity, and here they are 20 years later discussing its impact on not only videogame culture, but skateboarding as a whole. To see interviews with younger skateboarders talking about picking up a skateboard for the first time because of this game is incredible (I tried to skateboard, like I’m sure a lot of husky midwestern kids did, and was decidedly not coordinated enough to do anything but fall on my ass). I was particularly delighted to see Keire Johnson (from the Best of the Decade worthy doc Minding the Gap) make an appearance talking about how the game impacted his skating career. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater’s influence is undeniable, and while this doc feels a little light, it’s still nice to see the game and everyone involved get their just due for creating something that made those late 90s Saturday night sleepovers so awesome. 

Available to watch on demand tomorrow.