It’s 1999 and the video game that every kid is begging for is unexpected, to say the least. It’s a packed year with profitable games like Silent Hill, Super Smash Bros., and the long awaited Final Fantasy VIII — but somehow, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater is the game that nobody can stop talking about.
Featuring interviews with Tony Hawk himself, professional skateboarders, and video game developers, Ludvig Gür’s Pretending I’m a Superman pulls back the curtain on the game’s success. Paired with tons of VHS skate footage and a grungy soundtrack, the film is a delightful time capsule of the 1990s and early-2000s.
Pretending I’m a Superman isn’t the first deep-dive into the beloved franchise. In 2019, The Ringer published an extensive oral history with interviews from Hawk and some of the creative directors behind the original game. But what sets the film apart is its singular focus on the skater, both in the virtual world and in real life.
Much of Pretending I’m a Superman is concerned with Hawk, for obvious reasons. Hawk candidly chronicles his career: from picking up a skateboard for the first time as a hyperactive kid to becoming a star at the X Games. But Hawk also notes that the industry was unstable, even with his success. Skate parks were closing all across the country, there was less money to be made in his specialty of “vert skating,” and the sport still wasn’t mainstream in the way that others were. There simply wasn’t a reliable way to make a living skateboarding.
That all changed in 1998. Following the sustained success of Atari’s skateboarding arcade game 700° — combined with the rising star power of Hawk — several studios were interested in cashing in on the skateboarding phenomenon. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was ultimately brought to life by the now-defunct studio Neversoft, a subsidiary of Activision, who molded the game from their previous project: the Bruce Willis-fronted shooter Apocalypse.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater may not have been the first game of its kind, or the most realistic depiction of skateboarding, but it clearly had the biggest cultural impact. Pretending I’m a Superman illustrates that impact: from excited kids at Christmas unwrapping the coveted game, to people incorporating skateboarding into their lives. Thanks to the game’s success, those who weren’t in the skateboarding bubble suddenly knew the tricks and the lingo — and some were picking up boards for themselves for the very first time.
“THPS is a huge part of why skateboarding is here to stay,” Hawk says at the beginning of the film. “Why it’s in the Olympics, why it’s what kids gravitate to more so than team sports now.”
Pretending I’m a Superman also delves into how the game put skateboarding on the map, specifically from the perspectives of professional skaters themselves. The film includes interviews with Steve Caballero, Rodney Mullen, Jamie Thomas, and Chad Muska, all of whom were featured in the franchise and exploded in popularity in conjunction with its success. These interviews shed light on the perception of the game from an industry perspective, which is largely a positive one. However, what seems to be a great opportunity to discuss the nature of “selling out” and profiting off of a previously unprofitable hobby largely gets swept under the rug.
The film’s tone gets a bit confused once it delves away from the franchises’ golden era — often considered to be the first five games. But in a way, it almost mirrors the rushed and superfluous nature of Activision needing to make the same game over and over again with varying levels of success. “The potency or the relevance starts to get a little bit muddled and convoluted as you keep trying to reinvent the wheel” Thomas says.
As the franchise evolves, so does its diversity — with later games featuring notable female skaters and skaters of color in its roster. There are interviews with young skaters who felt inspired to pick up a board because of the representation in the game. But it’s shoehorned in at the end a bit abruptly to have too much of an impact on the viewer.
Pretending I’m a Superman is by far the most comprehensive look at Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, not only from its production, but also how it effectively revitalized the skateboarding industry into something with real momentum and cultural significance. It’s a bit hokey and saturated with 90s nostalgia at times, but it’s indicative of how, despite all that, the original game is still fondly remembered after all these years.
