Breaking Glass Pictures
Anybody familiar with skateboarding culture in America knows the familiar story about how an underground activity with its own word-of-mouth stars gradually became a popular, extreme sport, with tournaments and licensing and products to market and lots of money to be made. As we hear from the legendary Tony Hawk and a bevy of other skateboarding pioneers, they had a choice to make: keep on skating below the radar and watch the industry grow without their expertise, or jump into the circus and become top competitors and (shudder) brands.
After a long introduction on this theme about the way things inevitably change, this interesting documentary settles in on the development of skateboard-related video games and the crucial role Hawk and other skaters played in making those games realistic, technically accurate, and exciting for players who get to choose avatars of real-world superstars to represent them. There's a lot of time spent on the evolution of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and how Hawk sat through a lot of proposals for games until he saw the one he instinctively knew had what players wanted to see.
There are a lot of good stories here, too, particularly from young women who didn't know it would be okay for them to skate in real life until they saw one or two famous female skaters represented in a game. The more a viewer happens to know about skateboarding, the better a fit Trying to Be Superman will be. But there are deeper life lessons here, too, about how change can be an enemy or an ally. Strongly recommended. Aud: E, I, J, H, C, P.