Chronicling the creation of a pop-culture phenomenon, Pretending I’m a Superman: The Tony Hawke Pro-Skater Story also shows how skateboard legend Tony Hawke transcending his sport and took his fellow community of skaters for the ride.

Tony Hawke is in many ways the Michael Jordan of skateboarding. Along with daring athletic feats, Hawke knew how to market his star power through venues unlikely, yet ultimately profitable and iconic. Chief among them is the video game Tony Hawke Pro Skater, which sold more than a million copies when released in 2001. Yet as shown in Pretending I’m a Superman, the road to Pro-Skater was a rocky one indeed.

Directed by Swedish filmmaker Ludwig Gur (also known by his YouTube handle Icebears Forever), Pretending I’m a Superman is as much a history lesson in the world of skateboarding, as it is an example of marketing ingenuity. Beginning in the 1980s when skateboarding was a very niche scene looking for its place in the mainstream, Gur astutely points out that the relationship between skateboarding and technology was and is incredibly important to the growth of the sport, with young skaters capturing their antics on video, and then selling them to eager enthusiasts.

Over the years videos became video games, and at the forefront was Tony Hawke, whose ascension to skateboard hero was capped with a bravura performance at the X-Games (an extreme sports competition, for those who don’t know). As Pretending I’m a Superman expertly points out, the success of Tony Hawke Pro-Skater was not only due to Hawke lending his endorsement, but also taping into his wealth of knowledge into a scene that prides itself in its credibility. In Hawke, video game studio Activision had an “in” that was a treasure chest of do’s and don’t’s in developing their product into a successful franchise.

Hawke is portrayed as not only a talented sportsman and keen marketer, but also a generous soul, who decided to being along fellow skaters (friends and friendly rivals) into the videogame business, giving them a new revenue stream and exposure to a legion of gamers. Musicians too were the beneficiaries of the Pro-Skater phenom, with the games soundtrack consisting of bands like Primus and Goldfinger as a success. If the Godfather Part II adage of “wetting the beak” is of any indication, then many were diving into the deep well of Pro-Skater like Scrooge McDuck into his vault of gold.

Gur (who also edited) weaves together archive footage and new interviews with the likes of Hawke, Steve Caballero, and Chad Muska, into a documentary that not only serves as a fascinating history lesson into the merging of sport and video games, but also exemplifies the far reaching influence a videogame can have on its players, with many current skaters citing Pro-Skater as the spark that made them pick up a board. Entertaining and engaging, Pretending I’m a Superman will appeal to fans and novices alike.