Mazes and Monsters 1982

How many have seen this? This was a tv movie way back in 1982.
and it stared a young Tom Hanks.
I remember seeing the last little ending piece of it and have been looking
to watch the whole thing for quite some time.
This is one of those cautionary tales that is put out when some thing becomes
very popular and it shows that the "popular thing" has a dark side.
the films message is basically in my opinion is "don't take part in the popular thing,or this will happen to you just the same way it did for the main character!"

It is kinda of a scare tactic. in a lot of ways like the film below this one called
"Catfish" where the message was "every woman you meet online is not who she says she is..." they try to make it look like this is a dark side to it. I'm temped to say "They" being no one really knows who "they" are. I will say "People" so people have been doing this for years. with everything from Horror movies, to video games, to even Pokemon cards.

This movie is no different. It basically follows the story of Robbie(Hanks) who apparently was kicked out of this last school for this obsession with the game Mazes and Monsters (which of course is a Dungion and Drangons table top style RPG (Role Playing Game)
so he tries to start in a new school after kicking his habit.

This is where he meets Kate, Daniel and Jay Jay who are players of the game and need
a 4th person to play. Unbeknown to them they sign up poor Robbie.
all things are going well and the group is having fun, now things don't get bad until
the character of Jay Jay introduces a LARP (Live Action Role-Playing Game for those of you not in the know) aspect to the game where they leave the board behind and start playing it in the local caves
that have been condemned and at this point this seems to start to push Hank's Robbie of the edge
and he starts to loose grip on reality and begins to think the evens in the game are real
and disapears and goes off on a "quest" fulled by visions of his long lost brother
letting his friends and the town think he had died in a horrible death in the caves
but instead he is rescued by his friends in the end before jumping off the roof of one
of the Twin Towers in New York, believing he could fly.

Now this was an alright movie for its time especially on tv.
The acting was pretty good but you don't get to see much out of Hanks at least I didn't think
so he being pretty much the main character he didn't have as I seen it a big role in this the film
was pretty much carried by this co-stars the people who played his friends.
The creature effects were some what neat and the music at times had a very scary tone
it was either light and beautiful or some one spooky and frighting.

Now it does put a negative light one the whole RPG style of gaming
as if it is to say "if you play this stuff you will become crazy and suicidal"
which is not true Hank's Robbie went insane not because of the game but more
from the the issues he had before playing like those of the guilt of this brother.
Yes there have been cases where people have taken things a bit to far but
you can't blame a hand full of cases and then stamp it dangerous.

Now I personally enjoy enjoy some role playing i don't do it the same why
they do it I do like things like Final Fantasy and am currently playing
DC Universe Online I also role play on the Internet and Have a couple of characters
I use for that as well. It is plenty of fun and I do enjoy it greatly and there is times
where you can get carried away but you must always remain that focus
it is fun to live in a fantasy world for a couple of hours a few nights a week
but you can't let it take over you life.
The way I see it It is alot like acting, your playing a role hence the title
Role playing Game.

Now even though this move does bring up real dangers , it also exaggerated
them to the extremes. RPGing and to an extent LARPing can be fun and exciting
as long as it is not take to seriously. So in the end the movie was alright
but I don't believe it was a fair account or a fair representation of the RPG
gaming community.