everybody wants to be a hero

My review of the documentary Darkon has been published on Blogcritics. To be honest, I was surprised by how good it was. The cinematography is often quite stunning, and whomever they had doing the animation knew their stuff. Sure, it’s edited with a bit of a slant, and as the commentary track reveals, some things happen in the gameplay that might not have had the cameras been absent, but all in all, it comes off as a fair representation of the LARP game and players.

The tagline for the documentary Darkon is, “Everybody Wants To Be a Hero,” which succinctly sums up the main message of this film about a group of people involved in the full contact, live-action role playing (LARP) wargame of the same name. As one of the players puts it, “If you could watch Brad Pitt or be Brad Pitt, which would you rather do?” For these Baltimore area gamers, the answer is easy — they would rather pretend to be the heroes they wish they were.