Movies - TV
Tom Hanks' First Lead Role Was A Movie About The Evils
Of D&D
By WILLIAM BIBBIANI
The moral panic over certain films that people laugh at today were once treated seriously and made up a significant part of the cultural landscape. One of the more curious examples is 1982’s “Mazes and Monsters,” which gave audiences Tom Hanks' first starring role in a film and taught them that to play Dungeons & Dragons was to play with madness and murder.
Inspired by only somewhat-true events, “Mazes and Monsters” stars Hanks as Robbie, a college student whose brother ran away from home and whose parents hate each other. He was kicked out of his first college for playing too much Mazes and Monsters, the film's fictionalized version of Dungeons & Dragons, and Robbie promises his parents he'll stop playing the game.
According to “Mazes and Monsters,” every single person who's attracted to role-playing games is suffering from extreme mental health issues and/or is the product of a “broken” home. All of Robbie's fellow players are experiencing various forms of psychological strife, including the teenage super-genius Jay Jay who sadly contemplates suicide.
“Mazes and Monsters” ends with all of Robbie's friends growing into better people due to their rejection of role-playing games and discovering to their horror that Robbie’s mental health has deteriorated to the point of no return. Unfortunately, the film spends so much time demonizing a tabletop game that it never explores the characters’ struggles fairly, or realistically.