This early '8os TV movie is an interesting cultural artifact.. It's basically a dated cautionary tale on Dungeons & Dragons. A young Tom Hanks plays a college kid whose fragile emotional/mental health leads him to an escapist obsession with his D&D character. In a melodramatic scene, Hanks flees in to NYC and damn near leaps off the roof of the Twin Towers.

In 2023, it seems funny to look back on this institutional mistrust of D&D, especially on the heels of a major studio movie that basically now glorifies the D&D universe. But I remember some of the concerns & hysteria about D&D's potential to warp the minds of nerds.

The understandable parental anxiety of the late '7os & early '8os was that the line between reality and role-playing fiction could become blurred. And because D&D had demons & violence, the game play may carry over in to every day life and create killer elves & wizards. And there was an element of truth in these concerns. But I think every hobby has potential risk, and many hobbies and pastimes have been subjected to hysterical skepticism at some point. Video games, rap & heavy metal, etc. are things that have been cited for creating killers & psychos. And at times, those accusations aren't incorrect. But over time, the public is able to weigh an artform and/or hobby's net negative impact on its purveyors and fans. And even tho there have been isolated cases where D&D was believed to have a violent influence (the Shawn Novak case is one I remember well), I feel like D&D is now viewed as a harmless pastime. 

The movie wasn't great, but not terrible either. I did kind of get a sense tho it may have had a demoralizing effect on D&D players at the time(?) RPGs already had a reputation as a dorky, marginalized hobby, and D&D was being additionally demonized, when depicted as a gateway to psychotic breaks.

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