New World Cinema: Marwencol, Documentary About a Broken Man Whose Therapy is Making an Alternate World

"When his world was stolen, Mark Hogancamp made a world of his own." Marwencol, an acclaimed new documentary now playing in select theaters, isn't actually about user-created virtual worlds, but it speaks, I think, to a shared motivation that makes them possible. Here's the trailer:

Beaten into a coma by several thugs, Hogancamp recovers by creating an astonishingly realistic World War II-era town with lifelike figurines who represent himself, the woman he loves, his friends, and playing the evil Nazis, of course, the bastards who messed him up. I've met many metaverse creators who build virtual utopias for similar reasons as Hogancamp, as a catharsis and means of recovery, as a way of gaining control over a world that's all too often unfair. "Everybody wishes they had a double that could do things that they could never do," as Hogancamp says.

Comments

[Ignatius Onomatopoeia]

Many thanks for sharing this. I rekindled my old interest in GI Joes (the originals--the size of these more realistic figs from Dragon and other companies) many years back. Adults wondered "why in the hell are you collecting toys?"

I'd mumble something about value and investment (no longer true--the bottom fell out on that market).

While I don't share this man's need for inventing a therapeutic world through 1/6 scale figures, when I was a kid, it was magical to make up stories with these toys.

There's a lot in common with the reasons that folks make avatars and push them around a screen--the hunger for narratives not easily done (if possible at all) in real life.