The NeverEnding Story
Disclaimer:
Mild swearing, mild nudity, and Spoilers!
Good to see that my random movie picker finally moved me away from Disney stuff, so now I can take a look at a classic kid’s film from the 80’s: The NeverEnding Story. I used to watch this movie when I was a kid in the mid-2000’s myself and loved it very much, and it’s safe to say that I still love it now. While there are certain things I’ve come to realize with every film I used to watch as a kid that just don’t add up like in the case of WALL-E and Beauty and the Beast like I reviewed over the past couple of weeks, this film has a certain charm to its faults. In some respects its flaws are also its pros, and anything in this film I would personally consider to be a flaw are few and far between. Considering when this film came out and what audience they’re clearly addressing can create a bit of a disconnect as well, mostly as I’ve gotten older and have become an overly critical birch.
To put things in perspective, this movie came out the same year as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in 1984, so the children this movie is trying to represent are not going to be the same as the children of my generation that were watching this movie 20 years later. That’s not something I can inherently fault the movie on though, since what matters more is the message of the film which I believe has certainly stood the test of time. Everything that’s good about this movie is something that any child of any generation can enjoy, even adults for that matter since, being an 80’s PG kid’s movie, it does explore darker and more macabre themes that modern kid’s cinema would avoid like the plague. Not only can it be dark, but it can be funny, engaging, thrilling, visually stunning, and very creative. Also with the film being only 90 minutes (kinda ironic considering the title says it’s never-ending), it’s impressive how they managed to make the story coherent, make the characters likable, and give the message time to breathe in that amount of time. Well enough of me gushing over this movie, let’s get into the nitpicking which I’m sure y’all love to hear from me at this point. Don’t worry I only criticize the things I love. That’s not true. That’s so not true.
Without further ado, grab your books and hold onto your friends tightly so they don’t get sucked into nothingness, this is The NeverEnding Story!
Watching this movie for the first time in a while, I forgot how surreal and etheric these opening titles are. Not only is it beautifully accompanied by this movie’s main theme: ‘The NeverEnding Story’ sung by Limahl, but the smoky, cloud covered backgrounds leave you with both a feeling of wonder and dread at the same time. They color shift from shot to shot and along with the strong wind sounds occasionally thrown in alongside the music, it really creates an illusion that you’re being transported to another world, flying, or dreaming. And wow did I say the word ‘dreaming’ at just the right time since after the credits are over we’re introduced to our protagonist Bastian (played by Barret Oliver) who’s just waking up from a dream he had about his dead mother. I might not be reviewing a Disney movie, but opening with a dead mother makes it feel like I am.
He goes downstairs to get ready for school where his father is waiting (played by Gerald McRaney) who gives him a good exposition - I mean lecture. As it turns out our hero is struggling after the death of his mother by not doing as well in school and distracting himself with books and fantasy to numb the pain. Good thing he doesn’t know what drugs and alcohol are. Even though we don’t see Bastian’s father for very long, he comes across as genuine and loving enough while also willing to support his son even if he doesn’t like how his life is going right now. I know I said that about the same man who’s responsible for the child who ends up locking himself in his school’s attic for an entire day while he doesn’t suspect a thing, but I digress. Either way, on Bastian’s way to school we get even more confirmation that this is an 80’s movie with the addition of the stock bully characters (played by Chris Eastman, Darryl Cooksey, and Nicholas Gilbert). They throw him in a dumpster for not giving them his lunch money (I assume), and while this is an overused trope of a bullied main character, especially in stories that were released during this decade, this is the same character who draws unicorns in his textbook margins and spends his time reading books instead of playing video games at the arcade like the cool kids, so I totally believe he would be bullied. I’m not saying I’d bully him, but I see why he would be bullied.
After escaping the dumpster and getting chased by the bullies again, he hides himself in the store of one Carl Conrad Coreander (played by Thomas Hill). Coreander at first shoos Bastian away, but upon learning of his passion for reading and literature, he starts to have a more personal conversation with him. This is when Bastian notices Coreander is reading a very peculiar looking book and Bastian asks him about it. I’m just gonna say it as well, this scene has only improved with age for me.
On the surface it seems like Coreander is trying to scare Bastian into not wanting to read this book, but since we know that he’s only just learned about Bastian’s passion for reading, it’s not hard to see that what he’s actually doing is enticing him. It makes you think about what kind of person Coreander really is and if he in some way has a connection to the NeverEnding Story, because he probably does. At the end of the movie we hear about how Bastian ends up going on several different adventures himself because of the NeverEnding Story, so you could assume that Coreander was merely passing the torch onto Bastian after having been the caretaker of the NeverEnding Story before him. Only 10 minutes into this movie and it’s already raising some thought-provoking questions, damn it’s so good!
Coreander goes to take a call so Bastian steals the book while he’s away, and he makes his way to school where the teachers and faculty seem equally uninterested in keeping track of him as his father is. I mean really, he goes into school where no one is waiting at the principal’s office to admit him, he runs through the completely empty and camera-free halls to his classroom door where his teacher apparently didn’t care to take attendance, and he easily makes his way to a locked stairway room that leads to the school’s attic where the key is kept in a broken lock box which is easily accessible to any tween kid who may want to get it. While this is phenomenally irresponsible on behalf of the adults in charge of this school, I give it a pass.
Why would I do that? Well, I actually brought all of these points up with my mom who’s also a big fan of this movie, however she actually grew up in the 80’s herself. She didn’t deny that the points I mentioned highlighted how irresponsible the authority figures are, but she also brought up how that’s just kinda how things were back then. Though not the best way to keep track of children, this is the same decade that gave us those ‘It’s 10:00 pm, where are your kids?’ PSA’s, so after hearing that, it makes more sense that Bastian would be able to sneak through his school entirely undetected like this. Also I think it feeds a bit into what the movie is all about since Bastian sneaks into a dusty attic full of various mysterious items which also happens to be connected to his clean and marbled school. It’s an interesting and somewhat magical place that you never would’ve guessed to be a part of this seemingly drab and monochromatic building. Kind of like how books can appear uninteresting until you open them up and start reading, buildings/environments can also seem boring until you look closer.
Once Bastian gets comfortable he starts to read and we’re introduced to the world of Fantasia (Disney permitting) where we see a campsite get interrupted by the arrival of my second favorite character in this movie: the Rock Biter (played by an uncredited Alan Oppenheimer). Also, we get started on some of the darker imagery pretty quickly while we watch the Rock Biter approach the campers Teeny Weeny (played by Deep Roy) and Night Hob (played by Tilo Prückner) with creepy trees being knocked over, and rumbling/crushing sounds getting closer and closer to them.
Sidenote: As we see the Rock Biter approach the campsite, I swear I can hear Night Hob scream “Oh shit!”
I also really love the design of these characters including the Rock Biter himself, Teeny Weeny’s Racing Snail, and Night Hob’s Stupid Bat. While they may not be the most realistic per say (I mean heck, Rock Biter’s lips rarely, if ever, match up with what he actually says), they do still look distinct from each other and clearly have a unique style that makes it easy to believe that they all come from different parts of the same world. After the Rock Biter shows off the reason he’s called ‘Rock Biter’, he explains why he’s here which introduces us to the concept of the Nothing. As it turns out in Fantasia there’s an entity that’s appeared which destroys/absorbs/erases everything it comes into contact with leaving nothing in its place. Literally nothing. Hence the name: the Nothing. Everyone at the campsite has been called to the home of Fantasia’s Empress, the Ivory Tower (I’ll also say it’s kinda funny that the center of this world’s government is literally called the Ivory Tower), who is supposed to have the solution to this issue. Upon making it there, the Empress’ assistant Cairon (played by Moses Gunn) explains that the Empress is dying since her life force seems to be tied to Fantasia itself that the Nothing is now destroying. Their only chance now is a hero named Atreyu.
I didn’t question this when I was younger, but when Atreyu (played by Noah Hathaway) reveals himself to the council, Cairon just assumes he’s a stray child. After rewatching this movie for this review I started asking myself why Cairon or the rest of the council wouldn’t have just double checked to make sure they had the right person. Although, after thinking about this I feel like it might be more clever than I originally thought. When Cairon first says Atreyu’s name, we cut back to Bastian in the attic who has momentarily put the book down to look at an image of a Native tribesman on horseback hunting a buffalo that Bastian just so happens to have on his backpack. Bastian then picks the book back up and we see Atreyu appear as a young Native boy. Part of me wonders if this was in some way Bastian’s influence on Fantasia. By looking at that image of the Native tribesman, Bastian manifested Atreyu in the story to appear similarly to the image he already had of him in his head and he appeared as a young boy since Bastian would likely relate to a young boy more than a grown man. However this mismatch of expectations is likely what threw Cairon off and prompted him to believe that Atreyu wasn’t the Atreyu he sent for when he first saw him.
At first Cairon wants to shoo Atreyu away, but since Fantasia is in dire straits right now, he decides to send Atreyu out on this quest anyway even if he wasn’t expecting him to be so…inexperienced. He gives Atreyu a medal called the Auryn, which also happens to be the same symbol that’s on the cover of the book, that’s supposed to guide and protect him. With that, he’s off to save Fantasia. Unbeknownst to him and his horse Artax is that the servant of the Nothing called Gmork (also played by an uncredited Alan Oppenheimer) is off to prevent Atreyu and Artax from finishing their quest. In the end he turns out to be pretty bad at doing this, but we’ll get to that later. Sure he may not be the best servant, but he does offer some more of that creepy imagery in the movie that I was talking about before, so I at least appreciate that. Also I couldn’t find any pictures of Gmork’s intro with him in the overgrown cave, but I did manage to find this creepy ass AI artwork of him:
If he looked like this in the movie I would’ve shat my pants! It looks like what would happen if the Balrog and the Wolfman had a baby!
Along the journey the movie occasionally cuts back to Bastian in the attic offering reactions to what he reads in the book. Sometimes this can come off as a bit cheap when they cut back to him just so he can say a character’s name. He does this after Atreyu comes across the Shell Mountain and Bastian says ‘Morla the Ancient One’, they cut back to Bastian so he can say ‘The Southern Oracle’, and last towards the end when he says ‘The Empress’. The good news is that he does this rarely and most of the time when they cut back to Bastian in the attic it’s to offer something more than just a character’s name which also feeds into the main idea behind the movie as well, but that’ll become clear later.
For now we also get a bit of a sense that there are parts of the movie that we aren’t seeing since after Atreyu and Artax get a quick snack, the next time we see them is in the Swamps of Sadness. The reason I say this is because once we see them in the swamp, Bastian narrates that they’ve already searched places like the Silver Mountains, the Desert of Shattered Hopes, and the Crystal Towers until they made it to the Swamps of Sadness to find Morla the Ancient One for guidance. We never find out what those places are like or even look like, so it makes me wonder if there are certain parts of the story that were cut down for the sake of time. After all, this movie is only 90 minutes like I mentioned previously, so it’s definitely possible that that’s the case, and it becomes a bit more apparent when Artax drowns in the swamp. This happens only 30 minutes into the film and this is only the second scene that we’ve seen him in which is already pretty jarring, but to be fair, I cried my eyes out at this scene as a kid.
I think what makes this scene so effective isn’t the fact that we’re losing a character that we’ve gotten time to grow attached to, but we’re losing a character that meant a lot to our lead as we can see through Noah Hathaway’s performance here. With the camera angles and dramatic music as well, it only makes the scene that much more impactful. Even if that’s not enough, we also see throughout the rest of the movie just how much Artax meant to Atreyu in various other scenes such as when Atreyu first meets Falkor the Luckdragon and he says “It’s nice to have a friend again”, when Atreyu comes across the wall of paintings detailing his adventure towards the end and he sees Artax’s death among them, and when Atreyu mentions Artax’s death to the Empress in the final moments of Fantasia. Sure I get the sense that this part of the story was a bit cut down for the sake of time, but you definitely get the sense throughout the rest of the movie that the weight of this moment is constantly beating down on our hero from here until the end.
Eventually Atreyu comes across Morla the Ancient One who is frickin’ hilarious. She also serves as a much-needed levity after the death of a beloved friend like Artax with her completely nihilistic approach to life, her sarcastic remarks, and her constant sneezing since she’s actually allergic to youth.
I laugh so much at her whenever I see this scene, although she actually doesn’t know what’s needed to save Fantasia or cure the Empress. However, she does tip Atreyu off to the existence of the Southern Oracle 10,000 miles away from their current location which definitely kills any sort of optimism Atreyu had left. This is when the final bell rings at Bastian’s school for everyone to go home leaving him in the school completely by himself. He also gets momentarily scared by a wolf head on a stick which reminds us that Gmork is still hunting Atreyu down. Atreyu almost drowns in the Swamps of Sadness, you can assume in part because of the loss of hope of ever reaching the Southern Oracle and the death of Artax that’s still weighing on him, but luckily ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) he gets saved by my all time favorite character, Falkor the Luckdragon (played by a credited Alan Oppenheimer (yeah, for some reason they only credited him for Falkor’s voice)), just as Gmork was about to eat him.
Falkor to me is the perfect blend of both wise and goofy at the same time. He has a calm and comforting demeanor which makes him easily the most likable character in the movie, and of course he makes a great plushie too.
I unfortunately don’t have a plushie of him though.
Atreyu wakes up clean and healed in Falkor’s arms while also just outside the home of a gnome couple. Their names are Engywook (played by Sydney Bromley) and Urgl (played by Patricia Hayes) and they’re what you would expect most elderly straight couples to be: constantly fighting yet somehow endearing in their dislike of each other.
Urgl is the one who’s nursed Atreyu back to health, but Engywook just so happens to be an expert on the Southern Oracle. It’s also pretty lucky since Falkor has already taken Atreyu 9,891 miles towards the Southern Oracle already leaving only 109 miles left to go. What’s kinda weird about this is that Atreyu ends up walking the entire rest of the way to the Southern Oracle without the help of Falkor which is a bit unbelievable, but I assume this was another way that the filmmakers tried to keep the runtime focused. Even with this logical leap the movie is still pretty great. There is unfortunately a catch to the journey to the Southern Oracle, and that’s the fact that you have to pass through 2 gates which test your character beforehand as Engywook explains. The first is a gate featuring two sphinxes which judge your confidence in yourself. As demonstrated by another adventurer who attempts to pass through it, lack of confidence results in your death.
No pressure, Atreyu. That’s what he thinks as he sets out to make his way through the gate with no hesitation whatsoever, but his confidence wavers after he sees the barbecued remains of the previous adventurer he just saw die. Also, when I saw this movie as a kid, this image scared me so much!
This used to haunt my nightmares!
The sphinx’s eyes start to open to blast Atreyu to bits as his confidence wanes, but he runs through and barely makes it to the other side before he gets fried. Sure he made it through the first gate, but there’s one more as Engywook goes back to explain to Urgl and Falkor. The next gate is called the Magic Mirror Gate and is supposed to reveal to the adventurer what their ‘true self’ is. Falkor initially brushes that aside as an easy test, but Engywook says that it’s not so easy. Our true selves are often hard for us to comprehend and most of us would freak out when faced with that. As Atreyu approaches the gate in the middle of a blizzard, which is another of those logical leaps (how far has he walked already?), he sees his reflection only for it to fade into an image of Bastian in the attic reading the book! It really goes back to the core idea that Atreyu and Bastian are connected through a strong invisible bond, and in some ways Atreyu’s journey is Bastian’s journey.
Of course all this will make much more sense in the end, but we’ll get to that when we get to that. At first Bastian is freaked out by this, and I don’t blame him for that, but he keeps reading the story anyway because not only is he a kid but I imagine being a part of a fantastical story like this one is something he’s always dreamed of, and something that the movie has hinted at up until now. Atreyu passes through the mirror and makes it to the Southern Oracle which is just a color shifted version of the Sphinx Gate from before. They even reuse the exact same shots from the previous Sphinx Gate scene.
And yes, there are certain…‘parts’ of these images that are distracting…
What the Southern Oracle tells Atreyu is that to cure the Empress, she needs a new name. Not really sure how that cures dying, but okay. Also, the name has to be given to her by a human child from beyond the boundaries of Fantasia. This is a bit easier to take as an audience member since even Atreyu points out how weird this all sounds, but as the Southern Oracle concludes her wisdom, she begins to fall apart as she admits that she can’t hold back the power of the Nothing for much longer. So Atreyu’s job now is to find the edges of Fantasia with the help of Falkor and get in contact with a human child. In their travels they unfortunately don’t come across the edges of Fantasia, they instead come across the Nothing which whips them back and forth until Atreyu falls off Falkor’s back onto a beach which also doesn’t kill him somehow. I would probably forgive this if he still had the Auryn around his neck when he woke up since the Auryn is supposed to protect him, but when Atreyu wakes up it’s gone, so how did he survive that?
Being separated from Falkor, no one else around, and the death of his greatest companion Artax still weighing on him, Atreyu begins to wander aimlessly throughout the island until he comes across the Rock Biter. Get your tissues ready, because this scene gets me every time. The Rock Biter is lamenting the loss of his friends: Teeny Weeny, Night Hob, the Racing Snail, and the Stupid Bat since he tried to keep the Nothing from taking them away from him by holding onto them as tightly as he could, but he just couldn’t do it. The Nothing was too strong and it blew them away from him so now he’s resigned himself to sitting in this one place until the Nothing takes him away too as he blames himself for not being strong enough. For a kid’s movie, this film also has an impressive body count since each of these cute characters we come across eventually end up dying at the hands of the Nothing. That and also this is a particularly adult moment dealing with complex emotions and survivor’s remorse. If you’re not crying right now the Rock Biter will do it for you.
They look like big, good, strong hands, don’t they?
Atreyu leaves the Rock Biter to his chosen fate and he wanders more until he comes across a crumbling temple where the walls are lined with painted images of his journey up until now. It’s never fully explained why or how these paintings got here and to be honest I’m not really sure it matters either. You could make the argument that since this is seemingly the last place still intact before Fantasia’s landmasses get completely destroyed, it’s probably the newest place in the boundless reaches of Fantasia, but even without a clear explanation it’s pretty cool to see this stuff. However, there’s one image Atreyu comes across that he doesn’t quite remember, and that’s one of a green-eyed wolf snarling at the viewer. Sure enough, Atreyu turns to see Gmork waiting for him in a hole in the wall where he divulges all the information he has to Atreyu.
I especially like how Gmork’s mouth is all bloody and how he tells Atreyu that he’ll have the pleasure of being Gmork’s last victim. So like I said, Gmork ends up telling Atreyu everything he knows: how Fantasia doesn’t have any boundaries, what the true nature of the Nothing is, why Fantasia is being destroyed, and why he feels the need to serve the Nothing. In one of his lines he also tells Atreyu that he was hunting him to prevent him from succeeding in his quest, although it’s unclear if Gmork truly knows if he’s actually talking to the Atreyu or not. It isn’t until Atreyu admits to Gmork that he is Atreyu that Gmork finally pounces on him and immediately dies.
Yeah, so now we go back to what I said way earlier in this review how Gmork isn’t that great of a servant. In the end he doesn’t really do much outside of pounce on Atreyu twice and the second time he went out like a birch. Ultimately you could chock this up to more movie trimmings for the sake of cutting down the runtime to a more easily digestible length. Maybe in an extended version or even an original version of the film Gmork may have had a larger role, but as is he only seems to be an excuse for more creepy imagery. Not that I don’t like creepy imagery, I love it in fact, especially in kid’s films, but at least in this case the purpose behind it doesn’t seem to be the strongest in the final product.
Either way, as the last parts of Fantasia start to crumble around Atreyu, Falkor luckily swoops to his rescue with the Auryn gripped tightly in his teeth. At this point all the land that made up this wonderful world is completely gone and no one else is living in it. That is until the Auryn guides Atreyu and Falkor back to the Ivory Tower which just so happens to still be standing amidst the broken landeroids (that’s land-asteroid). After landing at the top of the tower, Atreyu enters the Empress’ chamber (she’s played by Tami Stronach in her first role) where she’s still sitting looking like she hasn’t been sick at all. Frickin’ faker. I will give props to the costume designers though because her outfit to me is instantly iconic.
It’s mostly her beaded headpiece that sticks out in my mind. Even my mom has told me that whenever she reads stories about a princess, she imagines them similarly to this character.
Atreyu tries to apologize for his failure and returns the Auryn to the Empress, but she’s not disappointed. In fact, Atreyu actually succeeded! She sits there ready to receive her new name which she knew had to happen to begin with, and Atreyu properly calls her out on her bull crap. Why did all of this have to happen if you already knew what needed to be done? That’s a good point there Atreyu, but the Empress lets him know that this journey needed to happen in order to make a connection with a human child. That child is Bastian, of course. Finally the entire point of the movie is made clear in these last moments, and there’s a lot here even in very little time. In fact, there are so many things you could infer from this ending, but I’ll just give my take on it since otherwise this may take way longer than necessary.
What I get out of it is that after spending so much time with any story we feel like we become a part of it ourselves, and this is literally what happens with Bastian in this final moment. We become endeared towards these characters that we’ve grown to love and this world we’ve spent so much time in to the point that it even influences our senses of character in the real world. Stories can offer us an escape from everyday troubles while giving us new and creative ways to cope with reality if executed well, and it’s this power in the movie that gives Bastian the ability to save Fantasia. Granted this is more of a surface level reading of the subtext the movie presents, but I’ll go into more detail here after a bit when more is revealed. That’s another thing I like about this movie: just how layered it is in its ideas.
Bastian goes back and forth on if the Empress and Atreyu are actually referring to him when they talk about the human child until Atreyu collapses on the floor. Now that I’m older I like to believe that Atreyu dies in this moment by being hit with falling debris as the tower crumbles around him, because at this point it makes everything seem so much more urgent and intense. It’s now that the Empress turns directly into the camera and addresses Bastian by name to call out her new name and save Fantasia. After a bit more back and forth, Bastian goes to the attic window, opens it up, faces the thunderstorm currently raging outside and calls out:
UNINTELLIGIBLE!
After so many years I still can’t for the life of me figure out what the heck he says here. I always heard ‘Baltheo’ as a kid which I’m pretty sure isn’t even a name and is certainly not a name I would give the Empress or Bastian’s mother if it is. I think the point is for the name he gives the Empress to be open to interpretation, but couldn’t they have had him say something that actually sounded like a name?
Anyway, it’s at this point that Fantasia is entirely destroyed with the exception of one grain of sand which the Empress offers to Bastian, because by calling out her name Bastian manifested himself into what’s left of Fantasia. I always really liked this exchange too:
BASTIAN: Why is it so dark?
EMPRESS: In the beginning, it is always dark.
The Empress tells Bastian that he can rebuild Fantasia any way that he wants with this grain of sand by making wishes. He gets to wish to his heart’s content which looking back is way too much power for one person! It’s also at this point that you could infer that Coreander essentially made Fantasia into what it was before until he passed the story onto Bastian. To me, this is also what makes this truly the ‘NeverEnding Story’. Much like great orations of the past, it’s something that’s passed down from person to person, is constantly changing, yet remains timeless and inspired through the ages. So while owners of the book may come and go as time passes, the book, and by extension the story, never ends. Also you could make the argument that the crisis of the Nothing was merely created on account of the story changing hands and representing the new owner’s deepest fears. The movie mentions earlier that the Nothing was created since humanity started to lose hope. Then again, when I say ‘the movie’ I mean Gmork, so he could’ve been somewhat bending the truth to kill Atreyu’s optimism for saving Fantasia. This is what leads me to believe that the occurrences of the story are more of a reflection of the person who currently owns the book which was also represented in other moments before like with Atreyu’s appearance, Atreyu’s encounter with the Magic Mirror Gate, and even the appearance of the Empress could’ve been influenced by Bastian as well. Like I said before, there are so many different things you can infer from this story’s ending and I just don’t have all the time in the world to go over them. That’s why I have comments!
Anyway, with the sudden ability to wish for anything he wants, Bastian makes the wish to bring every character back to the way they were, and of course he gets to ride on Falkor because who wouldn’t want to do that? Someone who’s afraid of heights, that’s who. Bastian also gets his revenge on the bullies from before by scaring them into the dumpster he got thrown into at the beginning of the movie. As Falkor flies away we pan up to the city skyline as a narrator explains that Bastian had many adventures after this with all the wishes he made which is admittedly a bit of an awkward way to officially end this movie, but I still think it’s awesome!
Looking back on this film so many years later, and having broken it down as methodically as this, only makes me appreciate it that much more. The creativity is bursting through the screens, the story is engaging, the characters are so likable, and the message is something that will surely never die. It’s genuinely baffling to me just how few people my age have seen, or even heard, of this movie. Not only is it baffling, it’s also disappointing considering how films from studios like Illumination or Blue Sky have become so popular in this day and age while truly challenging and artistically pleasing kid’s films like The NeverEnding Story aren’t given so much as a second glance. Even with some of the issues I mentioned that I had with the film in this review, they by no means take away from the great aspects of this wonderful movie.
I’ve also heard talk recently about the prospects of a reboot to this film being released sometime this year, and I’m kinda torn on that idea. Given the core ideas that are being represented in the movie, I think a reboot could potentially breathe new life into this material while still keeping to the original message of the story, but at the same time I can’t help but wonder if the main reason this idea is being considered is just for 80’s nostalgia exploitation and nothing else. If the reboot is going to work, I’d like to see an aging Bastian pass the book onto another wide-eyed dreamer child of today who’s own unique outlook on being young in modern day influences the story they read in the book and the journey they go through results in a complex commentary of current reality which allows them to grow as a person and us as the audience to become attached to them just as we’ve grown attached to Bastian in the past. I can speculate, but in the end, only time will tell. Not in the case of the original NeverEnding Story though, because in this case, time has told.
If you’re in need of a magical/fantastical adventure through a world of wonder and discovery this weekend movie night, look no further then The NeverEnding Story!
Given my opinion of this film, I feel obligated to rate it as a 4.5/5 Barnes & Nobles (that’s the plural of Barnes & Noble, I’m not one of those people who needlessly pluralizes things). To be real, and much like my Avatar: The Last Airbender review, I feel tempted to give it a 5/5, but I can’t quite go that far. The story is still amazing, to put it in context the rating is more of a 4.8 to 4.9/5 (I’m just calling it a 4.5/5 for simplicity’s sake), but much like how I mentioned previously in the review, there are still a few issues that keep me from giving it full marks.
What this means is: read a book! (I know I will)
(I make no claim of ownership for any of the images used in this post)
(Each of them are owned entirely by their respective copyright holders, which are not me)
(I am just a humble blogger who talks about movies, I do not make them)
(Yet)
