From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a film review for you.
Today I'll be reviewing the movie The Neverending Story released in 1984.
Starring:
Barret Oliver, Noah Hathaway, and Tami Stronach
Directed by:
Wolfgang Petersen
Genre:
Adventure, Drama, Family
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Rating:
PG
Budget:
$27,000,000 (estimated)
Current IMDb Rating When Reviewed:
7.4
The Synopsis is:
Bastian is a boy who is grieving the loss of his mother, dealing with bullies at school, and avoiding a dreaded math test. As an escape he reads a magical book about the wondrous world of Fantasia.
Story:
The story was based on the 1979 German fantasy novel, Die Unendliche Geschichte (The NeverEnding Story), by Michael Ende. It was number one on Germany's bestseller list for 113 weeks, and remained on the list for 332 weeks. The original edition was printed using red and green text. The red writing represented the human world events and the green writing represented the events that had taken place in the fantasy world of Fantastica. It was also initially only printed as a hardcover, because Ende wanted the reader to feel as if they were experiencing the story to perpetuate the neverending part of the story.
It was translated into English and was published in England and America in 1983. In total it was translated into at least 36 languages selling more than eight million copies worldwide.
Even before it was translated, German producer Bernd Eichinger saw his children reading the book, and they urged him to make a film out of it. He agreed to do it and acquired the rights to the book paying Ende only $50,000 and agreed to keep him on board as a script advisor.
Although the movie was produced in Germany, it was decided to make the film for American audiences to capitalize on that market. Ende had hoped for this film to be directed either by Andrzej Wajda or Akira Kurosawa. However Wolfgang Petersen was brought in after another unnamed director bowed out of the project.
Wolfgang, Herman Weigel and Michael Ende put together the initial screenplay and additional dialogue was added by Robert Easton. Eventually many changes to that script came about that displeased Ende and he was excluded from the final decision making process during the filming.
In many ways the film follows the main characters and groundwork for the world of Fantastica, but it also veers off into its own philosophical structure. I will be going over the specifics as we go deeper into the review.
And on the topic of the world of Fantastica, it was changed to Fantasia which was estimated to be the proper English translation. It was also the name of a famous Walt Disney film, Fantasia 1940 (and also its remake in the year 2000).
Another early decision was to only cover the first half of the film to fit a reasonable feature film screen time. I think that was such a good decision however, it did change the impact of the story. It sacrificed a lot of detail that was in the book concerning the themes influencing the main character, but for the medium of film, ideas needed to be brief and less mysterious. Most children’s films were about an hour and a half so creators had to get to the point quickly.
Another debate among reviewers was that perhaps structuring this film as a children's film and not a young adult film changed the dynamics too much. It’s a tough line to draw in the sand when most of the main characters are all about the age of 11.
What was created in the film was not a match to the book, but in my opinion it managed to deliver many poignant and inspiring messages that may take several viewings to catch it all. As a result we now have two completely different wonderful works of art that I love so much, the book and the movie.
Pacing:
At an hour and 42 minutes it is longer than usual for a kid’s movie, but this is no ordinary kid’s movie. The pacing does have quite a few lumps in it where you have scenes with opposing themes back to back on each other. The book follows a similar pacing so it may not have been something that could have been helped.
Challenge:
The story starts off with the depressing life of a boy named Bastian who is facing all of the issues I mentioned in the synopsis. Although the amount of screen time for Bastian is not very much, the story really unfolds because of the trauma in his life and the people he interacts with so I am going to spend a little bit of time setting up a little play by play. So bear with me, this is all leading up to something I want to highlight about the film.
While escaping bullies, he enters Carl Conrad Coreander’s antique bookstore. One book in particular that Coreander is reading is a mysterious book called “The Neverending Story” with a symbol called AURYN of two snakes engaged and eating the other tails creating the infinity symbol also referring to the story that never ends.
The book itself is a portal into the world of Fantasia has been described as “the world of human fantasy” a place where the hopes and dreams of mankind live. There is a strong relation to what happens in the real world to what happens in Fantasia. Because people on Earth are losing their hopes and dreams, Fantasia is threatened by a mysterious force called The Nothing.
In this story, The Nothing, is actually something. It is a metaphor for grief, depression and apathy that causes many of the characters in the story to simply give up on life. In the book it’s more explicit, but in the film it’s more ambiguous and really takes a mature audience to recognize it.
It’s very interesting because in the real world many people who are depressed express that they feel numb or a feeling of not being able to feel anything. Some people feel so much that they turn to alcohol, drugs or medication to turn off those feelings or numb themselves in order to cope.
The Nothing can also represent death because some people believe that there is nothing after death.
We learn a lot about The Nothing through a character called Gmork. He looks like a giant scary wolf in the movie, but he’s actually a werewolf in the book who is human in the real world.
What?! Isn’t that cool. That’s a prequel right there. What’s his story? I believe that he represents fear in Fantasia. This is interesting because within the human mind we can also imagine fearful things and this is why Fantasia is full of scary creatures and characters in the film and the book.
Gmork is the fear that our protagonists must face in order to beat this depression.
Gmork explains to the audience that he works for the power behind The Nothing. The book describes that power as The Manipulators. The Manipulators are actually humans in the real world that want to transform human hopes and dreams from Fantasia into lies in the real world in order to control humanity.
What?!
Most people think this is just a dumb kid’s movie with puppets and children, but oh no! We’re talking about issues that are so timeless that Ende was writing about it in 1979 and it still applies to many socio-political conversations we are having today about special interest groups that use their financial influence to manipulate news media through modern day propaganda and politicians through the laws they pass or shut down.
I think it’s also important to note that Michael Ende witnessed Nazi Germany during World War II as a very young boy and was in Munich during air raids which traumatized him and affected his views of the world. This story is perhaps a glimpse of that without being so bold as to point fingers at anyone in particular.
Back to The Nothing, this apathy that is happening in the real world, is literally destroying the lands of Fantasia which is also making the ruler of Fantasia, The Childlike Empress, terribly ill. This is why the challenge is so intense in the story and from a writing standpoint, I think Ende is a genius to set up such a threat.
Empathy:
For me, the empathy was there immediately because of the super adorable little boy Bastian Balthazar Bux who is so lovable right away. It hurts a little to see him suffer so much in life. The most significant thing he is dealing with is the loss of his mother. He dreams about her at night and he’s given little to no support from his father other than to tell his son to move on.
That’s pretty cold. In the book Bastian’s father is actually the one that is taking his wife’s death the hardest, being despondent and distant.
In the film, he initially comes off looking a bit like a jerk. However, upon heavy study, you can see that he deeply cares about his son by the way he looks at Bastian. There is concern on his face, not contempt. He doesn’t want his son to prolong his suffering by holding on to the memory of his mother.
Bastian’s grieving is affecting his schoolwork as he is failing his math class, and neglecting his responsibilities.
In the big picture, those things matter to ensure that Bastian will have a good life when he grows up, but there could be a great deal of mental health damage being done by not allowing him to properly grieve.
By the way, did anybody else do the silly thing with their fingers when you were a kid? I spent hours and hours doing this. The film seems to capture childhood beautifully.
For Bastian’s dad, moving on is the most practical solution. A little window into his psyche can be seen when we see him drink an orange juice and raw egg mixture which used to be a quick breakfast to get protein, fat and vitamin C in the 1960s 70s and 80s, before we knew the dangers of salmonella. It was also a hangover cure which also coincides with the possibility of Bastian's dad being an alcoholic to deal with his own grief.
On the other hand, Bastian has an entire breakfast laid out before him. This shows that Bastian’s dad is looking after his child better than he's looking after himself.
Bastain encounters some bullies on his way to school that put him in a dumpster. To get away from them, he hides in the antique book store of Carl Conrad Coreander who is reading the book of AURYN also known as the Neverending story. It's hard to tell whether he's a good guy or bad guy because is he intentionally baiting the book for Bastian to desire. In the movie Bastian desires the book because it can offer him the opportunity to be someone else, but in the book, Bastian wants The Neverending Story because he wants to experience a story that doesn’t end.
Bastian steals the book and takes it to the school attic to read, avoiding a dreaded math test.
There's a connection between the math test and Bastian’s father. They both represent the practical world and having “your feet firmly on the ground”.
Bastian is a good kid at the heart of it, but because of his narrow view of the world, he can only see his own suffering. He avoids his challenges in life, acts for his own thrill, and falls for temptation of the book.
When Bastian reads the book he is immediately connected to his alter ego, the hero Atreyu of the Plains people who enjoys hunting the purple buffalo. The name Atreyu means fearless, from the ancient Greek word “atreus”. In Sanskrit, Atreyu possibly means “great warrior”.
His appearance is literally created from Bastian's imagination of what he wishes he could be, a brave warrior. Bastian’s dad mentions how he is afraid to ride horses and yet Atreyu has a horse who is also his best friend.
One construct of the story is that the connection between Bastian and Atreyu is pulling Bastion closer to being transported to Fantasia and saving it. As Atreyu faced each phase of his adventure during his journey, Bastian became more emotionally attached.
For instance, Bastian cries when Atreyu cries at the loss of his horse Artax in the Swamps of Sadness because he knows what it is to lose someone.
It’s one of the most memorable scenes in the film that traumatized a lot of young viewers. I was so glad that the film allowed the audience to sit with Atreyu for a little while afterwards to process what happened so we could bond with Atreyu.
Next, suddenly Atreyu gets the idea to seek out an ancient giant turtle that lives in the swamps, Morla, who refers to themselves as a multiple being. The book makes a better excuse, having Atreyu dream of a purple buffalo in the sky tell him to seek out the wise creature. This is just an example where the book fills in the blanks the film didn’t cover that fill out the story better. Morla has been in the swamps for so long that they don't care about anything. Prolonged exposure to sadness can lead to apathy. I do believe Ende created this character and many of the characters in Fanstasia to represent shadows of what Bastian was facing with his father’s apathy.
Atreyu is protected by the AURYN necklace that was given to him by the Childlike Empress so he doesn’t succumb to the swamps when his horse died, but eventually, after confronting apathy in the form of Morla, he slowly succumbs and is almost taken by his fear in the form of Gmork.
The only thing that saves him is luck… in the form of the Luck Dragon Falcor. Falcore is probably one of the most memorable creatures in this movie because he’s so positive about everything and becomes Atreyu’s new companion.
In order to save Fantasia Atreyu must see the Southern Oracle on the way he meets a helpful gnome couple that leads him to the first gate of the oracle which tested his self worth. The next gate was a mirror that showed him his true self. The reflection in the mirror is none other than Bastian reading the book of AURYN in an attic.
Boom! Mind blown. Atreyu’s true self is Bastian?! Yes, because he is imagining himself as Atreyu as he is reading the book. I love it.
The Oracle reveals that a young boy from the human world needs to give the Childlike Empress a new name. At this point Bastian doesn’t believe that he is the one that the book is talking about, but he’s still too intrigued by the story that he is willing to continue reading.
Atreyu then bumps into a creature called the rockbiter who tells him of his fruitless efforts to save his friends we met at the beginning of the film from The Nothing. He says with remorse in his voice looking at his hands, “these look like strong hands”. I love this scene because it shows the audience that the stakes are high. At this point the Rockbitter is ready to give up fighting against The Nothing, so he is pretty much suicidal. This is sad and really heavy. The 14 year old me watching this movie never even knew this was actually what he meant when he was talking about giving up.
Atreyu then faced his fear in the character of Gmork, at his lowest point and defeated him. He was almost taken by The Nothing when he was saved again by luck… Falcor. Atreyu made it to the Ivory Tower to tell the Childlike Empress that he failed.
Atreyu discovers that his adventures were part of the strategy to lure the human child to Fantasia, teaching us that sometimes the road to success is through failure. What a wonderful lesson.
The Childlike Empress then looks right into the camera, breaking the fourth wall and the illusion of the movie to talk directly to Bastian and the audience. She acknowledges that Bastian read the book of AURYN following Atreyu’s journey and she also acknowledges the movie’s audience following Bastian through his experience too. It’s a wonderful moment in the film wherein The Neverending Story never ends as long as someone watches the film.
What an ingenious way to allow the audience to partake in the story. I was invested.
Technical:
As I mentioned previously, this was a German production that had an American audience in mind so it did well not to suffer too greatly in the technical department. However, in the hands of such a perfectionist like Wolfgang Peterson the originally planned 3 month shoot ended up taking a whole year due to reshoots. It became the most expensive film ever produced in Germany when it was made.
The real world where Bastian lives was shot in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Fantasia shots were filmed in Germany showcasing elaborately detailed sets built wonderfully with matte painted backgrounds and gorgeous atmospheric elements. They were able to capture the look of being in a fantasy world with so many diverse landscapes which sets this film apart from the other films of the time.
One set that was remarkable was the Swamps of Sadness. There were so many gritty details of barren trees, rocks, moss, and gross goopy black mud sprawled out into a vast studio with a matte painted background to fill out the visuals. It provided a tangible space for some of the saddest events of the film to take place. Every movement in the swamp was a struggle for the characters.
The one scene in particular that took over 50 takes in a span of two weeks to capture was Atreyu’s horse Artax’s demise. Wolfgang Peterson took great care to film that scene with the most dramatic impact he possibly could and it paid off. The scene was so believable that many audience members thought that the production actually killed the horse for the shot. The horse was in no actual danger and did not die on the set. The illusion was achieved by training the horse many additional weeks prior to stay on a built in mechanical elevator beneath the swamp mud.
One of the most striking visuals were the Southern Oracle Gate Sphinxes. I was in awe of them when I was a kid. They were reminiscent of the sculptures on the Ark of the Covenant. Somehow, I didn’t notice that the exotic creatures were topless, which caused some negative attention from critics and even Michael Ende, who flat out called them “strippers”.
I thought they were the coolest thing ever, and still do.
Another striking visual in the film is the Childlike Empress’ abode, the Ivory Tower. It is breathtaking. I also always loved the idea of the Ivory Tower in terms of the phrase’s meaning “a state of privileged seclusion or separation from the facts and practicalities of the real world”. It’s the perfect place for this mysterious character and her meaning in the book and film.
The Ivory Tower scene at the beginning of the film harbors many easter eggs such as Gumby, ET, Yoda, Chewbacca, Mickey Mouse, and Ewoks mixed in among the Fantasians. Since Fantasia is a place of human fantasies it would make sense that fictional characters would live there. What a treat!
I think the film manages to give us a diversity of many creatures all with expressively distinct personalities and scale. For instance the Rockbiter is a giant next to his tiny friends.
Speaking of size, Falkor was a 43-foot long puppet with animatronics built in. They used pink fluffy feathers for his fur and about 6,000 pearlescent plastic scales to complete his look. His head alone was about three feet tall. I just loved his unique look, especially his cute puppy dog face.
That leads me to the part of the film that receives the most praise and criticism, the creature design and function. There were many creatures with costumes for actors to wear and there were many puppets. At the time, the leader in puppetry arts would be Jim Henson and for a long time, I thought he was responsible for the work on this film. The work was done by Peterson’s in-house team of creators and animatronic specialists.
There are some critics that didn't quite enjoy the mechanical puppet effects on the facial movement of Morla, Falkor, and Gmork. It was a little clunky, but I have to say that I thought it added to their fantasy characteristics. I think it works for 1984 but maybe for a more modern or realistic approach, the movements are too exaggerated. I am here for it though.
In the case of Falkor, I thought it really gave him a loveable whimsical appeal. It’s not for everyone.
And we are talking about a movie about limitless fantasies, so creatures could be as ridiculous as a Rockbiter. This also stresses the attention to appeal to children rather than adults.
If you compare this to something like Sesame Street where you know that the characters are not real, it's all up to the viewer. With a good story attached, you might lose yourself in the characters.
Falkor is still beloved to this day and is the pride of Germany. Visitors to Bavaria Filmpark Munich, Germany can “ride” his back reliving the iconic scenes from the film.
I wanted to talk about The Nothing, which was a challenge to depict on screen. In the book, it is described more like a vanishing energy, at least that is how I interpreted it. In the film we see many shots of a vacuuming storm that sucks everything into a void of space. In its depiction on screen we get some of the most incredible cinematic visuals.
To achieve the storms, they employed the same technique that was used in Flash Gordon 1980 where colored oil was injected into a water tank and the film was slowed down to mimic cloud movements.
In one scene, the filmed section was tilted on its side allowing all of the debris to slide off screen. All the while a fixed camera captured the anti-gravity scene as if the wind was blowing fiercely. I love brilliant old-school illusions like these.
So many moments from the first half of the book did not make it to the big screen, most likely due to money and time limitations.
Two scenes from the book were written in the script but ultimately scrapped due to special effects limitations. The first was the initial appearance of Falkor, where Atreyu rescues him from Ygramul the Many, a swarm of poisonous wasps taking the form of a giant spider. This is where Bastian's scream being heard by the characters in the book was to have taken place, and also explained why Atreyu and Falkor are later seen being given medicine by the Gnomes. The second cut scene involved Atreyu and Falkor encountering the Wind Giants, giant creatures made of clouds, and being caught in a fight between them. This was re-edited into their close encounter with the Nothing before Atreyu falls into the sea.
Atreyu is member of a race named Greenskin after their skin has a green olive color, that to the touch it resembles grass. In the book, The Southern Oracle is a living voice carried by the air, being the only way to talk with it rhyming, while in the movie is a blue-colored replica of the two golden sphinxes at the entrance, and in the book, Another elements were left out of the movie by limitations of time, as the travel of Childlike Empress looking for the Old Man of the Wandering Mountain, of some scenes relatives to Gmörk. In the same way the movie drops the second half of the novel (the movie only covers the first half), where Bastian (turned in inhabitant of a renovated Fantastica) arrives to Goab the Desert of Colors which exists in a state of symbiosis with Perilin the Night Forest (Goab exists at day and Perilin at night, preventing each other that it invade all Fantastica because both Goab and Perilin have a non-stop growth); silver boat-city of Amarganth, which was built by a pitiful creatures named the Acharis creating with their tears lake Murhu of corrosive waters that destroy all but silver, all relative to witch Xayide (used as main villain in The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter (1990)), the evilest and most powerful sorceress in Fantastica who turns in Bastian's assistant and companion in his searching for Ivory Tower. Bastian previous companions as Four Heroes Hynreck, Hykrion, Hysbald and Hydorn, as well as Hynreck's love interest by whimsical Princess Oglamar, Bastian's arrival to Ivory Tower and his attempt to be Fantastica's emperor, forcing Atreyu to promote a war to prevent it and defeating him, making Bastian to escape alone, his arrival to House of Change, a living house in the middle of a forest inhabited by a humanoid-plant named Dame Eyola, the ruinous City of Old Emperors, set in a crater which inhabitants are human beings that time ago too they did put a new name to Childlike Empress but, unable for returning to the real world, lost all their memory and they went to the city for living as immortal mindless ones, not having speech nor common sense, and cared by the only one steward of the city, talking-monkey Argax, his later arrival to Yskal, a town close to Skaidan the Sea Mist, an enormous and deep ocean of fog that divides Fantastica in two, the snow-covered plain and underground picture mine of Minroud, Fantastica's basement caved by Yor the Blind Miner, and formed by human lost dreams in chrysalis, kept forever after Minroud lives an eternal winter to prevent the chrysalis melt, Waters of Life, Auryn's interior where there is a fountain and two great snake-shaped portals (one black and one white), that they are the frontier between Fantastica and human world, and Bastian's farewell from Fantastica for back to the real world and ultimate meeting with bookcase Karl Koreander.
Here is a little extra trivia that I had no idea of: Steven Spielberg edited the film and with the marketing for the American market as a favor to his good friend, Wolfgang Peterson. He was gifted the original Auryn for the film which now hangs in an enclosed glass display in Steven Spielberg's office.
One huge aspect of the film that may even precede the film’s fame is its music, both the score and the earworm title song. The film score was beautifully composed by Klaus Doldinger of the German jazz group Passport.
The German version of the film featured just the score, but the English release also included the title song composed by the legendary Georgio Moroder. Keith Forsey wrote the lyrics and Limahl (Christopher Hammill), the lead singer of the eighties band Kajagoogoo and Beth Anderson performed the single. It reached No. 4 on the UK singles chart and No. 6 on the US Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.
Moroder also rescored several scenes with his signature synth pop motifs at the filmmaker’s request to appeal to audiences outside Germany.
Both versions have their bonuses. However, I prefer the mixed score because it was the one I grew up with. Nostalgia wins again. It was full of triumphant feelings like flights of flying, soaring through the clouds. It's incredible and highly uplifting!
Performances:
Bastian was played by Barret Oliver who was about 10 years old during filming. I think he was amazing at presenting us with a very conflicted boy excited by his new treasure. He reminds me of myself as a quiet dreamy little baby nerd girl. He went on to appear in D.A.R.Y.L. (1985) and Cocoon (1985).
A big chunk of the weight of the film landed on the character of Atreyu. Nearly every child male actor was up for the role until Noah Hathaway was chosen. Previously he played the character of Boxey in the television series Battlestar Galactica (1978) and was due to appear in the Broadway show "Chaplin" starring Gene Kelly and Ann-Margret. He chose to work on this film instead. He was fired when the original director left the project and immediately rehired when Wolfgang Petersen was brought on board.
The brave 12 year old sacrificed greatly for his role, mostly performing his own stunts, but for extra pickup shots Bobby Porter was his stunt double. For the most part this was at the insistence of Wolfgang Petersen who felt it was important to have his actors do their own stunts.
When it comes down to it Noah got seriously hurt quite a few times. The worst injury was during the many months of training, he was thrown off the horse and then it fell on him which injured his back… permanently. It crushed 2 of his lower vertebrae causing poor Noah a lifetime of surgeries and treatment in debt costing him nearly a million dollars in total. To put that in perspective, he was not ever compensated for his suffrage by the studio. It was only a few years ago in 2018 that his neighbor was nice enough to set up a GoFundMe campaign to help pay for a spinal fusion surgery that cost him $184k.
That was not the only serious injury. His leg got caught on the horse’s elevator during the swamp scene and he was pulled under water. He was unconscious by the time the crew got him out of there. He also nearly lost an eye by Gmork’s claws and the weight of the puppet fell on him and nearly crushed him to death.
Noah’s accent in the film has undergone criticism for not being consistent which the actor has bore the blame for. However during a convention appearance at Dragon Con in 2010 he revealed that the production hired a different actor to dub his lines. A fun fact is that his dad, Bob Hathaway was also the music editor on this film.
Just looking at him in this picture giving every ounce of energy he had to play this character at such a tender age is so admirable and inspiring. After learning about all that he’s been through, I would consider him a real life hero.
One of the most striking characters in the film was the Child-like Empress. Wolfgang went through great lengths to find a unique child that embodied the majesty of the character. He nailed it when he found 11 year old Iranian born Israeli-American dancer Tami Stronach after 3 auditions. Unfortunately, after landing the role, she suddenly lost both of her front teeth. Partial dentures were fitted for her and she painstakingly practiced speaking with them for hours to get rid of the terrible lisp they caused. There was something so special about her performance that was mature and regal. Wolfgang spent time directing her performance so that she would convey all of the emotions he wanted us to see on screen. Although she was sought after for more roles in Hollywood, she had no intention of becoming an actor, but continued her career in dance and theater.
As an honorable mention, I have to point out the role of Teeny Weeny was played by Deep Roy, famous for his roles on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 2005 and Flash Gordon in 1980. His voice was dubbed by Frank Lenart.
Enjoyment:
The film ends spectacularly, with Bastian giving The Childlike Empress a new name of his late mother, Moon Child. That is not your typical name, so it raises a lot of questions about Bastian’s mom. Was she just a groovy lady or was that her birth name? How much of this story is influenced by Ende’s curiosity of Native American culture? The film did well to hint at it ever so subtly.
I also enjoyed the idea of Bastian being the one to give the Childlike Empress a new name because naming something is how we establish things in reality. By labeling something we claim it. I love these clever ideas.
By naming the Empress, he teleports to Fantasia and gets to restore it with unlimited wishes.
After that, the screenplay had no ending that would satiate a film audience. That is the problem with splitting up an adaptation of a book. Do you hint at what is next to come, or give the audience a happy ending?
Wolfgang Petersen and the production team came up with Bastian returning to the real world with Falkor chasing his three bullies into a trash bin as revenge or retribution, however you want to look at it. The ending sends most viewers into audible cheers of triumph for Bastian.
This ending was infuriating to the author Michael Ende because this negated the other half of his book. Bastion seems to have magically mastered his problems in the real world. Whereas in the book, it takes the whole second half of it for Bastion to truly transform in a touching and beautiful fashion. It’s really profound. The film also had a finality to it that seemed to end the never-ending story.
Ende was so angry refused to have his name in the opening credits and asked for the movie title to be changed. He sold the rights so the studio could do whatever they wanted with the property without his approval and that too hurt his feelings.
Production halted when he filed a lawsuit but he ultimately lost and the film was released.
It’s always sad to see that happen, because although I enjoyed the film as it was, I always seem to sympathize with the creators. When it comes to contracts and selling property, not enough creatives know the law or even how to anticipate what to negotiate.
Ende did not withhold his hatred for the movie, vocally blasting the film up until his death in 1995.
On the other hand, this movie has been the pride of Germans in the motion picture industry. Upon its release, nearly five million Germans watched the film.
In America, Warner Bros. released The Neverending Story in the summer of 1984.
It was not a financial or critical success. The reviews were very mixed with either scathing or slightly impressed ones.
Even still the film received many peer awards.
Wins
1984 – Bambi Award for National film
1984 – Goldene Leinwand (Golden Screen Award)
1985 – Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor (Noah Hathaway)
1985 – Brazilian Film Award for Best Production
1985 – Film Award in Gold for Best Production Design
Nominations
1985 – Saturn Award for Best Fantasy Film and Saturn Award for Best Music
1985 – International Fantasy Film Award for Best Film
1985 – Young Artist Award for Best Family Motion Picture, Best Young Actor, Best Young Supporting Actress
The legacy of the film was built in TV and cable airings as well as home video rentals and purchases. For kids at the time it was magical. I myself was about a year older than Noah Hathaway and had not yet outgrown my love of puppets and fantasy adventures. In fact I’ve never outgrown it.
It must have done well in home video because the movie studio thought it would be a good idea to make a sequel The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter (1990) without any of the original actors. They were all in their late teens at the time. This film does its own thing but adopts some of the aspects of the second half of the book. I would love to review it for you one day, because I had fun with it in spite of its obvious flaws.
Although, I wouldn’t recommend it if you aren’t tolerant of messy films.
A third movie independent of the book, The NeverEnding Story III was released in 1994. Then The Neverending Story: The Animated Adventures of Bastian Balthazar Bux ran for two years, and had a total of twenty-six episodes.
Tales from the Neverending Story TV series aired on HBO in 2002 as 4 two-hour television movies in the US and 13 one-hour episodes in the UK.
Although the film didn’t follow the book and changed a lot of the nuanced messages, it still has many of its own that landed on many of the viewers that appreciate this movie.
When I think about the things that Gmork had to say about The Manipulators and how they can change the meanings of what humans create, it blows my mind. It is a relevant conversation we are having today. We survived 2020 and 2021 learning what we did about politics and media during the pandemic. No matter what side you stand politically we all question the information coming into our living rooms every single day either promoting fake positivity or fear-mongering against the unknown.
It also speaks of how as a child we may be more able to access limitless imagination, but as one grows into adulthood one must “get their head out of the clouds” and “take care of their responsibilities”. Eventually the monotony of the daily grind wears down the imagination into numb apathy.
The Manipulators and The Nothing are forces that are too strong and big to fight against, but the story focuses on Bastian's mental health as a means of defeating the enemy.
The loss of Bastian’s mother was another thing that was out of his control and his journey spent some time dealing with his grief and trauma. Sadness can lead to apathy, which can lead to suicidal thoughts and impulses. This movie doesn’t shy away from this topic.
It talks about how luck plays a big part in life. Sometimes it can save you at your lowest point, put you in touch with the right people and get you to where you want to go.
There is an importance of facing one’s fears head on, the way Atreyu faces Gmork and later, how Bastian deals with his bullies.
It talks about the importance of transformation. The book is way more detailed about it. The real world changed for Bastian when his mother died, so he had to transform in order to move forward. Fantasia is a metaphor for that transformation. It gets reinvented in the film.
This movie was also a beautifully tender love letter to avid readers as well as encouraging the idea that reading books is a form of nurturing healthy imagination for good mental health.
After seeing this film, I was inspired to seek out the real life book and read it. And for that I am eternally thankful for.
My Rating:
8.9
That sums up my review. I hope you liked it.
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