[The Neverending Story theme starts quietly, gradually gets louder]
♪ Written on the pages ♪
♪ Is the answer to our ♪
[Music gets much louder; Dom mouths along] ♪ Neverending Sto-o-o-ry-y-y ♪
[Female vocals] ♪ Ah-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ah ♪
Welcome, beautiful watchers, to 'Lost in Adaptation',
where we take a look at the various changes and choices made between pages and screen.
Today's subject, a childhood favourite of many including yours truly, The Neverending Story.
In order to gauge how much I should assume you guys already know about this,
I asked a control group of friends if they had seen the film and/or read the book.
And the results were:
[Neverending Story theme plays quietly in background]
Okey-dokey, I'm going to be assuming that no-one's read the book.
If you have, my bad, and either way, spoiler warning!
'The Neverending Story', or 'Die unendliche Geschichte', was originally written in Geman by author Michael Ende.
[Struggles to pronounce] E-E-En-day?
E-End-ee?
End, who, incidentally, hated the film with a burning passion.
I should let you know early on that Atreyu's quest and Bastian's eventual intervention
only take up the first half of the book,
with a *very* different follow-up story being cut from the remaining chapters.
What's that you say?
"Well that makes sense Dom, you sexy bastard, they probably covered that in the sequels?"
Alas, no.
While the second film made some token effort to include references to the book,
they still change it so much it bears only a passing resemblance to it,
and the third film went so *completely* off the rails
I can only assume the writers were smoking a Neverending doobie while they worked.
Bu-u-ut, I'm thinking anyone who actually watched them
probably already guessed that the movies went off and did their own thing.
I mean, can you imagine how that would've read?
[Gruff male voice] "Oh! Careful! Watch the leaves!"
[Speaks German, badly] [Harpsichord plays in background]
[Harpsichord music continues]
So, it seems we must rely almost entirely on the first film for:
♪ Mellow titlecard music ♪
The film does a pretty impressive job of sticking to the book's story.
Both versions star a very young boy named Bastion who is suffering from the triple bad luck whammy
of recently losing his mother, the poor parenting of a good-natured but emotionally detached father,
and the cruel mistreatment of the local school bullies.
In an attempt to escape them,
he happens to hide in an old book shop and half-inches a book titled 'The Neverending Story'.
He then sequesters himself away in a locked attic in his school to enjoy it.
He reads about a magical land of unusual and massively varied creatures that are slowly being eaten away by,
and being turned into, The Nothing.
To the film's credit, it does a pretty good job of attempting to visualise the invisible;
I can't help but feel that Ende kind of wrote himself into a corner
when he put himself in a position to have to describe something that isn't there.
The ruler, and/or god of the world, who is simply known as The Childlike Empress,
has fallen ill,
and there seems to be some link between this and the apocalypse.
For reasons known only to her,
she chooses a ten year old boy named Atreyu to embark on a quest to find a cure.
Atreyu and his horse Artax bounce around the world getting hints and pointers
from ancient and mystical creatures and magical oracles,
all the while facing tests of his bravery and self-worth.
He teams up with a luck dragon named Falkor, who replaces Artax after he
TRAUMATISES OUR CHILDHOODS,
and is helped by some little gnomes in a verbally abusive marriage.
Female gnome: "There's no fool like an old fool."
Her husband: "Wait!"
"Stay here."
"The observatory!"
"To the winch, wench!"
[Dom snorts]
Hang on a second, I'm just adding 'Find reason to yell "To the winch, wench!" at someone' to my bucket list.
Eventually, the Trey-Meister learns that the Empress needs to be given a new name by a human
in order to be cured.
Unable to find one, he returns to the Empress to admit his failure.
She then reveals that she knew what the cure was all along,
and his quest was actually intended to attract the attention of a human,
who is reading about it right now, blah-blah-blah, meta-meta-meta.
Incidentally, when I first saw this as a kid, I assumed from watching this scene:
[Bastion, gloomily] "What a shame they don't ask me."
"My mother...
she had such a wonderful name."
[Dom] That Bastion gave the Empress his mother's name;
however if you listen closely you can just about make out the words:
"MOO-O-O-ON CHI-I-I-IL-L-LD!"
Which is the name he gives her in the book.
Man, his mother had a *weird* name.
Anyway, Bastion gives "MOO-O-ON CHI-I-I-LD!" her new name and saves the world, the end!
Of the film, but not the book, which conveniently leads us to:
♪ Mellow title card music ♪
Holy crap, did you know the horse could talk?!
I mean, it's not a big deal but it really threw me off when I read it, I mean...
can you imagine how different *that* scene would've been?!
[Very deep, echoing voice] "I think you ought to know, I'm feeling very depressed."
[Lively bubbling noise]
Ah. *Now* I get why they changed that.
There really is something gut-wrenchingly heartbreaking about seeing animals suffer.
More so even than people, sometimes.
It's their trusting innocence and loyalty, or something.
Humanising Artax by making him talk would probably have subtracted from that, and hey,
remember the Rockbiter's [imitates Rockbiter] "Good, strong hands" speech?
[Normally] Not in the book!
The Rockbiter, whose real name is 'Bjorn Crackzark', believe it or not,
only has a brief appearance at the start, and is never seen again.
People hate on the movie for replacing Atreyu with a little white kid,
but technically he wasn't supposed to look like a Native American either,
his people's customs were just similar.
Atreyu's actually rockin' a green skin, blue hair look.
The movie apparently felt the need to change a few names, for, as far as I can see, no real reason.
The magical world is meant to be called 'Fantastica' rather than Fantasia,
and it's Bastion Balthazar *Books*, in the books.
I know it's spelt Bucks, but it's Books;
they say it in the first chapter that it's fitting that he's *called* books because he loves to *read* books.
His- his names Books!
Bastion is also kind of an unlikable douchebag and massive pansy in the book.
He's actually too much of a steaming pile of wuss to say the Empress' name
even as Fantastica falls apart around her,
and the Empress kind of has to force him into it by throwing both their worlds into an infinite loop
until he has no choice.
Huh! At this point, I'm actually leaning towards the film being better than the book.
[Booing]
Shut up hipsters, it's rare but it happens!
The two most iconic scenes were either done better in the film, or were *just* in the film,
their Bastion's more likable, and you just can't put an epic theme tune in a book!
[Neverending Story theme plays]
♪ The answer to our neverending sto-o-o-o-ry-y-y ♪
Well that's gonna be stuck in my head forever!
Anyway, let's see what they missed out on, in:
♪ Mellow titlecard music ♪
The book says that the geography of Fantastica changes,
depending on the subconscious intentions of the person travelling through it.
Meaning, if you wanted to go somewhere, you would just have to set out in a random direction, and,
if you really wanted to get there, you would!
However, if you secretly wanted to arrive somwhere else, you'd end up there instead.
This I think could have some rather... informative side effects.
Naaah, baby, I'm really looking forward to spending the evening with your mother.
Yes, I do know she's really into cross stitching now.
I should be there soon; I've been walking for about an hour.
[YMCA by Village People]
♪ I said, young man! ♪
♪ Pick yourself off the ground ♪
♪ I said, young man! ♪
♪ 'Cause you're in a new town ♪
♪ There's no ♪
♪ need ♪
♪ to be ♪ Dom: Huh!
♪ unhappy ♪
♪ Young men! ♪
OK, here's the fun bit.
As I mentioned before, the film only covered the first half of the book,
and as it turns out, that's a damn shame,
and it's also the reason that Ende hated it so much.
Unlike in the movie, Fantastica doesn't immediately spring back into existence
when the Childlike Empress is given her name.
Instead, Bastion is given the task of rebuilding it piece by piece, because it turns out in Fantastica,
humans have the ability to make everything they wish for not only instantly *become* true,
but retroactively always have *been* true.
The process, however, erases something from his memory with every wish.
Bastion does an excellent job of rebuilding Fantastica in all its glory, and even improves on it in places.
He then, somewhat unsurprisingly considering he's a ten year old boy
who's been given the ultimate power to change himself and the world around him as he pleases,
proceeds to go balls to the walls batshit mad with power!
His ego is fed by the admiration of his followers,
so he keeps on creating more and more dangerous monsters and scenarios
that give him a chance to be the hero he always wanted to be.
As you can imagine, after a while this starts to cause some serious collateral damage.
He teams up with an evil witch queen,
banishes his new best friend Atreyu for trying to talk sense into him,
an army of loyal followers flock to him and he marches on the ivory tower
to usurp the Childlike Empress and crown *himself* ruler of all Fantastica!
Atreyu is forced to raise an army of loyal Fantasticans in open rebellion!
The battle that ensues is made of undiluted, weapons-grade AWESOME!
ROCK-biters fight iron giants,
EAGLES fight dragons,
LIGHT magic fights dark,
magical creatures on both sides fight to the death until the streets run red with blood
and the ivory tower burns to the ground!
Atreyu fights his way to the top of the crumbling walls and he and Bastion duel with swords;
Atreyu hesitates and Bastion stabs him in the fucking chest!
Fuck me, this shit got DARK!
I-I-I-I
LOVE IT!
MAN do I wish they'd put this stuff in the movie!
I mean, sure, it might have cost it its U rating,
but I'd probably consider this one of the deepest kids' movies of all time
if they'd gone on to show Bastion's fall to the dark side after the happy ending.
The end of the book chronicles Bastion's fall from power and his lonely travels seeking redemption for his actions;
it's deep, but it's also pretty weird as the places he visits are pretty surreal.
Like a village run by a monkey that serves as an insane asylum,
a coastal town with a hive mind, kind of like the Board collective if they were all chilled-out hippies,
and a mine where a blind old man digs up glass paintings of people's forgotten dreams.
He eventually discovers that the only way he can return to the human world
is by finishing every story that he started in Fantastica,
but with no memory and no wishes left he can never do so.
Despite everything that happened, a recovered Atreyu turns up,
and he and Falkor agree to finish everything for him so that he can go home.
Bastion returns to Earth a greatly improved person, but, alas, sans dragon,
and Atreyu and Falkor presumably spend the rest of their lives cleaning up the messes he left behind.
The Dom's final thoughts.
OK, maybe the film wasn't better than the book after all; for one thing it made me consider the question:
is half of Neverending Story *still* a neverending story?
[Loud, dramatic choral vocals]
Ha! Maths.
I totally understand why the author was pissed off;
*he* wrote a story about someone who saved a world and then completely fucked it up,
then the film makers came along and decided they could just pick and choose
the elements of the story they liked.
It's kind of like someone making a Romeo and Juliet movie and ending at the point where they get married;
it would entirely change the fundamental nature of the narrative.
Knowing this isn't gonna stop me loving the film,
as I don't see why being a betrayal of the original source material,
and being a great movie,
has to be mutually exclusive.
But hey! I've just had a great idea.
Hey, Hollywood!
You know how you're going through this fetish at the moment
where you reboot everything with a darker edge to it so that it'll appeal to a more modern audience?
Perfect candidate!
[Dom narrates reflectively overhead] The Dom *would* eventually take his idea to Hollywood,
but it turned out Leonardo Dicaprio beat him to it,
and stabbed him in the face to avoid competition.
But that's:
another story.
Wait, what?!
[Theme tune plays; female vocals] ♪ Turn around ♪
♪ Look at what you see-e-e-e ♪
♪ ee-ee-ee ee-ee-ee-ee-ee ♪
♪ In her face ♪
♪ The mirror of your dre-e-ea ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-ee-em ♪
[Other female vocals join in] ♪ Make believe, I'm everywhere ♪
♪ Given in the light ♪
♪ Written on the pages Is the-- ♪
[Walter White] "Say my name."
[Bastion] "MOO-O-O-OON CHI-I-I-ILD!"
[Harshly] "You're goddamn right."