The Neverending Story

Every year in elementary school, I guess the teachers had a lot of papers to grade so they'd get all of the classes together to watch a movie. It always seemed to be one of two movies...the first was "Cloak and Dagger" which, other than the lady pulling her glove off to reveal a missing finger, was really boring to me. The other movie...oh my...the other movie I still quote today. Today, we look at The Neverending Story.

The Neverending Story was released I think around the mid 80's and was just really out there. It was about a boy, Bastian (awesome name by the way), who steals an old book from an old bookstore and decides to read the ENTIRE book in one stormy night. The book itself looks like its over a 1000 pages so I guess the kid was a pretty good reader. This is where the movie really takes off.

The story itself involves a place called Fantasia that's slowly being disintegrated into nothingness by a thing called "The Nothing". Fantasia's last hopes are pinned on another young boy named Atreyu. Of course Atreyu runs into some serious problems like his horse dying via sinking into mud, getting nowhere with a giant turtle, and nearly getting vaporized by two weird looking statues.

Instead of recapping the entire plot, let's look at some scenes.

The first scene is probably one of the saddest scenes ever in a kids movie. Everybody loves horses so to see one sink in the mud is pretty wild.



Three things I love about this scene though...the first is the horse is sinking literally into something called "the swamp of sadness"...the second is how Atreyu says "c'mon you stupid horse...and finally, the fade to black as Atreyu lets out that scream". Who thought horses could get sad? Good stuff.

Next up is the weird turtle like creature. The only reason I put this video on here is because his head coming out of the hill there scared the sh*t out of me when I was 8 years old.



Now we get some comic relief although some shots of Falcor were really creepy looking. This clip pretty much runs the gambit of this. I love that creepy look he gives at the :21 second mark too and those weird facial expressions around the 1:21 mark.



This next scene also scared me with those crazy sphinx type statues. The below clip starts off pretty slow but if you fast forward to around the 4 minute mark you'll see what I mean.



Then there's possible the greatest soliloquy in movie history. I give you the Rock Biter. Listen to his words...its like he's starting a new religion and who thought rocks could cry?



Lastly, I give you one of the scariest creatures ever in film. The creature's name was Gmork but I just called him the scary wolf thing. This was the final showdown in the movie. I love how Atreyu says "Come for me Gmork...I am Atreyu".



Well that's that. I highly recommend this film if you've never seen it or rent it for your kids to see as it shows you the true meaning of courage. It will also give them nightmares too...Artex!!!! NOOOOOOOO!!!