I saw this coming

Oh my god, you guys, The Neverending Story is so bad. I couldn't even, like, watch it--I had to get up and clean my room while it was on, because, yuck. No wonder Michael Ende didn't want anything to do with it, because it has almost nothing to do with the story he wrote. Everything is wrong! I mean, I won't even talk about how it's so visually unappealing, because this movie is as old as I am, so what do you want? The eighties were not a pretty decade. However, I could go on and on and on about what was wrong, even if I don't bitch and moan about how the entire second half of the book is gone, but I won't. Yet. Also, even ignoring that the story is all wrong, the movie is still painful to watch because Noah Hathaway, portrayer of Atreyu, is quite possibly the worst child actor I've ever seen. This became abundantly clear during the death of Artax, which, um, might have made me cry in the book--but just made me cringe and pick up some dirty clothes when I saw it on screen. Also, I don't know if this is just me, but Atreyu seemed much more solemn in the book--like, he was ten, but he was wise beyond his years somehow--and this Noah Hathaway made him such a fucking spaz. Blergh. Also, he's not green. Why not?

Okay, I know this is supah queeah, but really, one of the best scenes in the book is when Atreyu is trying to make his speech rhyme, so he can talk to the Southern Oracle, and of course that was so not in the movie, and the Oracle was much more forthright--everyone is much more forthright--and it was lame. I can't even tell you how many times I just yelled, "Oh, weak!" at the screen.

I really wish someone would make this a movie again, like Lord of the Rings style, because it could make a really great film. They could do it in two parts, you know, ending the first one right after Bastian finally saves Fantastica and beginning with his adventures in the forest/desert. But I doubt that Michael Ende's estate will ever let that happen--or that anyone would even want it to happen except for me.

The other thing that bugged was that they injected this "do what you dream" message that's totally not in the book. Well, maybe it is, in a more subtler way: since humans are no longer using their imaginations, both Fantastica and the human world are perishing, so people need to stop being so...German (you know, boring and industrious), and both worlds will get better. (I'm just kidding, German people, but you somehow got stereotyped that way in the twentieth century.) But in the movie, Bastian's dad is all, "Get your head outta the clouds, boy," and that's why Bastian can't give the Empress her name, because he won't let himself believe that this is really happening. The book Bastian just has low self-esteem; he thinks he can't possibly be the savior of Fantastica, that the Empress must be talking about somebody else, and that's why it takes him so long to save her. But the movie does pretty much ignore the personal journey of Bastian, which is the entire point of the book, so eff you, movie! Plus that "do what you dream" bananas is just so cheesy.

I could go on, but I'd have to read the book again. I can't do the kind of ranting I can do for Narnia, because I have those books memorized, but The Neverending Story will probably earn a spot close to the Narnia books. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I have never been so disappointed in a film adaptation of a book I loved. Here's my last gripe: the movie ends with Falkor, I believe, narrating and telling the audience that Bastian made many more wishes before he returned to the ordinary world, "but that's another story." Um, no it's not--it's this story. Assbags.