Fantasy Zone: The one with the Luck Dragon

 

Title: The Neverending Story

What Year?: 1984

Classification: Irreproducible Oddity

Rating: What The Hell??? (2/4)

 

As of this writing, it’s exactly one week since I announced I was done with this feature with Return To Oz, so of course, I’m back with another installment. In my defense, it’s one I hadn’t decided whether to review here or anywhere else, though it would seem obvious enough that anyone with me all the way would probably have been expecting it. In fact, I had expected it to be a while before I even got to this one. Instead, with the usual random factor, I found it available on a streaming plan I activated while trying to get other problems with my paleolithic rental arrangements sorted out. So, I gave it a look, and with a pileup already building, I knew I had to cover it here and now. So with that equivocal introduction, I present The Neverending Story, an ‘80s fantasy movie that happens to have a theme song from the same composer as Cat People, and that’s just the start of the weird and random.

Our story begins with a boy being thrown in a dumpster by bullies. He takes shelter in a bookshop whose proprietor reveals a special book. As he reads, the world of Fantasia unfolds before our eyes, a land of magic and whimsy threatened by the advancing threat of The Nothing, a misty void that consumes all in its path. A boy hero named Atreyu goes forth on a quest to heal the sick Empress and turn back the tide. He must navigate a range of perils, from the Swamps of Sadness to deadly sphinxes, stalked by a mysterious wolf. With the help of a mystic turtle and a Luck Dragon who acts like the guest star on a Law And Order: SVU episode, the hero makes his way to the edge of Fantasia. It all comes down to a final battle with the wolf- but the fate of Fantasia still lies with the Earthly boy!

The Neverending Story was a 1984 American/ West German film by Wolfgang Petersen, based on the first part of a novel by Michael Ende. The film was produced by Neue Constantin Films with distribution by Warner Bros, with a budget equivalent $25 million. While the film was shot mainly in Munich, all dialogue was in English. The film starred Noah Hathaway (see Troll) as Atreyu and Barrett Oliver as Sebastian, with Alan Oppenheimer as the voices of the Luck Dragon, Rock Biter and the wolf G’Mork. Animatronics and other effects were provided by a crew led by Brian Johnson, whose previous credits included work on 2001, Alien and Dragonslayer. The soundtrack was provided by Klaus Doldinger, with a theme song by Giorgio Moroder and Keith Forsey. The production was troubled by a falling-out between Petersen and Ende. Who criticized the finished film as “kitsch, commerce, plush and plastic”. The movie was a commercial success, earning $100M worldwide. Attempts to expand it into a franchise were less successful, resulting in a 1990 sequel with a new cast and a third film that did not receive a US theatrical release. In 2019, a cover of the theme song was featured in Stranger Things. The film remains available in multiple platforms including free streaming from Netflix.

For my experiences, this is one I personally saw very early, I’m sure well before my family had a TV or VCR of our own. Even with my world’s-worst-superpower memory, I don’t believe I ever remembered more than a bare outline of it. I have a much clearer recollection of looking it up soon after getting Netflix, still well over a decade ago. I think that in itself is a significant commentary on the film’s impact. For kids, it’s a decent, fairly routine 1980s adventure, at least apart from the existentially terrifying nothing. It’s for adults that it becomes pure nightmare fuel, both intentionally and unintentionally. Through mature eyes, it’s an allegory of the conflict of hope against despair, perhaps between life and mortality itself. Yet, the one thing that gets casually referenced more than anything else is the theme song, even more egregiously Eighties than Moroder’s work on Cat People.

 Moving forward, it must be reemphasized from the start that this is serious fantasy, especially for a movie directed at kids. This is generally reflected in the effects and overall production values, which sometimes get rough but never campy or “cute” for its own sake. Most of the further issues rise either with the film’s own premises or inherited genre conventions. Fantasia and its inhabitants are a mishmash, by all indications to represent corresponding subgenres of fantasy. The main character is vaguely generic, though this is done with reasonable self-awareness and still with more effort and depth than the average preteen/ adolescent wish-fulfillment protagonist. The supporting characters tend to be either useless or overpowered. What easily balances everything out is the terror of the Nothing, portrayed with deceptive simplicity, and the monologuing G’Mork, whose simple motivations are all the more unsettling with age and hindsight. I definitely considered the “one scene” just for the line, “People without hope are easy to control…”

The real con in all this is simply that the film seems to second-guess itself by falling back on cliches that really aren’t even for the kids but for supposedly “hip” older viewers. This is most obvious with the music and the theme song, which I already ranted about. It also is definitely evident in the ending,  which bends over backward to show that everything is okay, and shoehorn in a vengeance-fantasy comeuppance of the bullies. There’s also the inexplicably risqué sphinx thingies, and then the trainwreck that is the Luck Dragon. I don’t believe they wanted to go there, I don’t believe they wanted anyone to think they were going there, but how did they think adults then or at any other time were going to react to a wonky animatronic creature talking to a 13-year-old boy about talking in his sleep and then asking for an ear rub?

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going with a scene with the Rock Biter. Just before the finale, Atreyu finds the giant , last seen at the beginning, now all alone. He sounds almost bemused as he stares at his hand and says, “They look like good, strong hands, don’t they?” He then gives a succinct account of trying to save the zany Lewis Carroll characters we saw early on. He relates that he literally tried to hold onto them, but concludes, “The Nothing pulled them all away.” Oppenheimer’s voice work is as heartbreaking as G’Mork is chilling as he announces his intent to wait for the Nothing to overtake him. Then, like a broken record, he seems to start over, as the boy warrior turns and moves on. It’s the surest demonstration just how much depth and maturity the movie has, when it’s actually trying.

In closing, the one thing I feel worth addressing is why I didn’t cover this before. As outlined above, it was up in the air if I was going to get a crack at this one without more time or actual money. Even apart from that, from my skewed standpoint, this is exactly the kind of movie that usually ends up above the radar, well-known and regarded, influential, and even profitable in its own time. At the same time, it was odd and notorious enough that I gave serious thought to covering it in my “worst” movies feature. With a fresh viewing, I easily convinced myself it didn’t belong there, which on a certain level was its own disappointment. What really convinced me to do the review was that I felt I could offer a new perspective. It’s not a perfect “classic”, and it’s not a hilariously self-dated relic either. It’s a thoughtful film that didn’t follow through quite far enough to reach its full potential. With that, I’m bidding all good night.

Image credit Film Affinity.