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The Neverending Story (novel)/YMMV: Difference between revisions
The Neverending Story (novel)/YMMV (view source)
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=== Book ===
* [[Alternate Character Interpretation]]: Between the time loop, everything we learn in The City of Old Emperors, and finding out that she'd drawn Bastian into a world that it became more and more impossible for him to escape from even if he was ''frugal'' with his wishes and didn't lose his mind without a single warning, it's not too difficult to read The Childlike Empress as the villain of the story.
** She is supposed to be [[True Neutral]], and give each user of AYRUN equal chances. It's up to them what they wish for. Remember that good, evil, beauty and ugliness are all equal for her. Likewise, insane, mindless husk of an Emperor is just as valuable as an enlightened human being who understands AYRUN's true purpose: both serve to tell a good story.
* [[Fridge Brilliance]]: The first letters of each chapter form the alphabet, in order.
* [[Jerk Sue]]: Bastian is the book's second half, a fully aware use of the trope. Atreyu eventually slaps him out of it.
* [[Tear Jerker]]: The scenes where Bastian discovers the truth about the lion Grograman, and sits with him so he won't be alone.
** Artax!
** Every last second of Artax's death scene, with Atreyu desperately screaming and begging for him to move. The fade out following is absolutely heart-wrenching.
*** And Artax knows he'll die, but he can't find it in his heart to resist. So he tells Atreyu to let go and stop trying to save him so he won't drown too, then gently tells him to look away so he won't have to ''see'' him go under. Atreyu does, crying the entire time.
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* [[Designated Hero]]: Bastian in the third movie. The Old Man of the Wandering Mountains describes him as "a special young human, a voracious reader, with great imagination and extraordinary courage", traits that Bastian does ''not'' possess this time around.
** [[Establishing Character Moment]]/[[Ironic Echo Cut]]: To establish this, when he was described as being "courageous", he's ''running away from the bullies''.
* [[Designated Villain]]: Bastian's stepsister in the third movie may be a bitch, but she actually ''does'' something with the power she obtains, and while what she does with it is selfish, Bastian's calling her out for screwing things up falls flat since ''he'' could have avoided it all by actually ''doing something with it himself'' when he had the chance.
** Also, she's part of why he wins the final fight, by using the book to give him super kung-fu moves. While he's still got the amulet and, as noted under [[Idiot Plot]], ''still isn't using it''.
** Hell, even [[Jack Black]] shows more initiative than Bastian!
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*** The extra heartbreak is that we see this memory because Bastian made a wish. He not only forgets that specific moment, but his mother entirely.
* [[They Just Didn't Care]]: The third movie had the Fantasians making pop cultural jokes, yet they still have a fish-out-of-water experience at the real world. Also, either the third movie's timeline spans from the first day of school to Chinese New Year to Halloween, or they all happened at once (with Bastian going to sleep before Halloween). And Bastian's father suddenly doesn't know about Fantasia anymore despite the second movie.
** Also they put a TV in Fantasia. And Fantasia needs people ''reading'' to keep it alive, whereas TV is the number one reason a lot of people don't read.
*** Actually, that's really not a message of the story. The point is for people to have ''imagination''. Filling your brain with reality TV and talk-shows may be detrimental for Fantasia's existence, but TV as a medium of storytelling is not a bad thing. Since the story was originally a book, and most great stories originate in book-format, it just makes most sense to relay Fantasia's existence through books, but ultimately it's the content that is important, not the medium.
* [[They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot]]: The whole idea of schoolyard bullies getting their hands on the book could have worked, if the writers had actually given a damn.
** As well as Fantasia characters exploring the human world for a change, as opposed to the other way around. Unfortunately, it's played purely for comedy and not very good comedy at that.
* [[Took the Bad Film Seriously]]: Everyone except (arguably) [[Jack Black]] in the third movie.
* [[Urban Legend]]: The "Swamp of Sadness" scene was evidently a troubled production site. Depending on who you ask, the horse that played Artax got caught in the elevator and died (Which scarred Atreyu's actor for life) or Atreyu's actor got caught in the elevator and almost drowned. Not to mention, he was thrown off a horse during training and stepped on, which certainly wouldn't have helped...
* [[Villain Decay]]: The villain of the first film was The Nothing, a classic example of [[Eldritch Abomination]]. The villain of the second film, Xayide, was basically the Nothing with a human form, but she was implied to be the manifestation of dying imagination and controller of "The Emptiness," the big Nothing-esque disaster causing Fantasia harm. Then we get to the third film, and the [[Big Bad]] is....JackBlack and a group of school bullies called "The Nasties."
* [[
** Julie Cox, who played the Childlike Empress in the same film, is an example of both this and [[Dawson Casting]], considering that she was 19 during filming and a good four or five inches taller than Jason James Richter, who played Bastian. In fact, Cox is only slightly younger in real-life than Tami Stronach, the Childlike Empress from the first film -- which was made ''ten years'' before the third.
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