Weirdhouse Cinema: The Neverending Story

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe venture into the 1984 fantasy film “The Neverending Story,” a generation-defining film based on the elegant novel by German author Michael Ende. It’s also a throwback to a time when you could have one guy do most of the creature voices in a film. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to Weirdhouse Cinema. This is Rob Lamb
and this is Joe McCormack. And today we're going to
be covering a well known classic. We are finally getting

(00:23):
around to the nineteen eighty four fantasy film The Never
Ending Story, something that I know many people of my
generation grew up watching over and over on VHS tapes.
But Rob, I think, if I understand correctly, both the
movie and the book here are very dear to you. Yeah. Well,
I don't have as long a history with the book.

(00:43):
The book is one that I ended up purchasing at
some point it was on the shelf, and then I
finally got around took to reading it as well when
I got back into the film with my son a
few years back, and that I instantly it was one
of the situations you never know exactly what the source
material for something you hold dear is going to be like.
But I was really blown away by Michael Enda's novel

(01:05):
it in my experience, it delivered everything I wanted to
of the of The Never Ending Story as I knew it.
But then adding all of these other dimensions to it
and this, and of course an entire half a book
plus on top of what we see in the film,
which I haven't read the book, but from what I understand,
the other half of the book not featured in the
film goes in a much darker direction. Yeah, I think

(01:27):
that's that's fair to say. I've made the comparison before
to like Doone and Doom Messiah, where the first half
of the never Ending Story is basically done about a
hero's ascension, and then the second half the Doom Messiah
portion of the never Ending Story, it is kind of
about the complications that occur when one to achieves this power,

(01:49):
like what is that disrupt what new challengers are presented,
and so forth. So yeah, I've been wanting to cover
the never Ending Story on Weird House for a while.
You know, it certainly a mainstream film and one that
I think many listeners have already seen. So it's it's
weirdness doesn't emerge from its unfamiliarity. It's in many ways,
I think, a generation defining film. Like you said, it's

(02:10):
one of these films of the sort of the dark
fantasy films of the nineteen eighties, alongside the likes of
The Dark Crystal and so forth that made a huge
impact on a lot of young viewers. But I feel
like this one hits a little differently than just about
any other particular dark fantasy film of this time period
I can think of, like you know, The Dark Crystal,

(02:32):
Return to Oz. Yes, they all have these fantastic, rich worlds.
They all present often a young viewer with some dark
imagery or ideas, but there's nothing quite like nineteen eighty
four is the Never Ending Story. Well, one thing I
didn't realize until just this moment when you made the
comparison is the thematic overlap between The Never Ending Story

(02:52):
and Return to Oz, which are both essentially stories that
integrate a fantasy world with the day human environment in
the imagination of a child, and that human child character
is essentially being like there are there are adults around
that child trying to tell them not to have an
imagination anymore, and the child is rebelling by dreaming up

(03:15):
all of these fantastic places and creatures and adventures. Yeah,
I mean the adults are also helping to foster a
traumatic world that is sending the young person even further
into the world of fantasy. So this one should be
a fun one to discuss here. I'll tell you when
I was trying to think of an elevator pitch, at first,
it was difficult because I mean, it's the never Ending Story.
It's like, all you have to say is that, and

(03:36):
I have this instant, crystallized idea of what it is.
But when I thought a little hard, I was like, oh,
yeah's essentially Ferris Bueler's day off, except for book nerds.
That's very good. And in fact, I was going to
get into this later in the discussion, but maybe it's
good to bring up right here at the top. When
I think back on my childhood feelings about The never
Ending Story, one way in which I think it is

(03:59):
distinct from a lot of these other fantasy films is
that in this movie, the things about it that stuck
with me the most were actually not the fantasy elements,
not the creatures within Fantasia, but like the scene where
and we'll describe the plot a more detail later, but

(04:19):
like the scene where the human child Bastion goes into
the bookshop and speaks with the man in the bookshop,
or the scenes where he has snuck away from school
and he or I guess he's still in the school building.
He's snuck away from class and he's just hiding out
reading a book by himself. Those scenes, when I was
a child, they had a really powerful sort of magic

(04:44):
about them, just like the excitement at the idea of
being alone, away from the scheduled existence of like school
life and activities and all the things adults are telling
you to do, and just getting to hide with a
book and read in these sort of dusty corners. It
was almost intoxicating. Oh, I absolutely agree. And yeah, these

(05:05):
scenes the bookshop and the school attic where Bastion holds
down and reads the never ending story. Yeah, both of
these sequences in the film I think are very true
to how they're presented in the book. And yeah, I
as a child and as an adult, there's something about that, Like, yeah,
just like hiding away and reading and then and eating

(05:28):
that sandwich, the scene where Bastian's like, yes, oh yeah,
I'm hungry. I'm going to get out my lunch from
today and eat it. Like I get a little snaky
every time I watch that sequence. So not so much
about the sandwich itself, but I thought of the comparison
of the reading scenes where he's hiding out with the
book are almost as like carnally appetizing as really good

(05:50):
food scenes in other movies, like you know, the cooking
scene and Good Fellas or something where you're like looking
at delicious foods and you're like, oh, I've got to
go eat now. This movie does that for hiding away
with the book. Yeah. The attic especially is great because
you look at the other environments that the real world
Bastion has to encounter like that we'll talk about them

(06:11):
in more death in a minute, but like the the
the kitchen of his house where he has sort of
breakfast with his dad, or certainly the school hallways, like
these are so dry and sterile and just um, you know,
and just devoid of joy. But here in the in
the Attic, we have this kind of like transitional realm,
this place where they've the the boring and like anti

(06:34):
creative forces of his life, where they set aside all
of these like remnants of imagination, and so you see
things like um, animal heads and what like knights, armor
and so forth in the background, like all these and
even just like suggestive shapes where it's like this is
like a lost temple of the imagination. Why are their
swords in the attic of the school? I don't know,

(06:56):
but yeah, it works absolutely because, yeah, there are other
aspects about that. As I rewatched it with my son,
which was very nice, and maybe he even brought it,
it's like, well, why why has no one noticed that
that bastion has not come home? Like it's night time out?
Is his dad really working that late? Well? Maybe, I mean, okay,
you kind of have to press that don't think about
that button, because otherwise it's like, oh, yeah, there's going

(07:17):
to be an emergency here. Everybody's like where has the
child gone? Yeah? All right, well, let's go ahead and
listen to the trailer audio for this film. What is
the secret of this enchanted book? What wonders I hidden
within its pages? What magical spell does it cast on

(07:40):
all who read it? What is the secret of the
never ending story? But that's impossible. You will enter a

(08:04):
world where a young boy's imagination becomes a vivid reality.
The world of betray You and our Tex, the Rockbiter
and a good and kind gnome, a world that is
vast and eternal, treadulous and dazzling, unforgettable and free, or

(08:30):
anyone who's ever made a wish, believed in a fantasy,
or had a dream. This is a never ending story,
all right. I think that captured some of the sweeping music,
some of the energy of the picture. Now, Robert, I

(08:52):
don't know if we ever discussed this before, but I
made a connection in my brain between your long running
relationship with this movie and the kind of music that
is featured in the soundtrack of this movie. I bet
we probably got some of it in the trailer there,
though I hadn't listened to the trailer ahead of time,
so I don't know. But is there a relationship between

(09:15):
the never ending story and electronic music scores in your mind? Oh? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Um,
And it's going to be fun when we get into
the the musicians responsible, because you've got a couple of
really big names here. You. I mean, you have Klaus Dollinger,
who is like a great German synth composer and saxophonist.
He's the guy who scored nineteen eighty onees Doss Boot

(09:38):
And then you also have Georgio Moroder adding these additional
synth tracks and also that really catchy theme music for
the US release of the film, and h yeah, especially Moroder.
Moroder is a huge name and electronic music and in
a talo disco. I mean, he's just he's a titan
of the sound. So yeah, well we'll get into him

(10:01):
in a bit, but yeah, it's you can't just take
Moroder out of like eighties films and expect anything to
sound the same. It's definitely a movie where like the
ideas of the book, the music, and also something very
distinctive about the visuals all come together. I think we've
talked before about sort of the sameness of the visual

(10:21):
flare of a lot of films, so certainly of the
of the modern period. You know how certain like monsters
will all sort of look the same, certain space suits
will sort of look the same, and nothing else really
quite looks like this movie. And part of it has
to do with the the artist that was involved in
designing these various creatures and scenes. That's a good point.

(10:41):
So I was going to raise this when when we
were talking about the plot, but actually we could address
it now, so uh yeah, I couldn't help but compare
this to a new fantasy film that I saw over
the past weekend. I went and saw The Dungeons and
Dragons movie, which I quite liked it was. I thought
it was it was funny, you know, tightly written, well structured,

(11:03):
plot zipped right along, had a really nice cast. So
basically thumbs up to all that. It was a grand
old time. But I do have to admit I was
not crazy about the way the movie looked. Not because
it looked bad. It didn't, you know, like there was
nothing ugly about it. It's not like Jason X or something,

(11:25):
but it just looked the same way most big budget,
mainstream genre movies I see these days look so like.
I feel like all the Marvel movies I've seen look
this way too. And I'm not I don't know. I'm
not involved in cinematography, so I don't know exactly what
this quality is. Maybe if you out there, listener, you

(11:46):
know more about cinematography, and I don't know how movies
are color graded and all that kind of stuff, like
could explain what this thing I'm talking about is. It's
this quality of big mainstream genre movies today, all looking
very smooth and digital somehow, like everything feels very evenly

(12:07):
well lit, and everything looks clean, and everything's just kind
of like sealed and seamed up and kind of paved
over with this digital sheen, like the whole movie has
been face tuned. You know those face tune apps like
people can use on I don't know. If they use one,
they get like a cat face or something. Well, no,

(12:28):
I don't mean fully like, I don't mean the ones
that like give you a cat face people. There's some
kind of apps people, I'm gonna sound really stupid people
who actually know what these things are. But basically, they're
these apps people use to make their faces look quote better.
I don't know if they actually end up looking better,
but like with the other you know, they'll run a
selfie through them and their face comes out just looking

(12:48):
like smoother and more sort of evenly lit and more.
I don't know, like it sort of takes out some
of the texture and the individuality of the image so
that they come out as a lie. Okay, that's fitting
for I don't really discussing later on Well, I don't know, so,
I mean, I don't want to sound overly harsh, because again,

(13:10):
I mean, I liked I liked the D and D movie.
I've enjoyed plenty of other movies that did look like this,
but I feel like the lack of visual distinctiveness does
kind of take away from my enjoyment. And I couldn't
help but keep making that mental comparison. When I was
rewatching The never Ending Story here and there are all
these scenes where, um, I don't know, like you there,

(13:32):
there's a lot of playing with light and shadow. You
can identify individual sources of light to the surfaces within
the sets and on the people feel like they have texture.
There would be bumps and wrinkles and things, and there's
a there's a feeling of dust and age and just
generally real life. And uh, the Never Ending Story has

(13:53):
that has that to the gills, you know, it's all
over the place, that that that sense of reality and
texture to it. And that's what I feel like he's
lacking in a lot of these big budget movies I
see today. I think it's a solid point. Um. I mean,
I agree to that. I saw the Dungeons and Dragons
movie and I loved it. I thought it was a
lot of fun. Um. But yeah, I would stop myself
from comparing it to films like this just because it

(14:16):
was just like, um, it's it's great if you compare
it to like all the other films that are coming
out these days. But um, yeah, like you said, the
light and the darkness, that the sense of like physical
reality that you find in a film like this, it's
it just doesn't compare. Yeah, I also didn't mean to
imply that in every other respect than the visual they

(14:38):
are similar, they're also different in other ways. Funds like
though recommend Dungeons seconds was a lot whatever whatever the
rest of the name of it is called to adventure.
I can't I can't remember the colon, but you know
what I'm talking about. Thieves, guilt, honor among thieves. That's it,
all right. Well, if you want to go watch an
ever ending story before proceeding with this episode, we'll lucky

(14:59):
for you. It's why available both physically and digitally, even
if I'm not sure it's actually streaming anywhere at the moment.
I think it was on a streaming service and then
it like cycled out of that streaming service, but it's
highly available. You should be able to find it wherever
you are going to get your physical or digital media.
All right, Well, let's get into the people behind it.
Let's start at the top with the director, who also

(15:21):
has a writing credit. It's Wolfgang Peterson, who lived nineteen
forty one through twenty twenty two German director who rose
to international acclaim with his third full length film, nineteen
eighty ones DOFs Boot. This is, of course, the German
submarine movie. This film, The Never Ending Story would be
his follow up film from nineteen eighty four, though in
nineteen eighty five he also directed Enemy Mine, which is

(15:43):
a science fiction film that I also quite like. I
wouldn't put it on the same level as this film
by any means. It also has, for my taste, the
best teaser trailer of all time, But don't watch the
full trailer for it, because it's also one of these
films where the full trailer for Enemy Mine ruins absolutely
everything that happens in the picture. Oh no, So anyway,

(16:05):
I like Enemy Mine, but critics and audiences at the
time apparently did not, and Peterson did not return to
filmmaking till nineteen ninety one with a psychological thriller title Chattered,
and then nineteen ninety three's In the Line of Fire,
which was a bit of a hit with everyone but
also certainly wasn't really weird. Wait a minute, in the
Line of Fires, that's the one where Clint Eastwood plays

(16:27):
a secret service agent who failed to save JFK's life.
And then am I getting this right? Yeah? And John
Malkovich is trying to kill the president. I think for
no like particular political reason. He just wants to. Yeah.
I saw it, but I don't remember much outside of that.
But the interesting thing about about Peterson's filmography is, yeah,

(16:51):
he hits, comes out strong with doubts boot he does
this pair of pictures, a fantasy film and a sci
fi picture, and then most of the rest of his homography,
the rest of his career, it's films kind of like
it's films like In the Line of Fire, which, again,
In the Line of Fire apparently did great business and
people liked it, critics liked it. But is this anybody's
favorite film? Does anyone consider nineteen ninety five's Outbreak Break

(17:14):
another Peterson film, or nineteen ninety seven's Air Force One
their favorite film? He did Get off My Plane. That's
the That's the Harrison Ford one, right, Harrison Ford is
the President one is another President movie. It's a Harrison Ford. Uh.
His Air Force One gets attacked by terrorists of some kinds,
Gary Oldman one of them. I think, Oh, that sounds

(17:36):
about right. Yeah. Yeah, but so Harrison Ford at one
point famously says, get off my plane. Yeah yeah. He
also did two thousands A Perfect Storm, which I also saw.
He also did a two thousand and six remake of
the Poseidon Adventure titled Poseidon. Oh, and he also did
the two thousand and four film Troy, which has I

(17:58):
think bread what as I say, no, Bradbitt playing Achilles.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, the Troy. Uh. I watched part
of that on television in Iceland. I think, yeah it.
I remember thinking it didn't look great. Um though, I
think it's one of those like two thousands movies that,

(18:20):
like the movie itself doesn't look that good, but it's
got a deep, great cast. I think it had maybe
Eric Bana as Um. Oh, what's his name, the the
the hero of Troy, of the other side, not the Greek.
So what's his name? Hector? That's it Hector. Yes, I
think it had Um, and it had Brian Cox maybe

(18:43):
as Agamemnon, and I don't know bunch other It has
a great cast, as our recall um seeing. I haven't
seen the film, but yeah, yeah, so I get the
impression that, like with Peterson again not to you know,
cast any doubt on his later career, because it sounds
like it it was tremendously successful. But it's like the
with enemy Mine and then never ending story. He's made

(19:03):
a film for Bastion and with the rest of his pictures,
he made films for Bastion's dad. You know. Yeah, these
are these are orange juice in an egg in the
Blender movies. Yeah. So, but anyway, anything away from him,
Like I said, I haven't seen dos boot in forever,
but I remember liking that one even as a younger

(19:26):
viewer of films. And we'll come back to that one
because the score on that one's also really good. All right, um,
one of the so again, Peterson also has writing credit
on this, but so does Hermann Weigel born nineteen fifty
German writer and producer on a number of mostly German
screenplays German language screenplays in his filmography. He was also
one of the associate producers on nineteen eighty six is

(19:48):
the Name of the Rows, and he's still active. But
as we mentioned, this is of course based on a book.
It's based on a book by German author Michael Enda
who lived nineteen twenty nine through nineteen ninety five, so
he's yeah, the true master of mind, I think, behind
this film, author of the book which came on seventy nine. Again,
this film is an adaptation of the first half or

(20:09):
so of the novel, and the remainder is equally great,
but kind of a different tale. You know. What happens
next is kind of about like what happens when the
dreamer is truly ascendant and the potential pitfalls of the fantastic,
but it's still great. Indo was a German author, the
son of a surrealist painter that was banned under the
Nazi regime. Perhaps like father, like son, because DA's writing

(20:32):
often features surreal and paradoxical elements. They are often a
lot of role mind twisters that he unleashes on you,
certainly in The Never Ending Story. His other novels include Momo,
which I'm currently reading with my son, and also a
book called Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver, which
I don't know anything about, but yeah, he has a

(20:53):
definitely has a following outside of this film, especially in Germany.
The book was tremendously popular in Germany and end of
famously Dislike this film adaptation, which I think is just
going to happen sometimes with adaptations, no matter what you know,
the creator, the author is so tied to it, it's
just not always going to see I I personally love

(21:15):
both the film and the novel. I think the film
does a fine job with the material, even if the
original book is ultimately more thought provoking and less diluted.
But it's still like nothing else, you know, Despite the
fact that I absolutely do love this movie even without
having read the book, I feel like I can detect
places in the script in the film where the story

(21:38):
is kind of patched together, kind of quickly duct taped
together to cover up some gaps, like I don't know
do do you know what I mean? Like there are
parts of it that just kind of feel like, Okay,
we maybe couldn't afford to do this shot or something,
so we had to like stitch these two parts together. Yeah. Yeah,
And certainly you can see that comparing the book to

(21:59):
the movie, like the whole encounters that are cut out,
and with a little luck dragon magic, you're able to
sort of stitch everything back together again. Now, it's worth
noting that the Never Ending Stories spawned two sequels in
nineteen ninety and nineteen ninety four, as well as in
nineteen ninety five animated series and a two thousand and
one German language live action TV series. I can't speak

(22:20):
for the TV shows at all, but as far as
the sequels go, I did watch I think maybe half
of Part two finally, and it at least tries to
adapt some aspects of the second half of the book.
It stars Jonathan Brandis as Bastian. It has some cool
creatures in it, but it's just the same magic as
not there. And then Part three I've not seen at all,

(22:43):
but it looks kind of awful, even though it does
have a good cast. It's got jack Billhack in it.
It's got Freddie Jones and Julie Cox in it, and
Jason James Richter of the Free Willie franchise plays Bastion.
Does it have an Orca? No, no Orca, just luck dragons?
Then I'm out all right. Getting into the cast of

(23:10):
this movie. First of all, playing Bastian Bastian Balthazar Bucks,
his full name in the novel is Barrett Oliver born
nineteen seventy three, former child actor of the nineteen eighties
who really lit it up for a short while there.
This was his first film role, followed by the nineteen
eighty four Tim Burton short Frank and Weeney, which is
really good. Nineteen eighty five's Darryll. That's d A R

(23:33):
Y L like it stands for something, but I don't
think I ever saw it. It's about a robot or
a computer. I'm guessing you don't know what Darrell stands
for now. It's due all robots yotel loudly. Oh okay,
Well that it makes sense. I get it confused with
war games, I think anyway. Also, he was in nineteen
eighty five Cocoon, and I also find it amusing that

(23:55):
in nineteen eighty four he appeared both in an episode
of Highway to Heaven and the TV movie Invitation to Hell.
Now wait a minute, before he started in Darryl, didn't
He also star in larry and then another movie named Darryl.
No No, No, No No. He came back for nineteen
and eighty eight's Cocoon. The return in his last film

(24:15):
credit was nineteen eighty nine Scenes from the Class Struggle
in Beverly Hills. He went on to become a photographer
in his adult life. But that's just one of the
major child actors in this film, because Baston, of course
is their character in the real world, but in the
realm of Fantasia, we were following the adventure of a
Treyo who was played by Noah Hathaway. I don't know

(24:35):
why I thought this, because they don't even look that similar.
But I think when I saw this was when I
was a kid, I thought these. I thought it was
the same actor playing both roles. I might have assumed
the same thing. Yeah, I didn't. When you see a
movie like this young enough, you don't really you know
you're not gonna pay out IMDb and started figuring out
who's playing who. But anyway, Yeah. Hathaway was another major

(24:57):
eighties child actor. He started off as Boxy on the
original Battlestar Galactica series and did various TV roles until
nineteen eighty four, when he started both this and also
was in the nineteen eighty four Saul Bass short film Quest,
which I think will cover the next time we do
a short film episode of Weird House Cinema. Oh Boy,
Saul Bass, director of I was about to say them,

(25:21):
not them Phase four. Yeah, the other Ant movie, the
Ant movie we've done. Yes, now as far as Hathaway goes.
In nineteen eighty six, he played, of course, Harry Potter
Junior in Troll which we may have to come back
to that one as well. We've seen its unofficial sequel,
Troll Too, which does not have Harry Potter Junior. A

(25:42):
Troll Too is of course a a B movie classic.
I remember the last time I tried to watch the
original Troll it was it took some effort getting to
the end. Oh yeah, yeah, I've never seen it. It
has a great cast. Okay, what Julia Louis Dreyfuss is
in it? I guess so, yeah, yeah, anyway, I need

(26:03):
to see it at some point. At any rate. After
nineteen eighty six, Hathaway didn't act again till ninety four,
and then again it was like the twenty teens before
he acted again. Has stated that most of his dialogue
in this film is dubbed. Now, I should also added
in the book ATREYU has green skin, and I think
I've read that they did some test shoots with Hathaway
in green body paint and then decided it didn't look right.

(26:25):
I read that too. I read that he compared it
to he ended up he said he ended up looking
like a fun guy. All right. Another character we have
as the bookstore owner Carl Conrad Coriander, played by Thomas Hill,
who lived nineteen twenty seven three two thousand and nine.
This is probably his best remembered role, but he had
a long running recurring role on TV's New Heart, which

(26:46):
he just referenced earlier. He also pops up in nineteen
eighty four's v The Final Battle, And I had no
idea this existed, but I read that he voiced Uncle
Ben in the nineteen eighty one radio drama of Star Wars,
which features Mark Hamill as Luke. Anthony Daniels is C
three po but then like they didn't have some of
the other ant like someone else is doing Han solo.

(27:08):
Brock Peters is doing the voice of Darth Vader, so
sounds interesting. Hill was also in the supporting cast of
the Clint Eastwood jet movie Firefox from nineteen eighty two.
Haven't Seen It? Is that about? Is that about helicopters?
Or it's about something that's kind of like an SR
seventy one Blackbird, like a big black jet that Eastwood

(27:29):
is flying. And I remember seeing the box art for it.
As a kid, and I was like, this movie looks
so cool. I absolutely must see this film. And I
can't remember I've ever did or not, because I don't
think it quite fulfills that promise to youth. It reminds
me of my relationship to a movie called Navy Seals,
so I was like, well, this is just it's called
Navy Seals. It's gotta be the coolest movie ever made.

(27:51):
It was not all right. We mentioned Bastion's father, who
is not in the film much at all, but I
guess kind of has. His character has important weight, and
this is played by Gerald McCraney, another notable TV actor.
His first film role was nineteen sixty nine's Night of
Bloody Horror, followed by Women of Bloody Terror, and in

(28:12):
nineteen seventy he had a role in an episode of
Night Gallery. So I had a pretty horror based beginning,
but then it's from there it goes into a lot
of increasingly successful TV work. He of course, was one
of the Simons on TV Simon and Simon in the eighties,
and he has at least one off roles in just
a ton of TV series all the way up through
recent shows like This Is US and NCIS Los Angeles.

(28:35):
I don't know why. Bastion's father kind of reminded me
of Louis del Grand, the guy who plays the you know,
the guy in Scanners. So it's like when he's leaving
for work that morning, he's leaving because he has to
go do a presentation in the auditorium at Conseack. Similar
look the mustache, the balding head, the never ending scan. Yeah,

(28:57):
all right, let's see who else do we have here.
We have Tammy's Stronach as the Childlike Empress for nineteen
seventy two. This was her first role in her most
notable one. I think she's been active in like documentaries
and so forth on The never Ending Story. And she
has a film coming up called Man in which that
she acts in and was also an epon looks like
as a good cast. We have a character in the

(29:19):
book called Kron and this character, I'm sorry, the character
in the book is a centaur. In the movie, he's
kind of a dude with like a super tall forehead,
like kind of a kind of a point on the
top of his head, and he's like speaking on behalf
of the childlike Empress. Yeah, I took him as kind
of I don't know, a lieutenant or like the steward

(29:40):
of Gondor. But for Fantasia, while the Empress is sick
and he's sort of watching over things, and he's the
one who explains to everyone. He's sort of like is
master exposition. He lays out the lore. Yeah, and and
clearly I think based on Kyron the centaur from Greek
mythology the teacher who what tad Achilles actually But yeah,

(30:04):
and he has a bigger role in the book, but
in this he's just has this one scene. But anyway,
Moses Gunn plays him in the movie. Solid character actor
appeared in such flicks as nineteen seventies, The Great White
Hope seventy one, Shaft seventy five, Rollerball nineteen eighties, The
Ninth Configuration, fire Starter in eighty four, Heartbreak Ridge in
eighty six, and on TV. He was very active and

(30:26):
has a great villainous role on a Tales from the
Crypt episode titled Fitting Punishment, in which he plays this
this mean funeral Home director. And I think we've mentioned
that episode before because it also has an actor by
the name of Teddy Wilson in it, who is in
Devil's Express. All right, so mostly human actors we've been
talking about here, but of course this also has some

(30:48):
voiceovers in it because you have multiple non human characters
that are portrayed via some fantastic puppetry and so forth,
and then includes the character rock Bye, the luck Dragon,
foul Core, the villainous Gomork. There's also a narrating there.
It's funny because they're like two different narration systems going

(31:09):
on in this movie. At one point Bastion is narrating,
and then later we just get some other dude narrating. Yeah,
that was a little confusing, but okay, So this does
confirm my suspicion just from listening that basically all or
maybe actually all of the voices were done by the
same person. Yes, yes, Alan Oppenheimer did the voices, and

(31:32):
I believe uncredited for all of these creatures. And this
is something that always floored me, and I think it
is perhaps just a snapshot of the time period and
how voice acting was approached, because obviously, if the Never
Ending Story was made today, and certainly if they end
up remaking it at some point, as they've been talking
about for a while, you'd have some big name actors
playing all of these characters, Like I can easily imagine

(31:54):
you got Liam Neeson playing foul Core. I'm gonna say
Werner Herzog as Mork. Maybe Dave Bautista as Rock Bitter,
you know the drill. Uh, you may be being a
little too optimistic. I think maybe it would be Chris
Pratt as Falk or Adam Sandler as Rock Bitter. Oh no, no, no, no, yeah,

(32:15):
surely not. I mean I'll credit to it to Sandler,
but um no, like I can't, I can't imagine it.
But at any rate, you mean you would have somebody
playing those voices. They would probably be someone with with
with outside star um a power. But yeah, in this
it's just veteran actor and voiceover actor. And I think
by certainly by this period, like almost entirely voice actor

(32:37):
um al Ellen Oppenheimer just voice doing all the voices.
You could just this is a time when you just
had one guy come in and you're like, hey, can
you do voices for I don't know, like a dog
like luck dragon, a giant rock creature, and some sort
of villainous werewolf, and also we might need some narration.
Can you jump in on that? Tune. He's like, yeah,
I can do that, no need to hire anyone else.
I am truly impressed by even though I did detect

(32:59):
that at least some of these voices were the same person.
I mean, he's got to do a lot of them,
So I'm impressed how many different voices he can do. Yeah,
and he looked at his credits and it's extensive. He
has three hundred and thirty five credits in IMDb, spanning
seven decades, all the way back to nineteen sixty three.
I mean, Oppenheimer was on a late series episode of

(33:21):
The Andy Griffith Show, for example, but then around nineteen
seventy three he starts doing voice roles and becomes a
major force there. Certainly a lot of it is that
kind of additional voices credit you see from older animated specials,
you know, where they just they just brought some people
and it had him do some voices. It might be
a minor voice, might be like the secondary character, but

(33:42):
they just get that additional voices credit. I don't know why,
but I always like to see an arc where somebody
goes from you know, doing in front of the camera
work to doing voice acting and then they really are
a hit as voice acting, you know, Mark Hamill kind
of arc Yeah, yeah, and uh yeah. I mean, this
guy's work has been great. Certainly, not gonna read through
everything that he was in. I'm I'm gonna read through

(34:03):
the list I put together from my notes here, But
one of the big ones is that he voiced both
Skeletor and Man at Arms. In the nineteen eighties, he
Man and The Masters of the Universe, as well as
very spin offs of that show. And then he pops
up in just about everything you know, various like an
episode of Batman, the animated series, Chippendale Rescue Rangers, Duck Tales,

(34:23):
video game voices for Stuff and the like, the Fallout
and Balder's Gate franchises, and more recently the Toy and
the Toy Story franchise he voiced Old Timer. So yeah,
he has done so much, big name in the voiceover
voice acting area. Now on the acting side of things
that I will mention briefly, he had a small part

(34:44):
as the Chief supervisor in nineteen seventy three's Westworld, and
he plays Duncan in a great essentially filmed stage adaptation
of Macbeth from nineteen eighty one that starred Jeremy Brett
as Macbeth and Piper Laurie as Lady Macbeth. Oh heard
of that. It's it's pretty. It's like I say, it's
not very cinematic. It's very much a film like stage performance.

(35:07):
But if you're at all, if you're like a kind
of a Macbeth completist, I guess, or you really like
any of these actors, it's gets worth checking out, all right.
He doesn't play much of a role in the picture,
but we have a character by the name of Teeny
Weeney who rides a racing snail. He's played by Deep
Roy born nineteen forty nine, a Kenyon, British actor who,
at four foot four, has been a go to actor

(35:29):
for creature performances and diminutive character performances for decades. He's
worked in Star Wars, Dark Crystal Flash, Gordon Gray Stroke,
The X Files, Planet to the Apes, Charlie and The
Chocolate Factory, Star Trek in More. He also pops up
very briefly in Return to oz Ah. Yes, there's another
character early on called night Hobb who's kind of this

(35:51):
bat writing goblin, who also doesn't have a tremendous role
in the in the plot, but who's played by Telo Bruckner,
who lived nineteen forty through twenty twenty, German actor who's
biggest splash. Certainly this was his biggest splash outside of
German film and television. But he has extensive German language credits.
So if if anyone out there has certainly more familiarity

(36:12):
with German language film and television than we do, maybe
you are more familiar with Kilo Pruckner's work. We also
have a couple of gnomes in the picture. We have
Ingi Wook, the gnome played by Cindy Sidney Bromley, who
lived nineteen o nine through nineteen eighty seven, British character
actor whose credits include nineteen sixty two's Night Creatures, nineteen
sixty seven's The Fearless Vampire Killers, The excellent nineteen seventy

(36:36):
one and very cinematic adaptation of Macbeth eighty ones, Dragon
Slayer nineteen eighty ones, An American Werewolf in London, and
eighty six is Pirates. Now Ingie Wook's wife is another
gnome named Urgel, played by Patricia Hayes, who lived nineteen
o nineteen nineteen ninety eight. Outside of this film. Her
other big role of this time period was the good

(36:57):
Witch Raziel from nineteen eighty eight Willow. She's she's the
good Witch. She has a memorable battle in the movie
against the bad Witch, Jean Marsh's Queen Bavmorda that is
just absolutely brutal. So I can't help but compare it
to the Gandolf Saramon Wizard duel from Peter Jackson's Lord
of the Rings, like that's it's a great sequence, but

(37:18):
it's very I don't know, it's it's it's um. I'm
not sure how to how to describe it here. It's um,
it's very clean, it's very honorable, Whereas the fight between
these two witches is just absolutely brutal and eye gouging
and they're just trying to absolutely murder each other. Uh So, yeah,

(37:39):
A Willow is not a film without its faults, but
that whole sequence is great. Okay, one more cast note
before we move on to a couple of other individuals.
But one of the three bullies in the film that
are after Bastion early in the picture and then get
their come up and slate in the picture is played
by Chris Eastman, who also played the Bully Belch in

(38:00):
nineteen ninety TV adaptation of Stephen King's It, which alone
is pretty interesting. Like this kid had the like the
bully market cornered for a short while while he was
acting as a as a youth. But then on top
of that, he's also, I believe, currently on the board
of the Canadian Anti Bullying campaign. I am someone, so

(38:20):
I don't know, like, how can it did? I don't
know the fullbackstory here, like if he felt like he
had to do this because he played two different cinematic
bullies or what the deal is. The guy who played
Scott Farcas is also on that all right. Earlier I
mentioned the visual style of the picture and how there's
something about this movie that stands out, you know, it

(38:41):
doesn't have that same it doesn't it doesn't resemble other pictures.
And the individual of note here is Count de Luis
de Rico, who was born nineteen forty six. He was
the conceptual artist, creature designer and scenery designer on the picture.
He is a German educated Italian artist and illustrator who's yeah,

(39:01):
I think his work is just really key to the
distinctive look of the never ending story outside of this movie.
He also worked. He has Skies and Clouds Artists credit
on nineteen eighties Flash Gordon, which I think totally makes
sense because both of these movies are full of swirling, psychedelic,
brightly colored clouds. His work is very surreal. He's an

(39:22):
artist and author of children's books as well, such as
nineteen seventy eight The Rainbow Goblins, and if you look
him up, you can find his website. His website features
various concepts he developed for The Never Ending Story, including
some concepts for a more humanoid werewolf style Gomork, which
I think is very interesting that I think he based

(39:43):
on a picture of himself, So it's always neat to
see those like these early mock ups of what things
might look up look like in a film and then
realize where they deviated and where things stayed the same.
You can see to his designs for the urn, the
amulet that the that the childlike Empress gives a Treyou
in the picture that is also the emblem on the

(40:06):
cover of The never Ending Story text. Oh yeah, these
illustrations are fantastic, and his Goamork, sort of his more
man Goamork, certainly looks much sadder than the than the
purely malicious wolf that's in the in the movie. Yeah. Yeah,
but it's especially interesting to keep in mind when we

(40:26):
come back around to like how the Gomork is depicted
and how the Comork describes itself in the movie versus
the book. All right, So moving on finally to the score.
So this is one of those situations where the score
was partially changed for audiences outside of in this case Germany.
So in the German cut of the film, the entire

(40:48):
score is Claus Dolinger, but for international audiences some tracks
by Georgio Moroder were added, along with the theme song,
which Moroder was behind. It reminds me a little bit
of the situation of the nineteen eighty five Legend, which
had a score by Jerry Goldsmith for the European release
and then Tangerine Dream for the American release. That always

(41:09):
puzzled me regarding Legend. With this film, I'd say there's
less of a like a sharp division between the scores,
Like both of them are very situated and based in
electronic sounds. So starting with Dallinger. Kaus Dallinger was born
in nineteen thirty six, Great German synth composer and saxophonist.
He composed the score for Peterson's nineteen eighty one U

(41:30):
Boat film Dos Boot, which is just a great synth
score on its own. I was re listening to some
of it. I haven't seen the movie in forever, but
it has a really killer lead melody that incidentally got
a techno remix in nineteen ninety two by the group
U ninety six, so we can look that up as well.
U Boat jams. Yeah. Yeah. His work on The Never
Ending Story is also great, with such tracks as Fantasia

(41:53):
and the Dad's like the mysterious intrigue of the book.
And then there's the track Bastion's Happy Flight, which just
giving the title that you know exactly what scenes I'm
talking about from the latter portion of the film that
give us that care free exhilaration. And then of course
we also have the Gomark music. Anytime the Gomork is
mentioned a reference, there's like really startling, scary music that

(42:16):
Dollinger was behind. But then we have Marouder born nineteen
fifty who did the synth editions and the theme song,
so he is the father of disco himself. Italian composer
Giorgio Moroder gives us the signature technopop tracks for the
US version, including the Swamps of Sadness track and the
Ivory Tower track. I mean, if you really get in deep,

(42:38):
you can definitely tell the difference between Moroder's work and
Dollinger's work. But I like all of it. He also
did synths on the theme song, and it was behind
the theme song The Never Ning Stories, sung by English
pop singer Limall born nineteen sixty eight, or perhaps Limall.
I'm not sure exactly how this particular artist, Moniker is pronounced.

(42:59):
I think it's an anagraham for the name Hamil, which
is the singer's actual name. Oh for real, Yeah, okay,
it's kind of like the Fantasia version version of his
name yea. And of course this this track was popular
again in recent years because they featured it prominently on
a season of Stranger Things. Oh, I guess I didn't
make it that far, I have to say, I don't.

(43:22):
I mean, you can't really take the theme song for
The Never Ning Story out of the situation. But it's
not my favorite thing that Marouder has been involved in.
I mean, it does say the name of the movie
a bunch of times and that's a good move. Yeah, yeah,
so yeah. Maroder is a legend, a true synth god,
italo disco mainstay. His nineteen seventy seven electro disco album

(43:44):
From Here to Eternity is pretty incredible and in film
and TV. His other notable works include he scored the
original Battlestar Galactica in the seventies. He scored nineteen eighty
three Scarface. In nineteen eighty four, he created a score
for nineteen twenty seven's Metropolis. Um, I think I've seen this.
I'd have to go back and look at it. He

(44:05):
scored nineteen seventy eight Midnight Express, eighties American Jiggalo eighty
twos Cat People. In eighty three, he scored the mega
hit Flash Dance, including writing the theme song Flash Dance
What a Feeling, which is just an all timer, Like,
you can't listen to this song and not get into
it as forgettable as as the movie. Maybe, uh, it's

(44:26):
a pretty great track. I don't think I know this
song what a Feeling? DA don't dadd Okay, maybe I
hold on, Okay, I'm looking it up. Oh, I absolutely
know this song. Okay, I just didn't know what it
was called or what it was from. Sorry, no, no no,

(44:47):
it's like like, like I say, it's not necessarily a
movie that you or I would have a lot of
feelings about, but the song what feelings? Yeah? Um. He
also scored nineteen eighty six is Top Gun Um, including
writing the theme song danger Zone sung by Kenny Loggins, Wow,
Highway to the Danger Zone. Yeah. And he also scored

(45:08):
over the Top from eighty seven, which I think that's
the arm wrestling film that I've never seen, but I
know some people find him using on some level Sylvester Stallone.
Is it? I think so? Yeah, Yeah, it's a Sylvester
Stallone arm wrestling picture. That one's kind of a bore
until you get to the scene where he arm wrestles
the Brundle Fly. That that's a real twist. I was

(45:29):
fixing to say. It's like I think of arm wrestling
in motion pictures, I'm gonna think of the fly or
I'm gonna think of what is it? Arms of Steel
had some hands hand Steel, Hands of Steel, Yeah, yeah,
they I wonder if the scene and Hands of Steel
was inspired by the Stallone movie might have been. Yeah,
so anyway that the music for this film is great,

(45:50):
you know, all in all this the score is just
an embarrassment of riches. I was talking with JJ prior
to coming in here. I've never actually seen the German
language cut of the film, and seem like the without
the Moroder additions to it, But that would be an
interesting exercise at some point. Yeah, unlike say the Jerry
Goldsmith kind of legend. I'm just not going to do it.
I'm sorry, I'm just tangerine dream all the way. Yeah,

(46:12):
I know your proclivities there. Okay, well wait, are we
going to the plot now? Yeah, let's jump in. Let's
crack up in the book. Okay. Well, so the movie
does start off, at least in the version I watched

(46:32):
to revisit it, with the title theme, the Moroder song,
with the with the you know, the never ending story
gets your blood pumping, ready, ready for an adventure. And
so our main character, Bastion, when we first meet him,
he wakes up from a nightmare. He's in bed, He's
obviously been having bad dreams, and he immediately finds comfort

(46:55):
in a book. So it's a good way to get
things started. We know, we know what he's all about
from frame one, that's right. The books. Books are his refuge,
books are his sacred space. And the next morning, Bastion
and his father are in the kitchen together. They're they're
having breakfast. We find out that Bastion's mother has died
and his father his father. Well, first of all, before

(47:19):
I sort of alluded to this earlier, but there's something
strange going on with Bastion's father's relationship with the blender,
in which he I think we see him pour orange
juice from a pitcher into the blender and then crack
a raw egg in there and then just blend and
drink it yep yep, drinks it down, gulps it down,
and then has like a one minute conversation with his

(47:42):
son about his disappointment in him, and then he's out
the door. It's like a Bastion is like not only
a latchkey kid. He has to like lock up and
leave for school in the morning. But yeah, my son
and I were commenting on this as we were rewatching
the film, you know, like, what a like, what kind
of a breakfast is this? I guess it's like a
true work best breakfast ride. I mean, he's such a

(48:02):
workaholic all he has time for is that ray egg
and that orange juice. Just gulp it down and go.
He needs to take a vacation to Hawaii and explore
his wolfie side. Now, you mentioned that the Bastian's mother
had died, and it isn't important to note she did
not just die. This scene would be very strange if
she had just passed away. But we get the impression
that it's it's been some time, like long enough that

(48:25):
Bastian's father is like, you need to get past this,
get on with it. You know, we got to move
on with life. And you know he's still still is
dealing with it to a large extent, and his father
is like, no, put it behind you. You need to
grow up and get with the program, right, And this
is reflectively, so he's like commenting on I think he
got a call from one of Bastian's teachers about how

(48:46):
he hasn't been doing his homework. Insteady, he's drawing horses
and his math book. And then Bastion's like, not horses, unicorns,
and then his dad's upset. He's like, hey, so you're
getting in trouble at school. You're not even trying out
for the swim team. You say you love horses, but
you're afraid to get on a real one. So why
don't you, you know, get your head out of the
clouds and put your feet on the ground. And so

(49:08):
this is all we see of Bastion's home life. But
it's it's it's well done, Like he gives us just
enough notes to sort of build things out with. And
Bastion's father is not portrayed as like mean or evil.
He is trying to be helpful. What this is what
he thinks being helpful is is like telling his son
he needs to like be realistic and stop daydreaming and

(49:28):
all that. Yeah, and like also clear, I mean, you
get the impression that he is also dealing with the
grief of this loss in a very particular way, and
on some other like thinks that well, Bastian should do
this too. This is what is sort of working for me.
If he would only just do the same thing, then
then he could move on as well. Anyway, Bastion is
on his way to school, but then he hits another obstacle.

(49:52):
Gang of bullies, three bullies that you get the feeling
that they mess with him all the time. They want
to rob him, they want his money and they end
up throwing him in a dumpster in an alley. Yeah yeah,
I hate these bullies there if they're the worst. He
climbs out of the dumpster and then they're not done
bullying him. They're like, hey, get back in there, and
so he runs away and they chase him and eventually

(50:13):
he ducks into an old bookshop to hide. And in
this scene, the old man who runs the bookshop this
is Coriander's. He's very curmudgeonly, but there's something exciting about
this space. It's full of stuff that seems old, seems
to contain secrets, and we know Bastion actually does love books,

(50:34):
and the man who runs the shop does not expect this.
As soon as the kid walks in, he looks at him.
He's like, oh, this is a kid. Sorry, the video
arcade is down the street, that's what you're looking for.
You can easily imagine a version of this where it's
the comic book guy from The Simpsons gatekeeping on poor Bastion,
worst generation ever. But yeah, so Bastion protests, He's like, no,

(50:57):
I like books. I like books, like though the one
you're reading out, But the old Man's like, no, not
like the one I'm reading now. All the books you like,
you you like Tarzan and Treasure Island and all that
those books are safe. This book not so much. Yeah,
and of course we'll learn why this book, the Never
Ending Story, is not safe, and certainly that's a book

(51:20):
a huge plot point in the film. But also I felt,
I feel like this kind of flows over into the
into the way I perceived this film as a young viewer,
that the film film itself was to some degree unsafe.
And granted, any film, if you're young enough and you
don't grasp the conventions of story and genre, any film
can feel unsafe because you don't know that like the
hero's supposed to win and so forth, or that certain

(51:41):
things are not going to happen in a PG rated
or G rated picture. But I felt like, even even
early on, I could tell that this film was somehow
buckling the against these restraints, you know that, and that
it wasn't a completely safe world that I was immersing
myself in. And for for goodness, say, I mean, there's
sphinx nipples in it. Later on, which also seemed to

(52:03):
contribute to this feeling. This scene in the bookshops setting
up the intrigue that will follow in the rest of
the plot. I think is very good and I would
place it in a league among the best scenes of
this type. Other examples would include the scene at the
beginning of Raiders of the Lost Arc where the men
from the government arrive and pull Jones out of class

(52:24):
to ask him about the arc and they have that
brief conversation. I know that that scene is often held
up is like a really great example of screenwriting of
like covering a lot of ground and raising tantalizing mysteries
in a very short amount of time. Yeah, and I
would say this scene is much like that. It does
exactly the same. So the book's not safe. What's he

(52:44):
going to do? He steals it? Of course, he leaves
a note. Yeah, the old man finds a note saying okay,
I will return it, but he runs off with the
book because he's got to read it now. It's not safe.
That's right. I mean, I think a lot of us
can relate to this, like the books you're told not
to read, that you shouldn't read when you're younger, Like,
of course, those are the ones that you're going to

(53:05):
get back to. Like I think I probably mentioned this before,
but I distinctly remember I started reading a copy of
the Silence of the Lambs when I was like in
middle school, I guess. And then and my dad took
a look at it and he's like, no, no, you
can't read that and stuck it away, and it was
like the only time you ever did that. But of
course I couldn't not read the rest of the book.
I had to go and I found where it was hidden,

(53:26):
and I had to sneak it out and finished reading
it at night and then put it back in its
hiding place. You know, I've actually never read one of
those Thomas Harris novels, but I've heard people say that
like they're trash, but they're exquisite trash, like really top tier.
Uh yeah, I don't know, it's been a long time,
but I mean I enjoyed. I enjoyed reading Red Dragon

(53:46):
in Silence, and then eventually I read Hannibal, and I
remember not liking it at the time, but but I
don't know, it's a it's a weird book. Maybe I
wasn't ready for it. I don't know. Anyway, back in
the plot, Bastion so he's got the book. Now he
makes his way on the school. But of course he's
late and he peeks in the window at the classroom
they're doing a math test. Oh brother, that's no good.

(54:09):
So instead of going into class late, he just skips
skips it entirely runs to the school attic. That's interesting
that there even is such a thing. There's an attic
at the school, and there's like a glass case containing
the key to the attic, where the glass is already broken.
I wonder if that means like he has snuck in
there before. I don't know, or it was just somebody

(54:31):
else head snuck in there. I'm not sure what the
exact situation is, but you know, we he knows what
to do. This is a probably a place he's fled
to before, and it is it is like the physical
incarnation of the refuge that he's finding in books, and
as we discussed early in the episode, yeah, it is
like it's like a temple to the fantastic in our

(54:53):
real world. It's kind of a transitional realm between our
world in the realm of Fantasia. That's right. So he
just settles in in this hidden place. It's very cozy
where no one can find him, and it's quiet, and
he takes out the book and he begins to read,
and yeah, it as I said earlier, it's just it
feels so good. Especially when I was a kid watching this,
it was like I want that. Basically what transpires next

(55:16):
is basically what transpires in the book. We get this
initial chapter that doesn't include a tray a Trey who
was not introduced yet. Instead, we meet the Nighthaub, we
meet Teeny Weeney. I think in the book there's also
a Willow, the Whisp rock Bier is here and they're
just talking about what's going on in Fantasia, and then
they talk about the Nothing, this force that's kind of

(55:38):
gobbling up the fantastic realm. Yeah, when we first meet
the rock Bier, I think the Nighthub and Teeny Weeney
are sort of camping together in the woods, and the
rock Bighter is this giant figure made of rock that
like rolls in with a manual steamroller bike or something. Yeah,
And these are great creatures and there's a good stick

(55:59):
in here, but they're all facing the same problem. The
Nothing is consuming parts of the world. There's some kind
of force that's annihilating everything. They're trying to escape it
and I think ultimately they are headed towards the Ivory Tower,
the home of the Impress of Fantasia of this world,

(56:20):
because they're they're going to find out what can be
done about the Nothing right right, And it's here that
we're going to get a scene where a Treyu is introduced.
He's summoned, he's given the quest of helping to heal
the when we find out that the childlike Empress is
sick and that she alone is not going to be
able to save everyone. And then also meanwhile, Bastion narrates

(56:41):
this bit where we learn that the Nothing has sent
its own servant out on a quest, and this servant
is the Goamorque. This is a first, absolutely terrifying glimpse
of this massive wolf creature. You know, the strong elements
of the of the werewolf and also the giant wolf
of finn Rear of Norse and as all in mythology. Yeah,

(57:02):
the Goodmork is extremely scary. I remember I remember that fear,
that like bone deep fear watching watching the Wolf as
a child. Green eyes, Oh yeah, green eye. It has
green eyes in the book as well, I should mention
in the book as in the film, the phantations at
the beginning are discussing the nothing and what soone asked, well,

(57:24):
what does it look like? And they're like, well, you know,
is it like a hole? And then they're like, well,
it's a whole would be something, but this is nothing.
They go into it a little bit more in the
book and they point out that it's it's like going
blind when you look at it. So just a little
hint of sort of the paradox nature paradoxical nature of
Michael Linda's work at times, like the idea of like
what is it like to look at something where there

(57:46):
is nothing at all? It's not like seeing an absence,
it's like like blindness. It's something that can't even really
be put into words. I mean, this reminds me of
things we've discussed on Core episodes before, where there are
you know, neurological conditions affecting to say, the visual processing
centers of the brain where you can have you can
have essentially blind spots in your vision. And you might

(58:08):
imagine that manifests as like Okay, you're looking around and
there's like a dark spot in the middle of your
vision where no light comes through, but instead for some
of these conditions. Instead, what you get is the sensation
that you're seeing a continuous scene, but in fact it's
like stitching together these two places that don't actually connect

(58:28):
in space. So you might like, I think one of
the examples we talked about is like you might look
at a dog and instead of a blank spot over
the dog's face, the dog just has no face. Yeah. Now,
then the movie doesn't really attempt to bring this idea
to life. We basically see all these like swirling storm
clouds and nebula effects going on where the nothing is

(58:51):
moving in and I don't know, we can either think
of that as I guess it's just something visual to
represent the nothing, or perhaps this is supposed to be
like sort of the event horizon of the nothing. Yeah,
I think the event horizon is a good way way
to put it. It's often, yeah, represented as like a
storm and these winds and clouds and all that. All right, Well,
at this point we have we have assigned our main
quest to our fantasia hero betray you. It's time from

(59:15):
to set off and get some answers. So he goes
to many different places, but he can't find a way
to stop the nothing. Oh and we should mention he's
equipped with. They get the agents of the Empress give
him a talisman called the Urn Yeah, which has like
the sort of intertwined serpent symbol that that looks very cool.

(59:39):
So he's got the Oorn, he's got his loyal horse, Artax,
and they're riding around trying to find answers. And they
go to one place, they find nothing. They go somewhere else,
they find nothing, not the nothing, just no answers, And
eventually they end up in the swamps of Sadness. And
here's where we sort of pick up on the quest
in more real time. And one of the first things

(01:00:00):
it happens here is something that I know horrified children
of my generation round the world, the death of our tax.
Where so they go into the swamps of Sadness and they, uh,
the story of this place is that if you let
the sadness overtake you, you will be sucked down into
the muck. And this happens to a tray U's loyal

(01:00:20):
horse here and it's it is so sad it is.
I mean, if you're watching it as an adult or
a child, it really pulls at the heartstrings because our
tax just straight up dies of sadness with a tray you,
pleading for him to hang on. I keep waffling on
which is worst, I guess because in the book the
horse talks and in the movie the horse is just

(01:00:41):
a horse. But um, and so it's certainly potent enough
in the film because there's something about the communication gap,
like how do you talk a horse out of sadness?
You can't, like, you know, it's it's he's helpless. In
the book, though, they have a whole conversation and like
they're likes he's like, hey, you gotta you know, don't

(01:01:02):
you gotta you know, push through it, you know, don't
don't give into the sadness. And so this is part
where to quote it goes like this, leave me, my
master said the little horse. I can't make it go
on alone. Don't bother about me. I can't stand the
sadness anymore. I want to die. And then our tax
explains he is sinking due to his sadness, but that

(01:01:22):
atray You is protected by the urn, and he makes
one last request to his master, a tray you. He says, quote,
I beg you to go away. I don't want you
to see my end. So heavy stuff agreed. I think
actually though, it might be even worse when it's just
the horse that can't talk. Because it can't talk, so
you have no closure. There's no last words or anything. Yeah,

(01:01:45):
there's no sense that the horse is okay with this
on any level. Oh we should also mention, Joe, I
know you're a big fan of like woodland environments that
are created artificially on a set. This is a fantastic
swamp set that they've put together here. You think this
this is probably indoor, right, I'm almost positive it is,
because I think I've seen some behind the scenes stuff

(01:02:06):
about how they pulled off this horse sinking and they
had to have like a whole like elaborate system with
like an elevator or something. Yeah, well it's brilliant. It
looks so good and so dank like this the swamp
is disgusting. But the reason there at the swamp is
I think a tray you has heard from somewhere that
he might be able to find a way to stop

(01:02:27):
to the nothing if he talks to a figure known
as Morla. The aged one is that, right, Yeah, an
ancient giant tortoise that has dwelt so long in the
swamp of sadness and just lived for so long in
general that nothing matters anymore, like not even a little bit.
And so it's it's it's very interesting on the page
and on the screen. I think they adapt it quite well.

(01:02:49):
More La talks to itself. It has like two distinct
personalities and and ultimately just really doesn't care about anything
but a tray. You keeps asking, and eventually Morla share
some wisdom. The childlike Empress, who is not old but
has always been young, needs a new name, though no

(01:03:09):
one in Fantasia can give it to her, so you're
gonna have to go see the Southern Oracle for more information. Now,
in the movie, we do not find out here that
the Empress needs a new name. I think a tray
who doesn't find that out in the movie until he
gets to the Southern Oracle, right, yes, I believe that's right. Yes,
But instead he for some reason, he's just sent to

(01:03:31):
the Southern Oracle. I can't remember exactly what Morris says,
but it's like Southern Oracle can help you, and it's
there's a funny scene where he, of course, he keeps
climbing a tree to speak to this gigantic tortoise, and
the tortoise keeps sneezing and that knocks him out of
the tree. But there is in this scene, there's a
moment where Bastion out in the real world screams, that's

(01:03:55):
something that frightens him, and his scream is heard by
the characters in the book. Yeah, this is a key,
key scene where where Bastian begins to realize that there
is this connection between his world and the world of Fantasia.
Now in the book, it doesn't occur until the next

(01:04:15):
sequence because in the book there's a whole other encounter
encounter that follows that's not depicted in the film. A
Trayu encounters Ygramole, the Mini the Horror of Horrors, which
is the strange creature that's like a swarm of hive
mind hornets that then takes the shape of a great
spider and has a deadly poison that will kill you

(01:04:35):
within an hour, but will grant the victim the power
to teleport to anywhere in Fantasia to die. It's it's
weird and wonderful, and it's in this encounter in the
book that Bastian's voice is heard by a Trayu and
the poison is how he ultimately makes it to the oracle.
And it's also where he meets Falcore, the luck Dragon,
because Falcore is caught in Nigramole's web. Oh there's a

(01:04:58):
very different meeting scene in the movies. On the movie,
a tray You is leaving the swamps of sadness, but
it's just too much. The sadness is overtaking him. He's
sinking down in the mud. And at the same time,
the Gamorc, the horrible wolf creature who every time we
catch a glimpse of him, it's almost just a blur,
but it's terrifying, and he's racing toward the hero of

(01:05:18):
the Empress who to kill him. And right, you know,
right when he's about to sink under and the wolf
is falling upon him, suddenly a white, fluffy flying serpent
just comes in out of the sky and lifts a
tray you out of the mud. And this is how
a tray You and Falcore meat ah foul Kore. I mean,
who doesn't love Falcore. It's just such a great character
and just wonderful creature design in the movie Falcore is Yeah,

(01:05:42):
a fluffy, white flying serpent kind of like the like
a like a Chinese dragon design, but very much with
a cute dog's face. Yes, yeah, wonderful, wonderful design. I
should also point out that the name is Falcore in
the movie Falco or in the English translation of the book,
but in the original German it's Fucker, but that was

(01:06:05):
changed for the English translation, I think for obvious reasons.
So A Trey You wakes up next to Falcore on
a mountaintop and they they introduce themselves. Falcore explains that
he is a luck dragon. He gets he you know,

(01:06:28):
he gets where he's going with luck, and he has
conveniently brought a tray you to the Southern Oracle. I
don't remember. Does Falcore ever explain, like really where he
came from. It just seems like he just showed up
to help. Yeah, it's just lucky like that, I guess.
So it's it's something that, like I say, in the book,
it makes more sense because they're they're sort of common prisoners.
They meet on the road at a specific place and

(01:06:50):
then their stories become intertwined. It's a little more rushed
in this adaptation. Now here. It's in this part that
A Trey You and Falkhor meet with the gnomes Ingi
Wook and Urgle. Ingi Wook is like in this room
that is kind of dusty and smoky. It's sort of

(01:07:10):
a cave, but with gnarled roots everywhere and old scrolls
and potions and all that ingi Wook is supposed to.
He fashions himself as a scientist of some form, and
he's always doing quote research, though I think this is
played for comedy, like it's questionable of what value his
research actually is, right, Yeah, he's the foremost authority though

(01:07:31):
on the Southern Oracle and has a lot of wisdom
to share. But I mean he's these these are cookie characters,
like they're constantly fighting with each other, and yeah, it's
uncertain how how much knowledge he really has to share
about any of this. But he does actually get a
tray there, so ingi Wok and Ingi Wok leads a

(01:07:52):
tray you up to sort of an observatory where they
can look down upon the first of the two gates
the tray you must pass to reach the Southern Oracle,
and the first gate is a pair of sphinxes, these
huge statues, and Ingiwik explains that their eyes stay closed
until someone who does not feel his own worth tries

(01:08:14):
to pass by, and we get to witness this with
sort of a paladin riding a horse to get through
the pass and he comes up upon them. He's got
his armor gleaming, he's holding a big spear. He looks
pretty confident until the Sphinxes open their eyes and then boom,
they zap him with laser as he sort of explodes
off his horse and dies. But a Trey us like, well,

(01:08:37):
I've got to get through there, so I'm going to
try it out. So we see him approach and he
walks underneath these huge, imposing statues. The designs are pretty scary.
It's good. Yeah, I was thinking that they always have
looked at me kind of like Ray Harry Housing creations,
like they might come to life at any second, but
they don't really, aside from the eyes opening, I see
that Ray Harry House in comparison. Yeah, it's baviously mentioned.

(01:09:00):
The sphinxes definitely have nipples. Like I said, that always
stood out to me, and for some reason, I always
interpreted that as a younger viewer, thinking, oh man, this
this movie is serious, Like this is kind of the
whole This film isn't safe, like clearly that the nipples
indicate that this is not just for kids, that this
could be who knows what could happen a tray who
is not safe? Yeah, it's true, and this is actually

(01:09:23):
in the normal sense, also a very scary scene a
tray you like, as he's walking up the dead paladin
on the ground, his visor flips back when it's blown
by the wind that you see like like a charred
face inside the mask. So this guy's burned up by
the sphinxes and a tray you He tries to walk through,
but apparently he fails the test of faith in himself.

(01:09:44):
He didn't have enough confidence, and the Sphinxes open their eyes.
They try to zap him, but he jumps. He just
barely avoids the blast. It kind of gets through on
this one on a technicality, So next he's got to
face another gait. This is the magic mirror. An inky
book explains that when they look into the magic mirror,
that people must face themselves. The kind men find that

(01:10:09):
they are cruel, brave men find that they are cowards.
When confronted with their true selves, most men run away screaming,
but something that's kind of interesting. When a tray you
goes and looks in this mirror, there's a kind of
there's like a double exposure effect in the film, where
we see a tray You looking and seeing himself, but
we also see Bastion sitting there reading the book Yes,

(01:10:31):
And strangely, Bastion detects this. It's as if he reads
a description of himself in the book. In this scene,
he gets freaked out and he throws the book away.
He says, this is going too far, but then he's
also kind of tempted. He's got overwhelming curiosity, like what
if they do really know about me and Fantasia? And

(01:10:54):
so he goes back, he retrieves the book he keeps reading,
and a tray You walks through the mirror. Yea. Now
in the book, the three gates are a bit different.
I'll note Gate one is that if you're caught in
the gaze of the Sphinxes, you have to solve every
riddle in the world until you die. Gate two is
essentially the same, the test of the true self. But
then Gate three is a keyless gate that only opens

(01:11:16):
once you no longer have the desire to pass through
but in the film, he basically comes finally to the
Southern Oracle, which is basically the same two sphinxes from before,
except now they're blue. Yes, it feels like maybe kind
of a short cut, but okay, and the Sphinxes tell
him when Trey Who arrives, they tell him, okay, here's

(01:11:36):
the solution. Here's how to beat the nothing. The Empress
needs a new name, and a trey who says, a
new name. That's easy. I can give her a new
name if you want. I can pick any name I want.
But the Southern Oracles tell him, Nope, you can't do it.
In fact, no one from Fantasia can do it. Only
a human child can give her this new name. And

(01:11:59):
he's like, well, where can I find a human? And
they say, you cannot find one inside Fantasia. There are
no humans here. You have to look outside the world
to find them. Yeah, everyone in Fantasia is a dream,
is a creation of the imagination, and a dream cannot
itself dream. So he's got to get outside somehow to
find one. But then the Sphinxes are crumbling. They tell

(01:12:22):
him he's got a hurry. You know, we don't know
how long we can withstand the Nothing, and here we're
onto the next adventure. So a tray you and Falco
are flying through the clouds. They fly over many landscapes,
mountain tops, deserts, and they're looking for the boundaries of Fantasia,
though neither one of them knows where that boundary lies.
And this scene I thought was kind of interesting because

(01:12:42):
suddenly it's right after this dire scene where we learn
about how close the Nothing is to destroying all, but
then we go straight to flying around and there's this
sense of exhilaration. There's laughter, A TRAYU and falcoor are
both laughing. I don't know. I thought it's notable that
this scene is fun right after this horrible warning given
by the Southern Oracle about impending doom if he does

(01:13:05):
not find the human child that can name the Empress.
I think maybe there's something going on here about the
childhood experience with adventure narratives, or narratives more generally, the
seeming paradox of the way that excitement for the human
child who is reading is heightened by increasing the stakes
within the story, so as the situation for the characters

(01:13:28):
becomes more dire, the experience for the reader becomes more fun,
and I think that maybe the film is suggesting something
about the ongoing contagion between the worlds here, like Bastion's
excitement with the story is infecting a tray You. I
think that's a solid interpretation, because, yeah, within the context
of what's actually going on in Fantasia, this is all

(01:13:49):
just a failed surveillance mission, you know. It's they're just
they're trying to find something and they don't find it.
But it's a very fun sequence, Like these are great
flying sequences. Who doesn't want to fly around on a
luck dragon after watching this? Back in the real world,
we could get a little scene where Bastion wishes that
a tray You and Falcore would come and ask him

(01:14:11):
to name the Empress, because he says his mother she
had a wonderful name, though he doesn't say what the
name is. Yeah, now, when they're flying along in Fantasia,
eventually a storm strikes. I guess this is the nothing
A Treyu and Falcore encounter the Nothing. It's like a
storm and it knocks a tray You off of Falcour's back.
He falls into the ocean. And in this scene there

(01:14:34):
is suddenly a storm in the real world as well,
and it blows the windows open on the attic of
the school, so Bastian has to go like refasten them
and then keep reading. And in Fantasia, a trey You
is washed ashore on a desolate rocky beach with these
great stone ruins in the background, and he encounters the
rock Biters. So we're full circle again. Rock Biter was

(01:14:57):
in one of the earliest scenes in the movie, and
we learned from him that the Rockbiter couldn't protect his friends.
He's looking at his big, strong, rocky hands but saying
how even with these hands holding onto his friends, he
couldn't hold them back from the nothing and they just
fell away into it and now they no longer exist. Yeah,
another absolute heart wrencher. So it's a real dark Knight

(01:15:19):
of the Soul scene. A tray You has lost the
r N that fell off when he fell into the sea.
He's lost falcore. Everything seems hopeless, that nothing is coming.
The Rockbiter says he wants to surrender and let the
nothing take him. And then a trey walks into the
ruins of a city. It seems to be a temple
of some sort where he sees paintings of scenes from

(01:15:41):
the adventure. He just went on all of the same characters,
making you wonder kind of like, wait, was all of
this foretold? And then there's the encounter with the Gomork. Finally,
a Trey You and the Gomork come face to face,
and the Gomork is so scary. Oh yeah, absolutely, this
is this great wolf there in the shadows, with its

(01:16:02):
gleaming green eyes and its ferocious mauve teeth and this
grumbling voice. Yeah, absolutely perfect. And rewatching with my son,
it's like he's still he's almost eleven, and he still
wouldn't really look this scene dead in the like dead on.
You know, it's kind of like looking off to the
side a little bit because it's it's pretty podent. So

(01:16:22):
I know you wanted to discuss differences between the scene
in the movie in the book. First, I guess I'll
just describe it in the movie. Is that how you
want to be? Okay? So in the movie, the Comork says,
you know, I am the Gomork, you can be my
last victim, and a Trey You says, well, I won't
go down easy because I'm a brave warrior, and the
Gomork says, well, if you're a brave warrior, then fight

(01:16:43):
the nothing, and a trey you says, I can't fight
the nothing. He wants to know why is Fantasia dying?
Where is the nothing coming from? And Gamork explains Gamork
actually knows. He says, because people have begun to lose
their hopes and dreams. The nothing is the emptiness that
is left, despair destroying this world. And Goamurk has been

(01:17:05):
trying to help the nothing because people who have no
hopes are easier to control, and whoever can control them
has power. Now I don't know if this is different
in the book, but I think this line from the
Goamurk about how people who have no hopes and just
generally I think our cynical is what he's sort of portraying,

(01:17:29):
are easier to control. I think that is actually truer
and much more profound than you might notice at first,
because it can easily sound like just boilerplate kind of
positivity about life, hope is good, etc. But specifically the
claim that people who have no hopes and dreams are
easier to control, I think that is quite true and
by no means obvious, because many people behave as if

(01:17:52):
they believe cynicism is actually an empowering type of wisdom,
like believing in nothing, hoping for nothing, trusting and nothing
makes a person smarter than everybody else around them and
harder to control. You hear a million different versions of this.
The person who says, you know, oh, I don't believe anything.
Anybody says I don't you know, oh I don't believe

(01:18:13):
any politician. They're all the same, or whatever. You know.
There's a million versions of looking at the world this way.
So some people think that makes them, you know, smarter,
harder to control. But I think exactly the opposite is true.
To embrace that kind of cynicism means you end up
with no real power of discernment. You disarm yourself of

(01:18:34):
one of the most powerful armaments you have mentally, the
ability to discern truth from falsehood, and you end up
with no real agency in the world. I think this
type of cynicism not only leads to but is in
itself actually a form of gullibility. And this is not
obvious too. Many lots of people think they make themselves

(01:18:55):
more powerful and more autonomous and more insightful by being cynical,
but exactly. The opposite is true. It is by having
hopes and imagination and the ability to put your trust
in good things that you become empowered to affect the world,
and more than that, that you have integrity in yourself. Absolutely,

(01:19:16):
I think that's a dead on. Yeah, And as I'll
discuss in just a minute here, I mean I think
all of that is present in the text as well,
and that ultimately in the film they do a nice
job of sort of condensing it down and getting it
on the screen in a way that you can easily
absorb in this ultimately brief conversation, but a conversation that
is still kind of in many ways kind of the

(01:19:37):
heart of the conflict. Yeah. So I found the scene
in the movie on rewatching quite powerful, kind of gave
me goose bumps and really profound. But anyway, so coming
back to like how it actually plays out in the conversation,
Gamork reveals, Okay, so he's serving the power of the Nothing.
He is its servant, and he was sent to kill

(01:19:59):
the only one who stopped the Nothing, a tray you
and a trey You says Okay, well, if we're both
about to die because of the Nothing anyway, then I
would like to die fighting. I am atray you so
and Gomork attacks, so they fight briefly, but Atray you
kills Gomork with his blade. Yeah, and great sequence. And
again it always gives me chill bumps to rewatch that scene.

(01:20:21):
Now in the book, Yeah, it has very much the
same energy, just a little more drawn out and provides
a little bit more detail on sort of the thesis statement. Here,
it's still a pivotal scene in which the threat to
our world in Fantasia is clearly laid out, and we
learn about the Nothing, the motivations of the power behind
the Nothing, and this strange creature known as the Comork.
And this is a section of the book that I've

(01:20:43):
gone back and reread in isolation on more than one
occasion because it's, yeah, it's really good. So just just
to highlight some of the things that are different, I'm
going to read a couple of passages as well. In
the book, the Gomork is chained and the location the
ruined city is spook City, the land of Ghosts. The
Comoric is described as a werewolf, and also the Comork

(01:21:05):
is weak and starving in the sequence, and he expects
to die before the Nothing arrives and consumes him and
seems to believe that this is far preferable. He cannot
bite through the chain because he was chained here by Gaya,
the Dark princess who gave up hope and leaped into
the Nothing with her people after chaining him. And then

(01:21:25):
he talks a bit more about the nature of werewolves
and reveals more about his own past. He says, you know,
only Fantastica. It's called Fantastica in the book is supposed
to Fantasia. There are other worlds, the world of humans,
for instance, but there are creatures who have no world
of their own, but are able to go in and
out of many worlds. I am one of those. In

(01:21:47):
the human world, I appear in human form, but I
am not human. And in Fantastica, I take on a
fantastic in form, but I'm not one of you. Ooh,
that is creepy. Yeah, almost kind of like you know,
Dark Tower vibes to this guy. You know, he's almost
like some sort of a Randolph Flag kind of a character.

(01:22:08):
He goes on to reveal that humans who are consumed
by the Nothing, they don't just vanish, They are transported
to the human world as lies. The comarc says, quote,
you ask me what you will be there? But what
are you here? What are you creatures of fantastica, dreams,
poetic inventions, characters in a never ending story. Do you

(01:22:30):
think you're real? Well? Yes, here in your world you are.
But when you've been through the Nothing, you won't be
real anymore. You'll be unrecognizable and you'll be in another world.
In that world, you Fantasticans won't be anything like yourselves.
You will bring delusion and madness into the human world.
Tell me, Sonny, what do you suppose will become of

(01:22:50):
all the spook City folks who have jumped into the Nothing.
They will become delusions in the minds of human beings.
Fears where there is nothing to fear, desires for vainful things,
despairing thoughts where there is no reason to despair. Wow. Yeah, So,
in short, the fantastic ins or Fantasians that jump into

(01:23:10):
the Nothing will become lies. And that's also related that
humans hate Fantasia or Fantastica and everything that comes from it,
so they want to destroy it, though in destroying it,
they are only flooding their own world with more fear
and delusion. In this section is also mentioned again that's
staring into the nothing is like feeling as if you're
going blind. And also in this sequence, in the Great

(01:23:33):
Film sequence, the Gomork mentions that he serves the powers
behind the Nothing, and in the book this power is
given a name, the Manipulators, and the gomorkh says quote,
when it comes to controlling human beings, there is no
better instrument than lies, because you see, humans live by beliefs,
and beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs

(01:23:55):
is the only thing that counts. That's why I cited
with the powerful and serve them, because I wanted to
share their power. And then the Gomork taunts a tray
you about the sort of lie he may be transformed
into when the Nothing takes him and tells him quote,
the human world is full of weak minded people who
think they're as clever as can be, and are convinced

(01:24:16):
that it's terribly important to persuade even the children that
Fantastica doesn't exist. Maybe they will be able to make
good use out of you. And so at this point
the Gomork relates his mission. He tells how he was
captured by the Dark Princess and never got to find
a tray you. Matreo asked him why, like, why are
you so he will? Why are you so full of hate?

(01:24:37):
And the Gomork says, because you creatures had a world
and I didn't, again touching on this idea that the
Gomork is a creature of the between, that he has
one form in our world, one form in Fantasia, but
he is not a denizen of it either, And then
in the final moments of this whole sequence plays out
much like in the film, except in the book, a

(01:24:58):
Trayu's leg is chomped by the Great Wolf and so
he is like grievously wounded in the process as well,
and is like seems like he's going to be too
slow to escape than nothing. But anyway, like like I
like I was saying, Like, the the ideas that are
more expressly presented in the book very much match exactly
what you're talking about with your interpretation of the scene

(01:25:20):
in the movie. Yeah, So the Mark serves powerful manipulators
who want to control people, and they do that by
militating against hope and imagination and trust and filling the
world with malicious lies. Yeah, it's a powerful vision of
a sort of meta real conflict. Yeah. One thing that

(01:25:43):
is interesting, you know in the book too, is that
at this point in the book you are presented with
this like greater understanding of the threat facing Fantasia, but
it's ultimately defeated, bretit rather swiftly by like halfway through
the book, so like the manipulators never really are an
issue again, and they're not really mentioned again later in
the book. So there, I guess firmly dealt with. But

(01:26:05):
it left me wanting more, which again is it's like
that's one of the great things about any work, and
it's actually something that Michael Into plays with a lot
in the book. There are always these little moments where
it sounds like he's about to go off on another
tangent relating like what happened to secondary characters when they
left the main events of the story, and he says,
but that is another story will be told another time,

(01:26:25):
which I think adds this feeling of the limitless nature
of Phantasia, that it has no limits because the limits
are just the limits of human imagination, which is almost
beyond limit. Okay, Well, after this conflict, the story is
not fully wrapped up ultimately a tray You and Falcor
have to find a way to stop the Nothing, which

(01:26:46):
they don't quite know how to do. But Falcor does
find the rn that has sunk to the bottom of
the ocean. He goes picks it up. He comes in
and he rescues a tray You from being consumed by
the Nothing, and together they fly through space as the
land of Phantasia is literally broken into pieces. The land
itself becomes like asteroids floating in the vacuum, and Detrey

(01:27:09):
uses the Oran to find his way back to the
Ivory Tower where the Empress is, and there's finally a conversation,
a meeting between a tray You and the Empress. A
tray You believes he has failed, but then the Empress
tells him he hasn't failed. He has brought her the
human Child. Though weirdly in the scene I think questionable choice.
In the movie they start calling the child the Earthling,

(01:27:31):
which is not a term they've used before. I think
that's an odd choice. But anyway, they're talking about the
human Child. They say he has suffered with you, he
went through everything you went through, and now he's here.
But he doesn't realize he's already part of the never
ending story. And just as he is sharing your story
a tray, you others are sharing his. So here we're

(01:27:55):
being brought into into the narrative as well. And they
say that, you know, they were with him when he
ran from the bullies, when he found the bookstore and
all that. But of course, Bastian we come out to
the real world in the movie and he's freaking out.
Is he reading about himself in the book once again?
And the Empress explains the boy just has to give

(01:28:15):
her a new name, that's all, and then the nothing
would be beaten. It would be so easy for him,
but he refuses to believe he really has the power
to save her by doing it, so he doesn't do it,
and the Empress begs him to save them. Everything's kind
of falling down. The tower is crumbling, a tray he falls,
he might fall down dead, and Bastition finally overcomes his hesitation.

(01:28:39):
He runs to the window. He throws down the book
and he cries out a name into the storm outside,
a new name for the Empress. I think we're to
understand it's his mother's name, but interestingly, we don't hear
what it is it's muffled by the storm. Yeah, it's
in the book. It is Moonschild. That's the name he chooses,
which I guess is probably not his money's name in

(01:29:00):
the real world. But I was in on this rewatch.
I couldn't understand what he was yelling either, and I
was like, well, I'm just going to use the subtitles handily,
click over the subtitles and see what he's saying. But
the subtitles for for the version I was watching, when
he yells his mother's name, it's just like it just
says yelling, so I guess. But as I leaned into it,

(01:29:21):
it's like, I think I can hear him yelling Moonschild.
I think he's yelling Moonchild, but it's not distinct. And
this does something sort of everything goes dark and we're
down to just the Empress, I guess, in Bastion together
in this dark environment. The Empress in her hand is
holding a single grain of sand that is glowing. She
says it's all that remains of her vast empire. But

(01:29:44):
she says Fantasia can be recreated if Bastion wishes. All
he has to do is wish for it, and he says,
how many wishes do I get? And she says, as
many as you want. Yeah, this becomes crucial in the
rest of the novel because we've learned that with each
wish he makes, he loses part of his memory of
his life in the real world. I mean, I guess
that's a that's a different kind of story, with a

(01:30:06):
new kind of complexity, But it is a oh, I'm
gonna say, a powerfully emotional ending for this, this story
about the joys and potency of childhood imagination. Uh, you know,
she's teaching him how to change everything with creativity. Yeah. Absolutely,
I mean it's ultimately a real and the real boost

(01:30:28):
of a story, you know, the power of of of
creative thought, the power of the imagination, the power of
actual childhood in one's inner childhood. And then of course
we get we get this very notable scene, right, we
get one more great flying scene to end everything out. Yeah. Well, first,
so Bastion himself rides Falcore. He imagines himself writing Falcore.

(01:30:51):
So Falcore is back, and the Rockbiter is back, and
a tray you and Artex and all the characters are
restored just by him imagining them. They are now no
longer or destroyed by the Nothing. Now they're back to
life again. They're carrying on with their lives. It's like
the Nothing never was. But then, of course, the final
merger of the two worlds happens when Bastion rides Falcour

(01:31:12):
out into the real world over the streets and terrorizes
his bullies like the ones who beat him up earlier,
and Falcour chases them into the dumpster. Doesn't feel too
vengeful because he doesn't actually hurt them, and Falcore is
not going to hurt anybody. Falcour's sweet. It's just they
just get scared. They get a good scare. Yeah, it's
a very satisfying scene. I don't think this doesn't happen

(01:31:35):
in the book. I'm pretty sure something doesn't happen in
the book. It kind of runs completely opposite of the
whole world building exercise that Enda is doing here. But
I cannot fault at all for just the pure cinematic
experience of it, and also having watched it with my
son at two different ages already, Like, this is a
real satisfying sequence. Kids love it, so I can tell

(01:31:57):
exactly why I loved this movie as a child. But
I loved it as an adult too. This one holds
up great. I think it's it's a beautiful movie, absolutely
and uh yeah, And I encourage everyone out there if
you if you're a fan of this film and you
haven't read Michael Linda's novel, pick it up like because it's,
like I say, the first half of it is going
to give you a great literary version of what you've

(01:32:19):
grown to love on screen. And then the second half
of the book kind of goes in a slightly different
direction but is full of wonderful adventures and strange creatures
and also lots of thought provoking material. So highly recommend
both of them. All Right, Well, on that note, I
guess we're going to go and close this episode up.
We're gonna enclose the never Ending story Book for this episode,

(01:32:40):
but we'll be back in the future. Just a reminder
that we're primarily a science podcast with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most
serious concerns and just talk about a weird film on
Weird House Cinema. If you want to see a full
list of the movies that we've covered on the show,
you can go to a couple of places. I have
a blog at some new to music dot com where
I'm log about the film's recovering, and like with this film,

(01:33:02):
I'll probably put in a bunch of like embedded examples
of some of the music that I talked about here
if you want to go check that out. Also include
a link for the artwork that sort of thing. But
also if you've used letterbox dot com, it's L T
T E R boxd dot com. Well, we have a
profile on there Weirdhouse, and if you go there you'll
find a list of all the movies we've covered, and

(01:33:23):
sometimes there'll be even a preview of what's coming the
next week. Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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(01:33:50):
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