Ye Olde Inn

The Plot

Fantastica is dying because all the magical *Play-Doh Factories* who live there are just too damn heroic and impossible to create something. Actually, to create anything. They are literally afraid of Nothing. That's okay, because they have one hope: send a constantly shouting retarded *Play-Doh factory* *tasty treat* Geronimo on a quest to drown his freakin' horse and be chased by an ineffectual giant wolf moron. Fantastica deserves to lose, because instead of writing in the book that Bastion needed to name the creamy-white princess in the giant ivory phallus, they sent a "Native-American" on a journey to talk to a giant suicidal turtle and to have lasers shot at him by two giant-breasted sphinxes. The Nothing deserves to lose, despite having rid Fantastica of a stupid bat, racing snail, dirty brown rapist, and giant retarded rock guy, it sent a wolf after a freakin' Indian and not a cavalryman with an infected blanket. The whole lynchpin of the first half was to have Bastion name someone. The whole second half was to have Bastion rebuild the world in his own image. Now, here are the problems with that. Bastion did not have any friends, and admittedly only liked books. The first person with whom he had even a slight connection, the bookstore owner, he freakin' stole from. Now, if you replace books with drugs, and the bookstore owner with Bastion's drug-dealer, then the "this one is not safe for you, because it will send you on a trip in a school attic during a thunderstorm" might have made more sense. Bastion is a lying, cheating, stealing outcast with delusional thought processing. He absolutely isn't intelligent, and essentially wins the story by not failing. After the Child-Like (but totally legal) Empress has to murder 99% of Fantasia just to get up the gusto to tell the stupid fraggler what his task actually is, he jumps to Fantastica and immediately fraggles everything up. AURYN reads "Do as thou will," which is the most fraggled up thing to give to a deranged little fraggler like Bastion. As soon as Bastion starts to sort of fix *lemony goodness*, his own hubris turns against him and that bitch Xayide wields him like a wrecking ball of angsty stupid. He ultimately realizes that his love for fiction is what everything is about (which is perfectly healthy). Bastion technically fails and gives up, but Atreyu decides to stop shouting long enough to finish the job and Bastion freakin' quits Fantastica. Bastion stealing the goddamn book is never even resolved, because when the bastard apologises, the bookstore owner denies having ever had it (the drugs).

The Idea
The basic point of The Neverending Story is that television and movies are evil, and that names like Moonchild aren't retarded. Its a meandering and poorly conceived novel that spends too much time describing fantastic locations (despite the point of the novel being to imagine things yourself) and only occasionally makes any kind of point. These points are pulled arbitrarily out of the freakin' aether, and in no way reinforce what has transpired before. If the Neverending Story were a math problem, it would be (1 + -1) + 1 = Whatever.

You know what actually sucks? Using memes to convey a point. Like how the point of TNS was about how Fantastica sucked so badly it was trying to die, but then revived itself by summoning a thief to plagiarize other books to fix it. Also, the movies were stupid.

I asked for this:

knightkrawler wrote:Make a thread titled "The Neverending `The Neverending Story' Rant".
I'm vaguely interested. That's because I like rants.
To me, "Rant" is almost like a literary genre in and out of itself.
I'm a rant-reader and sometimes I also write little rant pieces.

I like rants for the sake of them being rants and the person ranting conveying a point. Or more than one point.
I would like to watch the movie again, if only to see if I find it so good as an adult. I seriously think not.
I would NOT like to watch any successor of the first film, because these were steaming piles of *lemony goodness* even for me then 9 or 12 year old fantasy nerd. Same period as first time HQ, Lord of the Rings from Ralph Bakshi, and Fighting Fantasy books, for me. I knew even then where the quality is and where possibly-drug-related fever fantasies compile in a bowl of insalata mista puréed to the point where you can't see or taste the ingredients.
Also, I feel the books by Michael Ende are used as an excuse to create badly conceived wussy-fantasy worlds for little girls containing nothing but beautiful boys (yes, beautiful, not handsome), "children of the dark" (mostly said blond beautiful boys in black spandex trying to come off as credible werewolf badasses), soul ghouls, and ghoul souls, and girls desperately squeezed in as a female heroic (well, duh!) protagonist, by far badasser than the badass beautyboyz. How many movies have you seen or heard of that sounded or looked exactly like a poor girl's Twilight? How many of them were conceived as one book (to be precise, as one novel with a plot on its own)? None. All novels written today that don't carry the name of Auster or Patterson are conceived as moneymaking howmanythefuckyouwantilogies that are then, because that's where the money really is, made into sloppy movies showing you by way of images that there is no imagination whatsofuckingever involved.
That's not the fault of TNS, though. That's the fault of the audience. It's not even escapism anymore, it's just being served your dreams and imagination on a plate. A plate with puréed salad on it.

I haven't read the ENTIRE TNS rant yet, but I would like to say this:
The movie was made for kids, and for kids it works. As an adult, I don't like it that much...I might
put it on in the background sometimes just for "fantasy" noise, especially after I've already watched
Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or some other fantasy movie way too much recently.

Aside from this...What the Hell...where did this come from?? Why just attack a kids movie out of nowhere?

Sheesh.

I didn't attack it out of nowhere. And what I attacked was the novel.

The first two movies encompass (sort of) the story of the novel. The author is also a big turd.

Happier now rant is over? Hehe. Ill back you up. As a kid i thought it was awful a as a parent i just tell my daughter to watch lotr instead. Neverending story...even the name is bullshit. Talk about false advertising! Lol my mini rant over too. Yay go me!
Now do t get me started on them potter movies!! Lol

Just to back up chaotic...this wasnt out of nowhere. Check ou thantos' sculpting log where this little seed started!

I practically begged for a thread like this.
And now what's not to like about HP, amp?

You want to talk about Hubris, let's talk about the Hobbit movie. That movie is rape, plain and simple. If you liked that movie, and have read the book, you cannot be a fan of JRR Tolkien.

I'm so not going to read these