The Neverending Story
Since this is one of my all time favorite childhood movies, I figure why not do a walkthrough for it. I’ve seen this movie loads of times as a kid, but I didn’t appreciate it as much as I do now that I’m older. It’s such a great story about a boy named Bastian who overcomes his fears, and that’s just on surface level. I didn’t begin to realise till I got older how many metaphors there were in this movie, and how there’s a message in every scene. Usually when I review movies I pick most of this stuff out but even after doing a review, I still won’t notice certain things till like a year or two later, and this is a prime example of that.
And like all my walkthroughs I’m gonna assume you’ve already seen the movie, so I’m not gonna explain every scene. I think the movie is called the Neverending Story cause in regards to your life, you can change it at any moment and your life has infinite possibilities. I’m just gonna walk through the movie and pick out my favorite scenes and scenes that I feel I can discuss in depth:
And like all my walkthroughs I’m gonna assume you’ve already seen the movie, so I’m not gonna explain every scene. I think the movie is called the Neverending Story cause in regards to your life, you can change it at any moment and your life has infinite possibilities. I’m just gonna walk through the movie and pick out my favorite scenes and scenes that I feel I can discuss in depth:
1. Bastian (B) talks with his father, who tells him he’s been slipping on his grades. You get the feeling B is not really worried about it, but you also get the feeling he does care in some way.
2. I always loved these huge shots of the city, and this was in 84. Believe it or not there aren’t many directors today who even do this.
3. B later gets chased by bullies…
4. He runs into a shop, meets the librarian and they talk about books. And its cool cause in books you can make a story as long as you want, and movies that are based on books are usually better and higher rated than most (stuff like harry potter, lord of the rings etc)
5. I always thought the cover of the book was badass…
6. He steals it, and begins reading it in some dark room at his school…
7. Sup big guy…
8. He and these guys talk about “The Nothing” coming over and destroying the land. As a kid I always thought the term “nothing” was funny, especially given how they use it in the movie “the nothing is coming, the nothing is destroying us, etc” but I didn’t realise this till I got older that its really a metaphor. The Nothing represents people who make excuses for not doing anything with their lives. And really, nothing, is gonna hurt them, and nothing is gonna happen if they don’t… do anything with their lives.
9a 9b. I literally just realized this right now, which is why I love doing these walkthroughs cause they make you think about these things so much learn more about these movies. But one of the guys here has a snail, while the other has a bat. You’d think the first person out the gate would be the guy with the bat since they can fly (and eventually he does) but the first person out the gate is the one with the snail. To me, this scene is telling us that even the slowest people, can get out there and be more successful than the fastest, and just because your fast doesn’t always mean your gonna get there first.
10. I honest to god have no idea where this scene came from, or if it’s a deleted scene or something but… very random…
11. The Ivory Tower…
12. Love the outfits…
13. The Headmaster is looking for a warrior to face The Nothing…
14. Atreyu (A) arrives, and I always loved his hair lol.
15a 15b. He accepts the challenge, and dude gives him a necklace. And like the book, I always thought the necklace was badass.
16. Love this image…
17. I’m a pretty tough guy and very rarely do I tense up when watching certain scenes, but this scene is still tough to watch. A tries to drag his horse through the thick mud but he gets stuck and pulled under.
18. Now he’s by himself. And this is another scene showing us that you need to be strong and if you believe in yourself, you can do it.
19a 19b. Later on he stumbles upon a giant turtle and tells him about The Nothing, but the turtle doesn’t seem to care. To me, the turtle represents people who stay inside all day and don’t really care what happens to em. And I’ll be honest I’ve felt that way in certain points in my life.
20. I always loved this image…
21. Falcore, the flying dog (whatever you wanna call him) later rescues him.
22. Later on, he tells A that he not only rescued him, but flew him about 98% to his destination. I guess you could say Falcore was like an angel. He saw A was struggling, but wasn’t giving up and decided to help him. That’s very important in life, to keep trying and never give up.
23a 23b. A later meets this old guy who tells him about the southern oracle: these forces trying to keep him away from his destination.
24. He says if you’re not brave they’ll shoot you down. To me, this scene represents the people in life who will knock you down if you’re not brave enough.
25. But A is brave enough, and he takes his chances.
26. He talks to the stone heads for a few moments, but eventually he’s able to run past them before they get a shot on him.
27a 27b. After running past the stone heads, he ends up in the snow. He later finds this mirror and when he looks through it, he sees Bastian, who looks up from the book and sees him too. I think I realized this even when I did the review, but their seeing each other, and Bastian is supposed to see himself. He’s supposed to realise that A is representing everything he’s supposed to be, mostly about being brave.
28a 28b. When he realizes this he throws the book across the room, not being able to accept what’s going on, even though I’m sure he knows.
29a As I mentioned in 27a 27b A actually ran through and jumped past the twins before they were able to fire at him. But in doing that, he actually cheated, so now he has to face them again. This is telling us that in life, you can’t always skip past your problems. As you can see here the color of the twins are now blue, as apposed to orange. The definition of blue is described as sad / depressed, and I guess that describes them here: their sad for him that he would cheat to run past his problems.
30. Reminds me of Free Willy…
31a 31b. Eventually A ends up back on land and runs into the Rock Man again, who tells him he tried to protect the guy with the snail and the bat but they ended up slipping away. It’s alot like how I mentioned earlier, about how it doesn’t matter how strong you are, or how fast, you can still fail. Being big and strong won’t help you in life, and as we see here, Rock Biter, the giant that he is, still gets his pals taken.
32. Love this scene, even though its badly edited…
33. Falcore takes A to the princess, and I always loved this scene. She’s just so cute.
34. Eventually she talks with Bastian, and tells him that he has to take control of his life.
35. He gets revenge on those bullies, which is always cool.
PS sorry for the little gap down below. I had to add, move around and delete so many pictures it created all these empty little folder slots. I tried deleting them but the stupid site won’t let me, and I even went on google and it didn’t help me either. Their called sliders, and they have an option to delete em but they never work, so I just dragged em all to the bottom of the page. It’s not the biggest deal in the world but it is to me cause I’m such a perfectionist.