I’m normally one who freaks out when I hear of a movie remake, especially when the movie in question is such an iconic one from my youth. When I heard that Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way production company and Kennedy and Marshall were planning a remake I inwardly shuddered. I cried in the dark. I was in personal anguish and turmoil. Why oh why was my childhood being abused in this way?

I calmed. I had a copy of the movie on Blu-ray. I turned out the lights and loaded it up and made myself comfortable.  They couldn’t take this from me, at any rate. I hadn’t really watched it from an objective viewpoint before though, so I tried to clear my mind as much as possible.

I read the book more recently than I had watched the movie, so I would use this as part of my basis for comparison.

I lost any hope of objectivity as soon as that synthesized beat of the theme music started. Limahl may have had a rocky time with Kajagoogoo, but he hit a homerun with the music for this movie.

We sit through Bastien’s traumatic bully experiences, a moment of unabashed thievery, and Mr. Bux gets to his hideout and begins the book, and brings us along. Henson’s animatronic puppetry is almost magical. The characters are believable, detailed and larger than life. I make a double take as I notice Deep Roy is in there – holy crap, I never made that connection before!

Bastien for his part is pretty forgettable. His part in this movie is not pronounced, but they only really touched on the first part of the book for all that. They did try to develop him a bit with the bully sequence, which isn’t present in the novel.

I now find myself unconsciously drawing lots of comparisons to the book, noting that the Will-O-Wisp is absent, with the Rockbiter taking his/her/its lines. Not a big deal, special effects in 1984 were not quite as easy as they are today. I think they made the right choice, rather than use a shoddy special effect to cover the book more directly.

I try to ignore this once Atreyu is introduced, noting mentally his lack of green skin and blue hair. Noah Hathaway was fantastic in the part though, and carries it believably and strongly.

I pause the movie, go get a drink, remind myself that I should be watching the movie for what it is, and judging based on that. Unpause.

The movie proceeds apace, a fantastic journey, great effects, and my 30-year old self cried just as much as my 6 year old self did at the end of the swamp scene.

We get a look at Falkor, fantastic, majestic… oddly plastic looking. High definition is not a friend to all, I guess. The flaws in the puppet are worst in the close ups, when the speech doesn’t even come close to matching the mouth movements and the whole face is disjointed and phony looking. Ouch, my childhood.

I give the movie credit for having a lot of things that would not be ‘politically correct’ nowadays. The ideas of apathy, helplessness, anger and such aren’t often touched on in children’s cinema nowadays. The breasts on the sphinxes would be hard to put into a PG movie nowadays, but the sculptures are real works of art. Beautiful yet intimidating. The violence implied when meeting with Gmork, the blood. Sadly our lives are being sanitized away from real exploration of art.

We build to our climax and I’m enjoying myself immensely. I am only partially put off by how bad Gmork looks in the scene in the abandoned city. Tears flow when the Childlike Empress pleads with Bastien, I cheer when the bullies are dealt with in the end.

The NeverEnding Story is a fantastic movie. Sure, it has definite flaws that aren’t helped by the aging process, but it’s standing the test of time. I put it on for the kids the next day and watch their reactions to it. My oldest is enchanted, to the point of violently shushing her siblings when they get too loud. My middle child is a year younger than I was when I first watched it. She likes the critters but doesn’t seem to follow the story.  Both of them are in tears during the swamp scene. My youngest just wonders why Cars isn’t on the TV then goes and plays with his toy cars. Overall a positive experiment.

It passes the tests. It’s a great movie that shouldn’t be forgotten. That being said, I look again at the differences between the book and movie, and I realize, it might not be a bad idea for a remake. We have a lot of untouched things in the book to address, the shapeshifter, the Old Man, and much of the character backgrounds can be reworked to be much closer to the novel. Make two movies, one for each half of the novel.  I often wondered how a decent sequel would turn out, rather than these lovely barely video worthy sequels we got before.

Final Verdict? The NeverEnding Story is a classic piece of cinema. It’s well realized, a great journey, has a fantastic lead actor driving it, and isn’t dumbed down like so many children’s movies are. It’s a solid 7 of 10.

The remake is going to be made whether I want it to or not, so instead of dwelling on that, lets see about the possibilities of bringing more of this great book to the screen. It has potential, don’t let me down Hollywood.