Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob
Speaker 1: Lamb and oh we have one of my favorites here
Speaker 1: for you today, one of my favorite movies, and I
Speaker 1: think it was a pretty solid episode as well. Hopefully
Speaker 1: my enthusiasm and Joe's enthusiasm for the peace shines through.
Speaker 1: This is going to be our episode covering The Never
Speaker 1: Ending Story, the classic, really generation defining nineteen eighty four
Speaker 1: fantasy film. We originally published this episode four seven, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. Please enjoy.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: today we're going to be covering a well known classic.
Speaker 3: We are finally getting around to the nineteen eighty four
Speaker 3: fantasy film The Never Ending Story, something that I know
Speaker 3: many people of my generation grew up watching over and
Speaker 3: over on VHS tapes. But Rob, I think, if I
Speaker 3: understand correctly, both the movie and the book here are
Speaker 3: very dear to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I don't have as long a history with
Speaker 1: the book. The book is one that I ended up
Speaker 1: purchasing at some point. It was on the shelf, and
Speaker 1: then I finally got around to reading it as well
Speaker 1: when I got back into the film with my son
Speaker 1: a few years back. But I instantly it was one
Speaker 1: of these situations you never know exactly what the source
Speaker 1: material for something that you hold dear is going to
Speaker 1: be like. But I was really blown away by Michael
Speaker 1: Inda's novel. In my experience, it delivered everything I wanted
Speaker 1: to of the never Ending Story as I knew it,
Speaker 1: but then adding all of these other dimensions to it,
Speaker 1: and of course an entire half a book plus on
Speaker 1: top of what we see in the film, which.
Speaker 3: I haven't read the book, but from what I understand,
Speaker 3: the other half of the book not featured in the film,
Speaker 3: goes in a much darker direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's fair to say. I've made the
Speaker 1: comparison before to like Doune and Doune Messiah, where the
Speaker 1: first half of The Neverending Story is basically done about
Speaker 1: a hero's ascension and then the second half the Doom
Speaker 1: Messiah portion of the Neverending Story. It is kind of
Speaker 1: about the complications that occur when one achieves this power,
Speaker 1: like what does that disrupt? What new challenges are presented?
Speaker 1: And so forth. So yeah, I've been wanting to cover
Speaker 1: the Neverending Story on Weird House for a while. You know,
Speaker 1: it's certainly a mainstream film and one that I think
Speaker 1: many listeners have already seen, so it's weirdness doesn't emerge
Speaker 1: from its unfamiliarity. It's, in many ways, I think, a
Speaker 1: generation defining film. Like you said, it's one of these
Speaker 1: films of the sort of the dark fantasy films of
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, alongside the likes of The Dark Crystal
Speaker 1: and so forth that made a huge impact on a
Speaker 1: lot of young viewers. But I feel like this one
Speaker 1: hits a little differently than just about any other particular
Speaker 1: dark fantasy film of this time period I can think of,
Speaker 1: Like you know, did a Dark Crystal Return to Oz? Yes,
Speaker 1: they all have these fantastic, rich worlds. They all present,
Speaker 1: often a young viewer with the with some dark imagery
Speaker 1: or ideas, But there's nothing quite like nineteen eighty four
Speaker 1: as the never Ending Story.
Speaker 3: Well, one thing I didn't realize until just this moment
Speaker 3: when you made the comparison is the thematic overlap between
Speaker 3: the Never Ending Story and Return to Oz, which are
Speaker 3: both essentially stories that integrate a fantasy world with the
Speaker 3: mundane human environment in the imagination of a child, and
Speaker 3: that human child character is essentially being like, there are
Speaker 3: there are adults around that child trying to tell them
Speaker 3: not to have an imagination anymore, and the child is
Speaker 3: rebelling by dreaming up all of these fantastic places and
Speaker 3: creatures and adventures.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the adults are also helping to foster
Speaker 1: a traumatic world that is sending the young person even
Speaker 1: further into the world of fantasy. So this one should
Speaker 1: be a fun one to discuss here. I tell you what,
Speaker 1: I was trying to think of an elevator pitch. At first,
Speaker 1: it was difficult because I mean, it's the never Ending Story.
Speaker 1: It's like, all you have to say is that, and
Speaker 1: I have this instant, crystallized idea of what it is.
Speaker 1: But when I thought a little hard, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's essentially Feris Buehler's day off, except for book nerds.
Speaker 3: That's very good. And in fact, I was going to
Speaker 3: get into this later in the discussion, but maybe it's
Speaker 3: good to bring up right here at the top. When
Speaker 3: I think back on my childhood feelings about the never
Speaker 3: Ending Story. One way in which I think it is
Speaker 3: distinct from a lot of these other fantasy films is
Speaker 3: that in this movie, the things about it that stuck
Speaker 3: with me the most were actually not the fantasy elements,
Speaker 3: not the creatures within Fantasia, but like the scene where
Speaker 3: and we'll describe the plot in more detail later, but
Speaker 3: like the scene where the human child Bastion goes into
Speaker 3: the bookshop and speaks with the man bookshep, or the
Speaker 3: scenes where he has snuck away from school and I
Speaker 3: guess he's still in the school building. He's snuck away
Speaker 3: from class and he's just hiding out reading a book
Speaker 3: by himself. Those scenes, when I was a child, they
Speaker 3: had a really powerful sort of magic about them, just
Speaker 3: like the excitement at the idea of being alone, away
Speaker 3: from the scheduled existence of like school life and activities
Speaker 3: and all the things adults are telling you to do,
Speaker 3: and just getting to hide with a book and read
Speaker 3: and these sort of dusty corners. It was almost intoxicating.
Speaker 1: Oh, I absolutely agree. And yeah, these scenes the bookshop
Speaker 1: and the school attic where Bastion holds down and reads
Speaker 1: the never ending story. Yeah, both of these sequences in
Speaker 1: the film I think are very true to how they're
Speaker 1: presented in the book, And yeah, as a child and
Speaker 1: as an adult, there's something about that, like, yeah, just
Speaker 1: like hiding away and reading and then and eating that sandwich,
Speaker 1: the scene where Bastian's like, yes, oh yeah, I'm hungry.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get out my lunch from today and
Speaker 1: eat it. Like I get a little snacky every time
Speaker 1: I watch that sequence.
Speaker 3: So not so much about the sandwich itself, but I
Speaker 3: thought of the comparison of the reading scenes where he's
Speaker 3: hiding out with the book are almost as like carnally
Speaker 3: appetizing as really good food scenes in other movies, like
Speaker 3: you know, the cooking scene and Goodfellas or something where
Speaker 3: you're like looking at delicious foods and you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: I've got to go eat now. This movie does that
Speaker 3: for hiding away with the book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the attic especially is great because you look at
Speaker 1: the other environments that the real world Bastion has to
Speaker 1: encounter like that. We'll talk about him in more depth
Speaker 1: in a minute, but like the kitchen of his house
Speaker 1: where he has sort of breakfast with his dad, or
Speaker 1: certainly the school hallways, like these are so dry and
Speaker 1: sterile and just you know, just devoid of joy. But
Speaker 1: here in the in the attic, we have this kind
Speaker 1: of like transitional realm, this place where they the boring
Speaker 1: and like anti creative forces of his life, where they
Speaker 1: set aside all of these like remnants of imagination, and
Speaker 1: so you see things like animal heads and what like
Speaker 1: Knight's armor and so forth in the background, like all
Speaker 1: these and even just like suggestive shapes where it's like
Speaker 1: this is like a lost temple of the imagination.
Speaker 3: Why are there swords in the attic of the school?
Speaker 1: I don't know, but yeah, it works absolutely because yeah,
Speaker 1: there are other aspects about that. As I was, I
Speaker 1: rewatched it with my son, which was very nice, and
Speaker 1: maybe he even brought it. It's like, well, why why
Speaker 1: has no one noticed that that bastion has not come home?
Speaker 1: Like it's night time out? Is his dad really working
Speaker 1: that late? Well?
Speaker 3: Maybe, I mean you kind of have to press that
Speaker 3: don't think about that button then, yeah, because otherwise it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: there's gonna be an emergency here. Everybody's like where has
Speaker 3: the child gone?
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, well, let's go ahead and listen to
Speaker 1: the trailer audio for this film.
Speaker 4: What is the secret of this Enchanted book. What wonders
Speaker 4: are hidden within its pages? What magical spell does it
Speaker 4: cast on all who read it? What is the secret
Speaker 4: of the never Ending Story?
Speaker 2: It is impossible.
Speaker 4: You will enter a world where a young boy's imagination
Speaker 4: becomes a vivid reality. The world of betray You and
Speaker 4: our tacks, the rock Biter and a good and kind
Speaker 4: gnome a world that is vast and eternal, out, treacherous
Speaker 4: and dazzling, unforgettable and free. Or anyone who's ever made
Speaker 4: a wish, believed in a fantasy, or had a dream,
Speaker 4: this is the never Ending Story.
Speaker 1: All right. I think that captured some of the sweeping music,
Speaker 1: some of the energy of the picture.
Speaker 3: Now, Robert, I don't know if we've ever discussed this before,
Speaker 3: but I made a connection in my brain between your
Speaker 3: long running relationship with this movie and the kind of
Speaker 3: music that is featured in the soundtrack of this movie.
Speaker 3: I bet we probably got some of it in the
Speaker 3: trailer there, though I hadn't listened to the trailer ahead
Speaker 3: of time, so I don't know. But is there a
Speaker 3: relationship between the never Ending Story and electronic music scores?
Speaker 3: In your mind?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, yeah, definitely. And it's gonna be fun when
Speaker 1: we get into the musicians, respond onstable because you've got
Speaker 1: a couple of really big names here. You I mean,
Speaker 1: you have Claus Dollinger, who is like a great German
Speaker 1: synth composer and saxophonist. He's the guy who scored nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one's Dost Bout. And then you also have Giorgio
Speaker 1: Moroder adding these additional synth tracks and also that really
Speaker 1: catchy theme music for the US release of the film.
Speaker 1: And yeah, especially Moroder. Moroder is a huge name in
Speaker 1: electronic music in Italo disco. I mean, he's just he's
Speaker 1: a titan of the sound. So yeah, well we'll get
Speaker 1: into him in a bit, but yeah, it's you can't
Speaker 1: just take Marouder out of like eighties films and expect
Speaker 1: anything to sound the same. It's definitely a movie where
Speaker 1: like the ideas of the book, the music, and also
Speaker 1: something very distinctive about the visuals all come together. I
Speaker 1: think we've talked before about sort of the sameness of
Speaker 1: the visual flare of a lot of films, certainly of
Speaker 1: the of the modern period. Know how, certain like monsters
Speaker 1: will sort of look the same, space suits will sort
Speaker 1: of looked the same, and nothing else really quite looks
Speaker 1: like this movie, and part of it has to do
Speaker 1: with the uh, the artist that was involved in designing
Speaker 1: these various creatures and scenes.
Speaker 3: That's a good point. So I was going to raise
Speaker 3: this when when we were talking about the plot, but
Speaker 3: actually we could address it now. So yeah, I couldn't
Speaker 3: help but compare this to a new fantasy film that
Speaker 3: I saw over the past weekend. I went and saw
Speaker 3: the Dungeons and Dragons movie, which I quite liked it was.
Speaker 3: I thought it was great. It was funny, you know,
Speaker 3: tightly written, well structured, plot zipped right along, had a
Speaker 3: really nice cast. So basically thumbs up to all that.
Speaker 3: It was a grand old time. But I do have
Speaker 3: to admit I was not crazy about the way the
Speaker 3: movie looked. Not because it looked bad. It didn't, you know,
Speaker 3: like there was nothing ugly about it. It's not like
Speaker 3: Jason X or something. But it just looked the same
Speaker 3: way most big budget, mainstream genre movies I see these
Speaker 3: days look so like I feel like all the Marvel
Speaker 3: movies I've seen look this way too, And I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm not involved in cinematography, so I don't know exactly
Speaker 3: what this quality is maybe if you out there listener,
Speaker 3: you know more about cinematography and I don't know how
Speaker 3: movies are color rated and all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 3: like could explain what this thing I'm talking about is.
Speaker 3: It's this quality of big mainstream genre movies today all
Speaker 3: looking very smooth and digital somehow, like everything feels very
Speaker 3: evenly well lit, and everything looks clean, and everything's just
Speaker 3: kind of like sealed and seamed up and kind of
Speaker 3: paved over with this digital sheen, like the whole movie
Speaker 3: has been face tuned. You know those face tune apps
Speaker 3: like people can use on I don't know if they use.
Speaker 1: On Instagram like a face or something.
Speaker 3: Well, no, I don't mean fully like, I don't mean
Speaker 3: the ones that like give you a cat face people.
Speaker 3: There's some kind of apps people, I'm gonna sound really
Speaker 3: stupid people who actually know what these things are. But basically,
Speaker 3: there are these apps people use to make their faces
Speaker 3: look quote better. I don't know if they actually end
Speaker 3: up looking better, but like with the other you know,
Speaker 3: they'll run a selfie through them and their face comes
Speaker 3: out just looking like smoother and more sort of evenly
Speaker 3: lit and more. I don't know, like it sort of
Speaker 3: takes out some of the texture and the individuality of
Speaker 3: the image so.
Speaker 1: That they come out as a lie. Okay, that's fitting
Speaker 1: for what are we discussing later on?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know. So I mean, I don't want
Speaker 3: to sound overly harsh, because again, I mean, I liked
Speaker 3: the I liked the D and D movie. I've enjoyed
Speaker 3: plenty of other movies that did look like this, But
Speaker 3: I feel like the lack of visual distinctiveness does kind
Speaker 3: of take away from my enjoyment. And I couldn't help
Speaker 3: but keep making that mental comparison. When I was rewatching
Speaker 3: the Ending story here and there are all these scenes
Speaker 3: where I don't know, like you there, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of playing with light and shadow. You can identify individual
Speaker 3: sources of light to the surfaces within the sets and
Speaker 3: and on the people feel like they have texture. There
Speaker 3: would be bumps and wrinkles and things, and there's a
Speaker 3: there's a feeling of dust and age and just generally
Speaker 3: real life. And uh, the Never Ending Story has that
Speaker 3: has that to the gills. You know, it's all over
Speaker 3: the place that that that sense of reality and texture
Speaker 3: to it. And that's what I feel like is lacking
Speaker 3: in a lot of these big budget movies I see today.
Speaker 1: I think as a solid point. I mean, I agree
Speaker 1: too that I saw the Dungeons and Dragons movie and
Speaker 1: I loved it. I thought it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I would stop myself from comparing it to
Speaker 1: films like this, just because I was just like, it's
Speaker 1: it's great if you compare it to like all the
Speaker 1: other films that are coming out these days. But yeah,
Speaker 1: like you said, the light and the darkness, the sense
Speaker 1: of like physical reality that you find in a film
Speaker 1: like this, it just doesn't compare.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I also didn't mean to imply that in every
Speaker 3: other respect than the visual they are similar. They're also
Speaker 3: different in other ways.
Speaker 1: Fun flick, though, recommend Under the seconds whatever the rest
Speaker 1: of the name of it is called to adventure I
Speaker 1: I can't remember the colon, but.
Speaker 3: You know what to talk about thieves, Gil honor among thieves.
Speaker 1: That's it, all right. Well, if you want to go
Speaker 1: watch an ever ending story before proceeding with this episode,
Speaker 1: we'll lucky for you, it's widely available both physically and digitally,
Speaker 1: even if I'm not sure it's actually streaming anywhere at
Speaker 1: the moment, I think it was on a streaming service
Speaker 1: and then it like cycled out of that streaming service.
Speaker 1: But it's highly available. You should be able to find
Speaker 1: it wherever you are going to get your physical or
Speaker 1: digital media. All right, well, let's get into the people
Speaker 1: behind it. Let's start at the top with the director,
Speaker 1: who also has a writing credit. It's Wolfgang Peterson, who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen forty one through twenty two, twenty two German
Speaker 1: director who rose to international acclaim with his third full
Speaker 1: length film, nineteen eighty one's Dots Boot. This is, of course,
Speaker 1: the German submarine movie. This film, The Neverending Story would
Speaker 1: be his follow up film from nineteen eighty four, though
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty five he also directed Enemy Mine, which
Speaker 1: is a science fiction film that I also quite like.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't put it on the same level as this
Speaker 1: film by any means. It also has, for my taste,
Speaker 1: the best teaser trailer of all time. But don't watch
Speaker 1: the full trailer for it, because it's also one of
Speaker 1: these films where the full trailer for Enemy Mine ruins
Speaker 1: absolutely everything that happens in the picture. Oh No, So, anyway,
Speaker 1: I like Enemy Mine, but critics and audiences at the
Speaker 1: time apparently did not, and Peterson did not return to
Speaker 1: filmmaking till nineteen ninety one with a psychological thriller titled Chattered,
Speaker 1: and then nineteen ninety three's In the Line of Fire,
Speaker 1: which was a bit of a hit with everyone but
Speaker 1: also certainly wasn't really weird.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, in the Line of Fires that the
Speaker 3: one where Clint Eastwood plays a secret service agent who
Speaker 3: failed to save JFK's life. And then am I getting
Speaker 3: this right?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And John Malkovich is trying to kill the president.
Speaker 3: I think for no particular political reason, he just wants to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw it, but I don't remember much outside
Speaker 1: of that. But the interesting thing about Peterson's filmography is, yeah,
Speaker 1: he hits comes out strong with Dallas Boot. He does
Speaker 1: this pair of pictures, a fantasy film and a sci
Speaker 1: fi picture, and then most of the rest of his filmography,
Speaker 1: the rest of his career, it's films kind of like
Speaker 1: it's films like In the Line of Fire, which, again,
Speaker 1: In the Line of Fire apparently did great business and
Speaker 1: people liked it, critics liked it. But is this anybody's
Speaker 1: favorite film? Does anyone consider nineteen ninety five's Outbreak, Break
Speaker 1: another Peterson film, or nineteen ninety seven's Air Force One
Speaker 1: their favorite film.
Speaker 3: He did Get Off My Plane.
Speaker 1: That's the Harrison Ford one, right.
Speaker 3: Harrison Ford is the president. What is another president? It's
Speaker 3: a Harrison Ford. His Air Force One gets attacked by
Speaker 3: I don't know, terrorists of some kind. Is Gary Oldman
Speaker 3: one of them?
Speaker 1: I think, oh, that sounds about right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, But so Harrison Ford at one point famously says,
Speaker 3: get off my plane.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. He also did two thousand's a Perfect Storm,
Speaker 1: which I also saw. He also did a two thousand
Speaker 1: and six remake of the Poseidon Adventure titled Poseidon. Oh,
Speaker 1: and he also did the two thousand and four film Troy,
Speaker 1: which has I think bred not as I say, no,
Speaker 1: Brad Pitt playing Achilles.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, the Troy. I watched part of
Speaker 3: that on television in Iceland. I think, yeah it. I
Speaker 3: remember thinking it didn't look great though. I think it's
Speaker 3: one of those like two thousands movies that, like the
Speaker 3: movie itself doesn't look that good, but it's got a deep,
Speaker 3: great cast. I think it had maybe Eric Bana as
Speaker 3: oh what's his name, the the the hero of Troy
Speaker 3: of the Other Side, not the Greeks. So what's his name, Hector,
Speaker 3: that's it Hector, Yes, yes, I think it had and
Speaker 3: it had Brian Cox, maybe his Agamemnon, and I don't
Speaker 3: know a bunch other.
Speaker 1: It has a great cast, as I recall seeing. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen the film, but yeah, yeah, so I get
Speaker 1: the impression that, like with Peterson, again, not to cast
Speaker 1: any doubt in his later career, because it sounds like it.
Speaker 1: You know, it was tremendously successful, but it's like the
Speaker 1: with Enemy Mine and an Everthing story. He made a
Speaker 1: film for Bastian and with the rest of his pictures,
Speaker 1: he made films for Bastian's dad, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, these are these are orange Juice and an egg
Speaker 3: in the Blender movies.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, but anyway, John taking anything away from him,
Speaker 1: Like I said, I I haven't seen Daf's Boot in forever,
Speaker 1: but I remember liking that one even as a younger
Speaker 1: viewer of films. And we'll come back to that one
Speaker 1: because the score on that one's also really good. All right.
Speaker 1: So again Peterson also has writing credit on this, but
Speaker 1: so does Herman Weigel born nineteen fifty German writer and
Speaker 1: producer on a number of mostly German screenplays German language
Speaker 1: screenplays in his filmography. He was also one of the
Speaker 1: associate producers on nineteen eighty six is the Name of
Speaker 1: the Rose, and he's still active. But as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: this is of course based on a book. It's based
Speaker 1: on a book by German author Michael Inda, who lived
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty nine through nineteen ninety five. So he's yeah,
Speaker 1: the true master of mind, I think behind this film
Speaker 1: author of the book which came out in seventy nine. Again,
Speaker 1: this film is an adaptation of the first half or
Speaker 1: so of the novel, and the remainder is equally great,
Speaker 1: but kind of a different tale. You know, what happens
Speaker 1: next is kind of about like what happens when the
Speaker 1: dreamer is truly ascendant and the potential pitfalls of the fantastic,
Speaker 1: but it's still great. Indo was a German author, the
Speaker 1: son of a surren list painter that was banned under
Speaker 1: the Nazi regime. Perhaps like fatherlike son, because in his
Speaker 1: writing often features surreal and paradoxical elements. There are often
Speaker 1: a lot of real mind twisters that he unleashes on you,
Speaker 1: certainly in The Never Ending Story. His other novels include Momo,
Speaker 1: which I'm currently reading with my son, and also a
Speaker 1: book called Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver, which
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about, but yeah, definitely has a
Speaker 1: following outside of this film, especially in Germany. The book
Speaker 1: was tremendously popular in Germany and in the famously disliked
Speaker 1: this film adaptation, which I think is just going to
Speaker 1: happen sometimes with adaptations, no matter what the creator, the
Speaker 1: author is so tied to it, it's just not always
Speaker 1: going to I personally love both the film and the novel.
Speaker 1: I think the film does a fine job with the material,
Speaker 1: even if the original book is ultimately more thought provoking
Speaker 1: and less diluted. But it's still like nothing.
Speaker 3: Else, you know. Despite the fact that I absolutely do
Speaker 3: love this movie even without having read the book, I
Speaker 3: feel like I can detect places in the script in
Speaker 3: the film where the story is kind of patched together,
Speaker 3: kind of quickly duct taped together to cover up some gaps,
Speaker 3: like I don't know, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Like there are parts of it that just kind of
Speaker 3: feel like, uh, Okay, we maybe couldn't afford to do
Speaker 3: this shot or something, so we had to like stitch
Speaker 3: these two parts together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and certainly you can see that comparing the
Speaker 1: book to the movie, like their whole encounters that are
Speaker 1: cut out, and by a little luck dragon magic, you're
Speaker 1: able to sort of stitch everything back together again. Now,
Speaker 1: it's worth noting that The Never Ending Story spawned two
Speaker 1: sequels in nineteen ninety and nineteen ninety four, as well
Speaker 1: as in nineteen ninety five animated series and a two
Speaker 1: thousand and one German language live action TV series. I
Speaker 1: can't speak for the TV shows at all, but as
Speaker 1: far as the sequels go, I did watch I think
Speaker 1: maybe half of Part two finally, and it at least
Speaker 1: tries to adapt some aspects of the second half of
Speaker 1: the book. It stars Jonathan Brandis as Bastian. It has
Speaker 1: some cool creatures in it, but it's just the same
Speaker 1: magic is not there. And then Part three, I've not
Speaker 1: seen it all, but it looks kind of awful, even
Speaker 1: though it does have a good cast. It's got Jack
Speaker 1: Black in it, It's got Freddy Jones and Julie Cox
Speaker 1: in it, and Jason James Richter of the Free Willie
Speaker 1: franchise plays Bastion.
Speaker 3: Does it have an Orca?
Speaker 1: No, no, Orca, just luck Dragons.
Speaker 3: Then I'm out.
Speaker 1: All right getting into the cast of this movie. First
Speaker 1: of all, playing Bastion Bastian Balthazar Bucks. His full name
Speaker 1: in the novel is Barrett Oliver born nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: former child actor of the nineteen eighties who really lit
Speaker 1: it up for a short while there. This was his
Speaker 1: first film role, followed by the nineteen eighty for Tim
Speaker 1: Burton short Franken Weeny, which is really good, nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: five's Daryl. That's dryl like it stands for something, but
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever saw it. It's about a
Speaker 1: robot or a computer.
Speaker 3: I'm guessing you don't know what Darryl stands for. No,
Speaker 3: it's do all robots yodel loudly.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, Well that makes sense.
Speaker 3: I have ever seen it.
Speaker 1: I get it confused with wargames, I think anyway. Also,
Speaker 1: he was in nineteen eighty five's Cocoon, and I also
Speaker 1: find it amusing that in nineteen eighty four he appeared
Speaker 1: both in an episode of Highway to Heaven and the
Speaker 1: TV movie Invitation to Hell.
Speaker 3: Now wait a minute. Before he starred in Daryl, didn't
Speaker 3: he also star in Larry and then another movie named Darryl.
Speaker 1: No No, No, No No. He came back for nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight's Cocoon The Return, and his last film credit
Speaker 1: was nineteen eighty nine's Scenes from the Class Struggle in
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills. He went on to become a photographer in
Speaker 1: his adult life. But that's just one of the major
Speaker 1: child actors in this film, because Bastian, of course, is
Speaker 1: our character in the real world, but in the realm
Speaker 1: of Fantasia, we were following the adventure of a Treyu
Speaker 1: who's played by Noah Hathaway.
Speaker 3: I don't know why I thought this, because they don't
Speaker 3: even look that similar. But I think when I saw
Speaker 3: this was when I was a kid, I thought these
Speaker 3: I thought it was the same actor playing both roles.
Speaker 1: I might have assumed the same thing. Yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 1: When you see a movie like this young enough, you
Speaker 1: don't really you know, you're not gonna pull out IMDb
Speaker 1: and start figuring out who's playing who. But anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Hathaway was another major eighties child actor. He started off
Speaker 1: as Boxy on the original Battlestar Galactica series and did
Speaker 1: various TV roles until nineteen eighty four, when He started
Speaker 1: in both this and also was in the nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: four Saul Bass short film Quest, which I think will
Speaker 1: cover the next time we do a short film episode
Speaker 1: of Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, Saul Bass, director of I was about to
Speaker 3: say them, not them Phase four.
Speaker 1: Yes, the other Ant movie, the Ant movie we've done. Yes,
Speaker 1: now as far as Hathaway goes. In nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: he played, of course, Harry Potter Junior in Troll which
Speaker 1: we may have to come back to that one as well.
Speaker 1: We've seen its unofficial sequel, Troll Too, which does not
Speaker 1: have Harry Potter Junior.
Speaker 3: Troll Too is, of course a B movie classic. I
Speaker 3: remember the last time I tried to watch the original
Speaker 3: Troll it was it took some effort getting to the end.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I've never seen it. It has a great cast. Okay,
Speaker 1: what Julia Louis Dreyfus is in it? I guess so yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: I need to see it at some point at anyway.
Speaker 1: After nineteen eighty six, Hathaway didn't act again until ninety four,
Speaker 1: and then again it was like the twenty teens before
Speaker 1: he acted again. Has stated that most of his dialogue
Speaker 1: in this film is dubbed Alic should also add that
Speaker 1: in the book A Treyu has green skin, and I
Speaker 1: think I've read that they did some test shoots with
Speaker 1: Hathaway in green body paint and then decided it didn't
Speaker 1: look right.
Speaker 3: I read that too. I read that he compared it
Speaker 3: to he ended up. He said, he ended up looking
Speaker 3: like a fun guy.
Speaker 1: All right. Another character we have as the bookstore owner
Speaker 1: Carl Conrad Coriander, played by Thomas Hill, who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty seven through two thousand and nine. This is probably
Speaker 1: his best remembered role, but he had a long running
Speaker 1: recurring role on TV's New Heart, which he just referenced
Speaker 1: to earlier. He also pops up in nineteen eighty four's
Speaker 1: v The Final Battle, and I had no idea this existed,
Speaker 1: but I read that he voiced Uncle Ben in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one radio drama of Star Wars, which features
Speaker 1: Mark Hamill as Luke. Anthony Daniels is c three po
Speaker 1: But then like they didn't have some of the other
Speaker 1: like someone else is doing Han solo. Brock Peters is
Speaker 1: doing the voice of Darth Vader, so sounds interesting. Hill
Speaker 1: was also in the supporting cast of the Clint Eastwood
Speaker 1: jet movie Firefox from nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 3: I haven't seen it. Is that about a helicopters.
Speaker 1: Or it's about something that's kind of like an SR
Speaker 1: seventy one Blackbird, like a big black jet that the
Speaker 1: Eastwood is flying. And I remember seeing the box art
Speaker 1: for it as a kid, and I was like, this
Speaker 1: movie looks so cool. I absolutely must see this film.
Speaker 1: And I can't remember I've ever did or not, because
Speaker 1: I don't think it quite fulfills that promise to youth.
Speaker 3: It reminds me of my relationship to a movie called
Speaker 3: Navy Seals. So I was like, well, this is just
Speaker 3: it's called Navy Seals. It's got to be the coolest
Speaker 3: movie ever made. It was not all right.
Speaker 1: We mentioned Bastion's father, who is not in the film
Speaker 1: much at all, but I guess kind of has his
Speaker 1: character has important weight. And this is played by Gerald McRaney,
Speaker 1: another notable TV actor. His first film role was nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine's Night of Bloody Horror, followed by Women of
Speaker 1: Bloody Terror, and in nineteen seventy he had a role
Speaker 1: in an episode of Night Gallery. So I had a
Speaker 1: pretty horror based beginning, but then it's from there it
Speaker 1: goes into a lot of increasingly successful TV work. He
Speaker 1: of course was one of the Simons on TV Simon
Speaker 1: and Simon in the eighties, and he has at least
Speaker 1: one off roles in just a ton of TV series
Speaker 1: all the way up through recent shows like This Is
Speaker 1: Us and ncis Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: I don't know why. Bastioni's father kind of reminded me
Speaker 3: of of Louis del Grand, the guy who plays the
Speaker 3: you know, the guy in Scanners. So it's like when
Speaker 3: he's leaving for work that morning, he's leaving because he
Speaker 3: has to go do a presentation in the auditorium at Concept.
Speaker 1: A similar look, the mustache, the balding.
Speaker 3: Had the never Ending Scan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, let's seeho else do we have here.
Speaker 1: We have Tammy's Stronach as the childlike Impress born nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two. This was her first role and her most
Speaker 1: notable one. I think she's been active in like documentaries
Speaker 1: and so forth on The never Ending Story, and she
Speaker 1: has a film coming up called Man in which that
Speaker 1: she acts in and was also an ep on. Looks
Speaker 1: like as a good cast. We have a character in
Speaker 1: the book called karn and this character, I'm sorry, the
Speaker 1: character in the book is a centaur. In the movie,
Speaker 1: he's kind of a dude with like a super tall forehead,
Speaker 1: like kind a kind of a point on the top
Speaker 1: of his head, and he's like speaking on behalf of
Speaker 1: the childlike Impress.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it took him as kind of I don't know,
Speaker 3: a lieutenant or the steward of Gondor. But for Fantasia,
Speaker 3: while the Empress is sick and he's sort of watching
Speaker 3: over things, and he's the one who explains to everyone.
Speaker 3: He is master exposition. He lays out the lore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and clearly I think based on Kyron the centaur
Speaker 1: from Greek mythology the teacher who what todd Achilles actually,
Speaker 1: But yeah, and he has a bigger role in the book,
Speaker 1: but in this he's just has this one scene. But anyway,
Speaker 1: Moses Gunn plays him in the movie. Solid character. Actor
Speaker 1: appeared in such Flix Says nineteen seventy is the Great
Speaker 1: White Hope seventy one, Shaft seventy five's Rollerball nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: the Ninth Configuration, fire Starter in eighty four, Heartbreak Ridge
Speaker 1: in eighty six, and on TV. He was very active
Speaker 1: and has a great villainous role on a Tales from
Speaker 1: the Crypt episode titled Fitting Punishment, in which he plays
Speaker 1: this mean funeral home director. And I think we've mentioned
Speaker 1: that episode before because it also has an actor by
Speaker 1: the name of Teddy Wilson in it who is in
Speaker 1: Devil's Express. All right, so mostly human actors we've been
Speaker 1: talking about here, but of course this also has some
Speaker 1: voiceovers in it because you have multiple non human characters
Speaker 1: that are portrayed via some fantastic puppetry and so forth.
Speaker 1: And that includes the character rock Bider, the luck Dragon, Foulcore,
Speaker 1: the villainous Gomork. There's also a narrator there. It's funny
Speaker 1: because they are like two different narration systems going on
Speaker 1: in this movie. At one point Bastion is narrating and
Speaker 1: then later we just get some other dude narrating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was a little confusing, but okay, So this
Speaker 3: does confirm my suspicion just from listening that basically all
Speaker 3: or maybe actually all of the voices were done by
Speaker 3: the same person.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, Alan Oppenheimer did the voices, and I believe
Speaker 1: uncredited for all of these creatures. And this is something
Speaker 1: that always floored me, and I think it is perhaps
Speaker 1: just a snapshot of the time period and how voice
Speaker 1: acting was approached, because obviously, if The Never Ending Story
Speaker 1: was made today, and certainly if they end up remaking
Speaker 1: it at some point, as they've been talking about for
Speaker 1: a while, you'd have some big name actors playing all
Speaker 1: of these characters. Like I can easily imagine you got
Speaker 1: Liam Neeson playing Falcore. I'm gonna say Werner Herzog as
Speaker 1: the Gomork. Maybe Dave Bautista is rock Biter, you know,
Speaker 1: the drill.
Speaker 3: You may be being a little too optimistic. I think
Speaker 3: maybe it would be Chris Pratt as Falcore, Adam Sandler
Speaker 3: as rock Biter.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, no, yeah, surely not. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll credit it to Sandler, but no, I can't. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine it. But at any rate, you mean you
Speaker 1: would have somebody playing those voices. They would probably be
Speaker 1: someone with with outside star a power. But yeah, in
Speaker 1: this it's just veteran actor and voiceover actor. And I
Speaker 1: think by certainly by this period, like almost entirely voice
Speaker 1: actor al Allen Oppenheimer just voice doing all the voices.
Speaker 1: You could just this is a time when you just
Speaker 1: had one guy come in and you're like, hey, can
Speaker 1: you do voices for I don't know, like a dog,
Speaker 1: like luck dragon, a giant rock creature, and some sort
Speaker 1: of villainous werewolf. And also we might need some narration.
Speaker 1: Can you jump in on that tune? He's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can do that, and no need to hire anyone else.
Speaker 3: I am truly impressed by even though I did detect
Speaker 3: that at least some of these voices were the same person.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's got to do a lot of them,
Speaker 3: so I'm impressed how many different voices he can do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you look at his credits and it's extensive.
Speaker 1: He has three hundred and thirty five credits on IMDb,
Speaker 1: spanning seven decades, all the way back to nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 1: I mean, Oppenheimer was on a late series episode of
Speaker 1: The Andy Griffiths Show, for example, But then around nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three he starts doing voice rolls and becomes a
Speaker 1: major force there. Certainly a lot of it is that
Speaker 1: kind of additional voices credit you see from older animated specials,
Speaker 1: you know, where they just brought some people in it
Speaker 1: had them to do some voices. It might be a
Speaker 1: minor voice might be like the secondary character, but they
Speaker 1: just get that additional voices credit.
Speaker 3: I don't know why, but I always like to see
Speaker 3: an arc where somebody goes from you know, doing in
Speaker 3: front of the camera work to doing voice acting and
Speaker 3: then they really are a hit as voice acting, you know,
Speaker 3: Mark Hamill kind of arc.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and yeah. I mean, this guy's work has
Speaker 1: been great. Certainly not going to read through everything that
Speaker 1: he was in, and I'm not even gonna read through the
Speaker 1: list I put together for my notes here, but one
Speaker 1: of the big ones is that he voiced both Skeletor
Speaker 1: and Man at Arms in the nineteen eighties, he Man
Speaker 1: and The Masters of the Universe, as well as very
Speaker 1: spin offs of that show, and then he pops up
Speaker 1: in just about everything you know. Veris like an episode
Speaker 1: of Batman, the animated series, Chippendale Rescue Rangers, Duck Tails,
Speaker 1: video game voices for stuff like The Fallout and Balder's
Speaker 1: Gate franchises, and more recently the Toy in the Toy
Speaker 1: Story franchise he voiced Old Timer. So yeah, he just
Speaker 1: has done so much a big name in the voiceover
Speaker 1: voice acting area. Now on the acting side of things, though,
Speaker 1: I will Mention briefly. He had a small part as
Speaker 1: the chief supervisor in nineteen seventy three's Westworld, and he
Speaker 1: plays Duncan in a great essentially film stage adaptation of
Speaker 1: Macbeth from nineteen eighty one that starred Jeremy Brett as
Speaker 1: Macbeth and Piper Laurie as Lady Macbeth. Oh, I've never
Speaker 1: heard of that. It's pretty. It's like I said, it's
Speaker 1: not very cinematic. It's very much a film like stage performance.
Speaker 1: But if you're at all, if you're like a kind
Speaker 1: of a Macbeth completist, I guess, or you really like
Speaker 1: any of these actors, it's worth checking out, all right.
Speaker 1: He doesn't play much of a role in the picture,
Speaker 1: but we have a character by the name of Teeny
Speaker 1: Weeney who rides a racing snail. He's played by Deep
Speaker 1: Roy born nineteen forty nine, a Kenyan British actor who,
Speaker 1: at four foot four, has been a go to actor
Speaker 1: for creature performances and diminutive character performances for decades. He's
Speaker 1: worked in Star Wars, Dark Crystal Flash, Gordon Gray Stroke,
Speaker 1: The X Files, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and The
Speaker 1: Chocolate Factory, Star trek in more, he also pops up
Speaker 1: very briefly and returned to oz Ah. Yes, there's another
Speaker 1: character early on called Knighthobb who's kind of this bat
Speaker 1: writing goblin, who also doesn't have a tremendous role in
Speaker 1: the plot, but was played by Keelo Bruckner, who lived
Speaker 1: nineteen forty through twenty twenty, German actor whose biggest splash
Speaker 1: certainly this was his biggest splash outside of German film
Speaker 1: and television, but he has extensive German language credits. So
Speaker 1: if if anyone out there has certainly more familiarity with
Speaker 1: German language film and television than we do, maybe you
Speaker 1: are more familiar with Kelo Pruckner's work. We also have
Speaker 1: a couple of gnomes in the picture. We have Indy Wook,
Speaker 1: the gnome, played by Cindy Sidney Bromley, who livedeteen nine
Speaker 1: through nineteen eighty seven, British character actor whose credits include
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two's Night Creatures, nineteen sixty seven's The Fearless
Speaker 1: Vampire Killers, the excellent nineteen seventy one and very cinematic
Speaker 1: adaptation of Macbeth eighty one's Dragon Slayer, nineteen eighty one's
Speaker 1: An American Werewolf in London and eighty six is Pirates Now.
Speaker 1: Inge Wook's wife is another gnome named Ergel, played by
Speaker 1: Patricia Hayes, who lived nineteen oh nine through nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1: Outside of this film, her other big role of this
Speaker 1: time period was the good Witch for Raziel from nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight Willows. She's the good Witch. She has a
Speaker 1: memorable battle in the movie against the bad Witch, Jeene
Speaker 1: Marsh's Queen bav Morda that is just absolutely brutal. So
Speaker 1: it can't help but compare it to the Gandalf Sarremon
Speaker 1: Wizard duel from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings like that.
Speaker 1: It's a great sequence, but it's very I don't know's
Speaker 1: it's I'm not sure how to describe it here. It's
Speaker 1: it's very clean, it's very honorable, whereas the fight between
Speaker 1: these two witches is just absolutely brutal and eye gouging
Speaker 1: and they're just trying to absolutely murder each other. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: Willow is not a film without its faults, but that
Speaker 1: whole sequence is great. Okay, one more cast note before
Speaker 1: we move on to a couple other individuals, but one
Speaker 1: of the three bullies in the film that are after
Speaker 1: Bastion early in the picture and then get their come
Speaker 1: up and slay it in the picture is played by
Speaker 1: Chris Eastman, who also played the bully Belch in the
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety TV adaptation of Stephen King's It, which alone
Speaker 1: is pretty interesting. Like this kid had the like the
Speaker 1: bully market cornered for a short while while he was
Speaker 1: acting as a as a youth. But then on top
Speaker 1: of that, he's also I believe, currently on the board
Speaker 1: of the Canadian Anti Bullying campaign. I am someone, So
Speaker 1: I don't know, like how can it did? Like I
Speaker 1: don't know the fullback store here, like if he felt
Speaker 1: like he had to do this because he played two
Speaker 1: different cinematic bullies or what the deal is?
Speaker 3: The guy who played Scott Farcas is also on that
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 1: Earlier I mentioned the visual style of the picture and
Speaker 1: how there's something about this movie that stands out, you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have that same it doesn't resemble other pictures.
Speaker 1: And the individual of note here is Count de Uido
Speaker 1: Rico who was born nineteen forty six. He was the
Speaker 1: conceptual artist, creature designer and scenery designer on the picture
Speaker 1: he is a German educated Italian artist and illustrator who's yeah,
Speaker 1: I think his work is just really key to the
Speaker 1: distinctive look of The never Ending Story. Outside of this movie,
Speaker 1: he also worked. He has Skies and Clouds artist credit
Speaker 1: on nineteen eighty's Flash Gordon, which I think totally makes
Speaker 1: sense because both of these movies are full of swirling, psychedelic,
Speaker 1: brightly colored clouds. His work is very surreal. He's an
Speaker 1: artist and author of children's books as well, such as
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy He Ates the Rainbow Goblins and he If
Speaker 1: you look him up, you can find his website. His
Speaker 1: website features various concepts he developed for The never Ending Story,
Speaker 1: including some concepts for a more humanoid werewolf style Gomork,
Speaker 1: which I think is very interesting that I think he
Speaker 1: based on a picture of himself, So it's always neat
Speaker 1: to see those early mockups of what things might look
Speaker 1: up look like in a film and then realize where
Speaker 1: they deviated and where things stayed the same. You can
Speaker 1: see too, his designs for the urn, the the amulet
Speaker 1: that the that the childlike Empress gives the Treyu in
Speaker 1: the picture that is also the emblem on the on
Speaker 1: the cover of the never Ending story text.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, these illustrations are fantastic, and his his Gomork,
Speaker 3: sort of his more man Gomork certainly looks much sadder
Speaker 3: than the than the purely malicious wolf that's in the
Speaker 3: in the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but it's especially interesting to keep in mind
Speaker 1: and when we come back around to like how the
Speaker 1: Gomork is depicted and how the camwork describes itself in
Speaker 1: the movie versus the book. All right, So moving on
Speaker 1: finally to the score. So this is one of those
Speaker 1: situations where the score was partially changed for audiences outside
Speaker 1: of in this case Germany. So in the German cut
Speaker 1: of the film, the entire score is Class Dollinger, but
Speaker 1: for international audiences some tracks by Georgio Moroder were added
Speaker 1: along with the theme song, which Moroder was behind. It
Speaker 1: reminds me a little bit of the situation in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five Legend, which had a score by Jerry
Speaker 1: Goldsmith for the European release and then Tangerine Dream for
Speaker 1: the American release. That always puzzled me regarding Legend. With
Speaker 1: this film, I'd say there's less of a like a
Speaker 1: sharp division between the scores, like both of them are
Speaker 1: very situated and based in electronic sounds. So starting with Dollinger.
Speaker 1: Claus Dollinger was born in nineteen thirty six, great German
Speaker 1: synth composer and sad phonist. He composed the score for
Speaker 1: Peterson's nineteen eighty one U Boat film Dos Boot, which
Speaker 1: is just a great synth score on its own. I
Speaker 1: was relistening to some of it. I haven't seen the
Speaker 1: movie in forever, but it has a really killer lead
Speaker 1: melody that incidentally got a techno remix in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: two by the group U ninety six, so we can
Speaker 1: look that up as well.
Speaker 3: U Boat jams.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. His work on The Neverending Story is also great,
Speaker 1: with such tracks as Fantasia and the Dad's like the
Speaker 1: mysterious intrigue of the book. And then there's the track
Speaker 1: Bastion's Happy Flight, which just giving the title that you
Speaker 1: know exactly what scenes I'm talking about from the latter
Speaker 1: portion of the film that give us that care free exhilaration.
Speaker 1: And then of course we also have the Gomork music.
Speaker 1: Anytime the Gomork is mentioned or reference, there's really startling,
Speaker 1: scary music that Dollinger was behind. But then we have
Speaker 1: Moroder born nineteen fifty who did the synth editions and
Speaker 1: the theme song, so he is the father of a
Speaker 1: disco himself. Italian composer Giorgio Moroder gives this the signature
Speaker 1: techno pop tracks for the US version, including the Swamps
Speaker 1: of Sadness track and the Ivory Tower track. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you really get in deep, you can definitely tell
Speaker 1: the difference between Moroder's work and Dullinger's work, but I
Speaker 1: like all of it. He also did synths on the
Speaker 1: theme song, and it was behind the theme song The
Speaker 1: Neverending Story, sung by English pop singer Limol born nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight, or perhaps Limeol. I'm not sure exactly how
Speaker 1: this particular artist, Moniker is pronounced.
Speaker 3: I think it's an anagram for the name Hamil, which
Speaker 3: is the singer's actual name.
Speaker 1: Oh for real, Yeah, okay, it's kind of like the
Speaker 1: Fantasia version version of his name. Yeah. And of course
Speaker 1: this track was popular again in recent years because they
Speaker 1: featured it prominently on a season of Stranger Things.
Speaker 3: Oh, I guess it didn't make it that far.
Speaker 1: I have to say, I don't. I mean, you can't
Speaker 1: really take the theme song for the neverding story out of
Speaker 1: the situation. But it's not my favorite thing that Moroder
Speaker 1: has been involved in.
Speaker 3: I mean, it does say the name of the movie
Speaker 3: a bunch of times, and that's a good move.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so yeah. Maroder is a legend, a true
Speaker 1: synth god, italo disco mainstay. His nineteen seventy seven electro
Speaker 1: disco album From Here to Eternity is pretty incredible and
Speaker 1: in film and TV. His other notable works include he
Speaker 1: scored the original Battlestar Galactica in the seventies. He scored
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three Scarface. In nineteen eighty four, he created
Speaker 1: a score for nineteen twenty seven's Metropolis. I think I've
Speaker 1: seen this. I'd have to go back and look at it.
Speaker 1: He scored nineteen seventy eight's Midnight Express, eighties American Jigglow,
Speaker 1: eighty two's Cat People. In eighty three, he scored the
Speaker 1: mega hit Flash Dance, including writing the theme song Flash Dance,
Speaker 1: What a Feeling, which is just an all timer, Like,
Speaker 1: you can't listen to this song and not get into it.
Speaker 1: As forgettable as the movie may be, Uh, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty great track.
Speaker 3: I don't think I know the song what a.
Speaker 1: Feeling Du dun u da da dun dun d d
Speaker 1: dun d.
Speaker 3: Okay, maybe I hold on, Okay, I'm looking it up. Oh,
Speaker 3: I absolutely know this song, Okay, I just didn't know
Speaker 3: what it was called or what it was from.
Speaker 1: Sorry, no, no, no. It's like like, like I say,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily a movie that you or I would
Speaker 1: have a lot of feelings about, but the song what
Speaker 1: feelings are. Yeah. He also scored nineteen eighty six's Top Gun,
Speaker 1: including writing the theme song danger Zone sung by Kenny Loggins,
Speaker 1: Wow Highway to the danger Zone. Yeah. And he also
Speaker 1: scored over the Top from eighty seven, which I think
Speaker 1: that's the arm wrestling film that I've never seen, but
Speaker 1: I know some people find amusing on some level.
Speaker 3: Sylvester Stallone, is it?
Speaker 1: I think so? Yeah, it's a Sylvester Stallone arm wrestling picture.
Speaker 3: That one's kind of a bore until you get to
Speaker 3: the scene where he arm wrestles Brundle Fly. That that's
Speaker 3: a real twist.
Speaker 1: I was fixing to say. It's like I think of
Speaker 1: arm wrestling in motion pictures, I'm going to think of
Speaker 1: the Fly or I'm gonna think of what is it
Speaker 1: arms of Steel had some.
Speaker 3: Hand hand of steel, hands of Steel. Yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 3: I wonder if the scene and hands of Steel was
Speaker 3: inspired by the Stallone.
Speaker 1: Movie might have been. Yeah. So anyway that the music
Speaker 1: for this film is great. Uh, you know all on
Speaker 1: all this the score is just an embarrassment of riches.
Speaker 1: I was talking with JJ prior to come in here.
Speaker 1: I've never actually seen the German language cut of the film. Uh,
Speaker 1: and seen like the film with without the Morauder additions
Speaker 1: to it, But that would be an interesting exercise at
Speaker 1: some point. Yeah, unlike say the Jerry Goldsmith cut of Legend.
Speaker 1: I'm just not gonna do it. I'm sorry, I'm just
Speaker 1: Hanjurine dream all the way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know your proclivity's there. Okay, well wait, are
Speaker 3: are we going to the plot now?
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's jump in. Let's in the book.
Speaker 3: Okay. Well, so the movie does start off, at least
Speaker 3: in the version I watched to revisit it with the
Speaker 3: title theme, the Moreauder song with the with the you know,
Speaker 3: the never ending sorry gets your blood pumpin' ready ready
Speaker 3: for an adventure. And so our main character Bastion, when
Speaker 3: we first meet him, he wakes up from a nightmare.
Speaker 3: He's in bed, he's obviously been having bad dreams, and
Speaker 3: he immediately finds comfort in a book. So it's a
Speaker 3: good way to get things started. We know, we know
Speaker 3: what he's all about from frame one.
Speaker 1: That's right. The books. Books are his refuge. Books are
Speaker 1: his sacred space.
Speaker 3: And the next morning, Bastion and his father are in
Speaker 3: the kitchen together. They're having breakfast. We find out that
Speaker 3: Bastian's mother has died and his father his father. Well,
Speaker 3: first of all, before I sort of alluded to this earlier,
Speaker 3: but there's something strange going on with Bastien's father's relationship
Speaker 3: with the blender, in which he I think we see
Speaker 3: him pour orange juice from a pitcher into the blender
Speaker 3: and then crack a raw egg in there and then
Speaker 3: just blend and drink.
Speaker 1: It yep yep, drinks it down, gulps it down, and
Speaker 1: then has like a one minute conversation with his son
Speaker 1: about his disappointment in him, and then he's out the door.
Speaker 1: It's like a Bastion is like not only a latch
Speaker 1: key kid. He has to like lock up and leave
Speaker 1: for school in the morning. But yeah, my son and
Speaker 1: I were commenting on this as we were rewatching the film.
Speaker 1: You know, like, what a like, what kind of a
Speaker 1: breakfast is this? I guess it's like a true work
Speaker 1: best breakfast, right, I mean, he's such a workaholic. All
Speaker 1: he has time for is that raw egg and that
Speaker 1: orange juice. Just gulp it down and.
Speaker 3: Co he needs to take a vacation to Hawaii and
Speaker 3: explore his wolfy side.
Speaker 1: Now, you mentioned that that Bastion's mother had died, and
Speaker 1: it isn't important to note she did not just die.
Speaker 1: This scene would be very strange if she had just
Speaker 1: passed away. But we get the impression that it's it's
Speaker 1: been some time, like long enough that Bastian's father is like,
Speaker 1: you need to get past this, get on with it.
Speaker 1: You know, we got to move on with life. And
Speaker 1: you know he's still still is dealing with it to
Speaker 1: a large extent, and his father is like, no, put
Speaker 1: it behind you. You need to grow up and get
Speaker 1: with the program.
Speaker 3: Right, And this is reflectively so he's like commenting on
Speaker 3: I think he got a call from one of Bastioni's
Speaker 3: teachers about how he hasn't been doing his homework. Instead
Speaker 3: he's drawing horses in his math book, and then Bastion's like,
Speaker 3: not horses, unicorns, and then his dad's upset. He's like, hey,
Speaker 3: so you're getting in trouble at school. You're not even
Speaker 3: trying out for the swim team. You say you love horses,
Speaker 3: but you're afraid to get on a real one. So
Speaker 3: why don't you, you know, get your head out of
Speaker 3: the clouds and put your feet on the ground.
Speaker 1: And so this is all we see of Bastian's home life,
Speaker 1: but it's it's well done, Like he gives us just
Speaker 1: enough notes to sort of build things out with.
Speaker 3: And Bastian's father is not portrayed as like mean or evil.
Speaker 3: He is trying to be helpful. What this is what
Speaker 3: he thinks being helpful is is like telling his son
Speaker 3: he needs to like be realistic and stop daydreaming and
Speaker 3: all that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like also clear, I mean, you get the
Speaker 1: impression that he is also dealing with the grief of
Speaker 1: this loss in a very particular way, and on some
Speaker 1: of it like thinks that, well, Bastian should do this too.
Speaker 1: This is what is sort of working for me. If
Speaker 1: he would only just do the same thing, then then
Speaker 1: he could move on as well.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Bastien is on his way to school, but then
Speaker 3: he hits another obstacle. Gang of bullies, three bullies that
Speaker 3: you get the feeling that they mess with him all
Speaker 3: the time. They want to rob him, they want his money,
Speaker 3: and they end up throwing him in a dumpster in
Speaker 3: an alley.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I hate these bullies there. They're the worst.
Speaker 3: He climbs out of the dumpster and then of course
Speaker 3: they're not done bullying him. They're like, hey, get back
Speaker 3: in there, and so he runs away and they chase
Speaker 3: him and eventually he ducks into an old bookshop to hide.
Speaker 3: And in this scene, the old man who runs the bookshop,
Speaker 3: this is Corianders. He's very curmudgeonly, but there's something exciting
Speaker 3: about this space. It's full of stuff that seems old,
Speaker 3: seems to contain secrets, and we know Bascian actually does
Speaker 3: love books. And the man who runs the shop does
Speaker 3: not expect this. As soon as the kid walks in,
Speaker 3: he looks at him. He's like, oh, this is a kid. Sorry.
Speaker 3: The video arcade is down the street, that's what you're
Speaker 3: looking for.
Speaker 1: You can easily imagine a version of this where it's
Speaker 1: the comic book guy from the Simpsons gatekeeping on poor Bastian.
Speaker 3: Worst generation ever. But yeah, so Bastion protests, He's like, no,
Speaker 3: I like books. I like books like though the one
Speaker 3: you're reading now. But the old Man's like, no, not
Speaker 3: like the one I'm reading now. All the books you like,
Speaker 3: you like Tarzan and Treasure Island and all that those
Speaker 3: books are safe. This book not so much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and of course we'll learn why this book, the
Speaker 1: Neverening story, is not safe, and certainly that's a huge
Speaker 1: plot point in the film. But also I felt I
Speaker 1: feel like this kind of flows over into the way
Speaker 1: received this film as a young viewer, that the film
Speaker 1: itself was to some degree unsafe. And granted, any film,
Speaker 1: if you're young enough and you don't grasp the conventions
Speaker 1: of story and genre, any film can feel unsafe because
Speaker 1: you don't know that like the hero is supposed to
Speaker 1: win and so forth, or that certain things are not
Speaker 1: going to happen in a PG rated or G rated picture.
Speaker 1: But I felt like even early on, I could tell
Speaker 1: that this film was somehow buckling the against these restraints.
Speaker 1: You know that it wasn't a completely safe world that
Speaker 1: I was immersing myself in and for for goodness sake.
Speaker 1: I mean there's sphinx nipples in it later on, which
Speaker 1: also seemed to contribute to this feeling.
Speaker 3: This scene in the bookshops setting up the intrigue that
Speaker 3: will follow in the rest of the plot, I think
Speaker 3: is very good and I would place it in a
Speaker 3: league among the best scenes of this type. Other examples
Speaker 3: would include the scene at the beginning of Raiders of
Speaker 3: the Lost Ark where the men from the government arrive
Speaker 3: and pull Jones out of class to ask him about
Speaker 3: the arc and they have that reef conversation. I know
Speaker 3: that that scene is often held up as like a
Speaker 3: really great example of screenwriting, of like covering a lot
Speaker 3: of ground and raising tantalizing mysteries in a very short
Speaker 3: amount of time. Yeah, and I would say this scene
Speaker 3: is much like that. It does exactly the same. So
Speaker 3: the book's not safe. What's he gonna do? He steals it?
Speaker 3: Of course, he leaves a note. He's a good Yeah.
Speaker 3: The old man finds a note saying okay, I will
Speaker 3: return it, but he runs off with the book because
Speaker 3: he's got to read it now. It's not safe, That's right.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think a lot of us can relate
Speaker 3: to this like the books you're told not to read
Speaker 3: that you shouldn't read when you're younger, Like, of course,
Speaker 3: those are the ones that you're going to get back to.
Speaker 3: Like I think I probably mentioned this before, but I
Speaker 3: distinctly remember I started reading a copy of the Silence
Speaker 3: of the Lambs when I was like in middle school,
Speaker 3: I guess, and then and my dad took a look
Speaker 3: at it and he's like, no, no, you can't read that,
Speaker 3: and stuck it away. It was like the only time
Speaker 3: you ever did that. But of course I couldn't not
Speaker 3: read the rest of the book. I had to go
Speaker 3: and I found where it was hidden and had to
Speaker 3: sneak it out and finish reading it at night and
Speaker 3: then put it back in its hiding place. You know,
Speaker 3: I've actually never read one of those Thomas Harris novels,
Speaker 3: but I've heard people say that like they're trash, but
Speaker 3: they're exquisite trash, like really top tier.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's been a long time, but I
Speaker 1: mean I enjoyed. I enjoyed reading Red Dragon in Silence,
Speaker 1: and then eventually I read Hannibal and I remember not
Speaker 1: liking it at the time, but but I don't know
Speaker 1: it's it's a weird book. Maybe I wasn't ready for it.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Anyway, back in the plot, Bastion, so he's got the book.
Speaker 3: Now he makes his way onto school, but of course
Speaker 3: he's late and he peeks in the window at the classroom.
Speaker 3: They're doing a math test. Brother, that's no good, so
Speaker 3: instead of going into class late, he just skips, skips
Speaker 3: it entirely, runs to the school attic. That interesting that
Speaker 3: there even is such a thing. There's an attic at
Speaker 3: the school and there's like a glass case containing the
Speaker 3: key to the attic, where the glass is already broken.
Speaker 3: Wonder if that means like he he has snuck in
Speaker 3: there before.
Speaker 1: I don't know, or it was just somebody else had
Speaker 1: snuck in there. I'm not sure what the exact situation is,
Speaker 1: but you know, he knows what to do. This is
Speaker 1: probably a place he's fled to before, and it is
Speaker 1: it is like the physical incarnation of the refuge that
Speaker 1: he's finding in books, and as we discussed early in
Speaker 1: the episode, yeah, it is like it's like a temple
Speaker 1: to the fantastic in our real world. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a transitional realm between our world and the realm of Fantasia.
Speaker 3: That's right. So he just settles in in this hidden place.
Speaker 3: It's very cozy where no one can find him and
Speaker 3: it's quiet, and he takes out the book and he
Speaker 3: begins to read. And yeah, it as I said earlier,
Speaker 3: it's just it feels so good. Especially when I was
Speaker 3: a kid watching this, it was like, I want that.
Speaker 1: Basically what transpires next is basically what transpires in the book.
Speaker 1: We get this initial chapter that doesn't include a Tray
Speaker 1: you a tray who's not introduced yet. Instead, we meet
Speaker 1: the Nighthob, meet teeny Weenye. I think in the book
Speaker 1: there's also a Willow of the Whisp. Rock Bier is here,
Speaker 1: and they're just talking about what's going on in Fantasia,
Speaker 1: and they talk about the nothing, this force that's kind
Speaker 1: of gobbling up the fantastic realm.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when we first meet the rock Bider, I think
Speaker 3: the Nighthob and teeny Weeny are sort of camping together
Speaker 3: in the woods, and the rock Bier is this giant
Speaker 3: figure made of rock that rolls in with a manual
Speaker 3: steamroller bike or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and these are great creatures and there's a good
Speaker 1: stick in here.
Speaker 3: But they're all facing the same problem. The Nothing is
Speaker 3: consuming parts of the world. There's some kind of force
Speaker 3: that's annihilating everything. They're trying to escape it, and I
Speaker 3: think ultimately they are headed towards the Ivory Tower, the
Speaker 3: home of the Impress of Fantasia of this world, because
Speaker 3: there they're going to find out what can be done
Speaker 3: about the Nothing right.
Speaker 1: Right, And it's here that we're going to a scene
Speaker 1: where a Treyu is introduced. He's summoned, he's given the
Speaker 1: quest of helping to heal the when we find out
Speaker 1: that the childlike Empress is sick and that she alone
Speaker 1: is not going to be able to save everyone. And
Speaker 1: then also meanwhile, Bastian narrates this bit where we learn
Speaker 1: that the Nothing has sent its own servant out on
Speaker 1: a quest, and this servant is the Gomork. This is
Speaker 1: a first, absolutely terrifying glimpse of this massive wolf creature.
Speaker 1: You know, the strong elements of the of the were
Speaker 1: wolf and also the giant wolf of fin Rear of
Speaker 1: Norse and as all mythology.
Speaker 3: Mm hmmm, yeah, the Goomork is extremely scary. I remember,
Speaker 3: I remember that fear, that like bone deep fear watching
Speaker 3: watching the Wolf as a child.
Speaker 1: Now green eyes, Oh yeah, green Eyes has green eyes
Speaker 1: in the book as well. I astud mentioned in the
Speaker 1: book as in the film, the Fantasians at the beginning
Speaker 1: are discussing the nothing and what someone asked, well, what
Speaker 1: does it look like? And they're like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it like a hole and they're like, well, it's
Speaker 1: a hole would be something, but this is nothing. They
Speaker 1: go into it a little bit more in the book
Speaker 1: and they point out that it's like going blind when
Speaker 1: you look at it. So just a little hint of
Speaker 1: sort of the paradox nature, paradoxical nature of Michael Inda's
Speaker 1: work at times, like the idea of like what is
Speaker 1: it like to look at something where there is nothing
Speaker 1: at all? It's not like seeing an absence, It's like blindness.
Speaker 1: It's something that can't even really be put into words.
Speaker 3: I mean, this reminds me of things we've discussed on
Speaker 3: Core episodes before, where there are you know, neurological conditions affecting,
Speaker 3: say the visual processing centers of the brain where you
Speaker 3: can have you can have essentially blind spots in your vision,
Speaker 3: and you might imagine that manifests as like okay, you're
Speaker 3: looking around and there's like a dark spot in the
Speaker 3: middle of your vision where no light comes through, but
Speaker 3: instead for some of these conditions, instead what you get
Speaker 3: is the sensation that you're seeing a continuous scene, but
Speaker 3: in fact it's like stitching together these two places that
Speaker 3: don't actually connect in space. So you might like, I
Speaker 3: think one of the examples we talked about is like
Speaker 3: you might look at a dog and instead of a
Speaker 3: blank spot over the dog's face, the dog just has
Speaker 3: no face.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now the movie doesn't really attempt to bring this
Speaker 1: idea to life. We basically see all these like swirling
Speaker 1: storm clouds and nebula effects going on where the nothing
Speaker 1: is moving in and I don't know, we can either
Speaker 1: think of that as I guess it's just something visual
Speaker 1: to represent the nothing, or perhaps this is supposed to
Speaker 1: be like sort of the event horizon of the nothing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the event horizon is a good way
Speaker 3: way to put it. It's often, yeah, represented as like
Speaker 3: a storm and these winds and clouds and all that.
Speaker 1: All Right, Well, at this point we have we have
Speaker 1: assigned our main quest to our fantasia hero a tray. You,
Speaker 1: it's time for him to set off and get some answers.
Speaker 3: So he goes to many different places, but he can't
Speaker 3: find a way to stop the nothing. Oh and we
Speaker 3: should mention he's equipped with They get the agents of
Speaker 3: the Empress give him a talisman called the.
Speaker 1: Orneah, which is like the sort of intertwined serpent symbol
Speaker 1: that looks very cool.
Speaker 3: So he's got the orn, he's got his loyal horse
Speaker 3: attacks and they're riding around trying to find answers. And
Speaker 3: they go to one place, they find nothing. They go
Speaker 3: somewhere else, they find nothing, not the nothing, just no answers,
Speaker 3: and eventually they end up in the swamps of Sadness.
Speaker 3: And here's where we sort of pick up on the
Speaker 3: quest in more real time. And one of the first
Speaker 3: things that happens here is something that I know horrified
Speaker 3: children of my generation round the world, the death of
Speaker 3: our tax. Where so they go into the swamps of
Speaker 3: sadness and they the story of this place is that
Speaker 3: if you let the sadness overtake you, you will be
Speaker 3: sucked down into the muck. And this happens to a
Speaker 3: tray You's loyal horse here, and it is so sad.
Speaker 1: It is, I mean, if you're watching it, as an
Speaker 1: adult or a child. It really pulls at the heartstrings
Speaker 1: because our Tax just straight up dies of sadness, with
Speaker 1: the tray you pleading for him to hang on the
Speaker 1: keep waffling on. Which is worse, I guess because in
Speaker 1: the book the horse talks and in the movie the
Speaker 1: horse is just a horse. But and so it's certainly
Speaker 1: potent enough in the film because there's something about the
Speaker 1: communication gap, like how do you talk a horse out
Speaker 1: of sadness? You can't like, uh, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: he's helpless. In the book, though, they have a whole
Speaker 1: conversation and and like there's like he's he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you gotta, you know, don't you gotta, you know, push
Speaker 1: through it, you know, don't don't give into the sadness.
Speaker 1: And so there's this part where quote it goes like this,
Speaker 1: leave me, my master said the little horse. I can't
Speaker 1: make it go on alone. Don't bother about me. I
Speaker 1: can't stand the sadness anymore. I want to die. And
Speaker 1: then our Tax explains he is sinking due to his sadness,
Speaker 1: but the detray you is protected by the orn, and
Speaker 1: he makes one last request to his master, a Treyo.
Speaker 1: He says, quote, I beg you to go away. I
Speaker 1: don't want you to see my end so heavy stuff, agreed.
Speaker 3: I think actually though, it might be even worse when
Speaker 3: it's just the horse that can't talk. Because it can't talk,
Speaker 3: so you have no closure. There's no last words or anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no sense that the horse is okay with
Speaker 1: this on any level. Oh we should also mention, Joe,
Speaker 1: I know you're a big fan of like woodland environments
Speaker 1: that are created artificially on a set. This is a
Speaker 1: fantastic swamp set that they've put together here.
Speaker 3: You think this is probably indoor, right, I'm.
Speaker 1: Almost positive it is, because I think I've seen some
Speaker 1: behind the scenes stuff about how they pulled off this
Speaker 1: horse sinking and they had to have like a whole
Speaker 1: like elaborate system with like an elevator or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's brilliant. It looks so good and so
Speaker 3: dank like this the swamp is disgusting. But the reason
Speaker 3: there at the swamp is I think tray you has
Speaker 3: heard from somewhere that he might be able to find
Speaker 3: a way to stop the nothing if he talks to
Speaker 3: a figure known as Morla. The aged one is that.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, an ancient giant tortoise that has dwelt so
Speaker 1: long in the swamp of sadness and just lived for
Speaker 1: so long in general that nothing matters anymore, like not
Speaker 1: even a little bit. And so it's it's it's very
Speaker 1: interesting on the page and on the screen. I think
Speaker 1: they adapt it quite well. Morla talks to itself, it
Speaker 1: has like two distinct personalities and ultimately just really doesn't
Speaker 1: care about anything but a tray. You keeps asking, and
Speaker 1: eventually Morla shares some wisdom. The childlike Empress, who is
Speaker 1: not old but has always been young, needs a new name,
Speaker 1: though no one in Fantasia can give it to her,
Speaker 1: so you're gonna have to go see the Southern Oracle
Speaker 1: for more information.
Speaker 3: Now, in the movie, we do not find out here
Speaker 3: that the Empress needs a new name, I think best
Speaker 3: or not in the movie A Tray You doesn't find
Speaker 3: that out in the movie until he gets to the Southern.
Speaker 1: Oracle, right, yes, I believe that's right, yes.
Speaker 3: But instead he for some reason, he's just sent to
Speaker 3: the Southern Oracle. I can't remember exactly what Morris says,
Speaker 3: but it's like Southern Oracle can help you. Uh, And
Speaker 3: it's there's a funny scene where he, of course, he
Speaker 3: keeps climbing a tree to speak to this gigantic tortoise
Speaker 3: and the tortoise keeps sneezing and that knocks him out
Speaker 3: of the tree. But there is in this scene, there's
Speaker 3: a moment where bastion out in the real world screams
Speaker 3: as something that frightens him, and his scream is heard
Speaker 3: by the characters in the book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a key, key scene where Bastionian begins
Speaker 1: to realize that there is this connection between his world
Speaker 1: and the world of Fantasia. Now, in the book, it
Speaker 1: doesn't occur until the next sequence because in the book
Speaker 1: there's a whole other encounter encounter that follows that's not
Speaker 1: depicted in the film. Trayu encounters Yigramol the Mini the
Speaker 1: horror of which is this strange creature that's like a
Speaker 1: swarm of hive mind hornets that then takes the shape
Speaker 1: of a great spider and has a deadly poison that
Speaker 1: will kill you within an hour, but will grant the
Speaker 1: victim the power to teleport to anywhere in Fantasia to die.
Speaker 1: It's weird and wonderful. And it's in this encounter in
Speaker 1: the book that Bastian's voice is heard by a Trayu
Speaker 1: and the poison is how he ultimately makes it to
Speaker 1: the oracle. And it's also where he meets Falcre, the
Speaker 1: luck dragon, because Falcre is caught in Yigramohl's web.
Speaker 3: Oh, there's a very different meeting scene in the movie.
Speaker 3: So in the movie, a tray You is leaving the
Speaker 3: swamps of sadness, but it's just too much. The sadness
Speaker 3: is overtaking him. He's sinking down in the mud. And
Speaker 3: at the same time, the Gomork, the horrible wolf creature
Speaker 3: who every time we catch a glimpse of him, it's
Speaker 3: almost just a blur, but it's terrifying, and he's racing
Speaker 3: toward the hero of the Empress, who to kill him.
Speaker 3: And right, you know, right when he's about to sink
Speaker 3: under and the wolf is falling upon him, suddenly a white,
Speaker 3: fluffy flying serpent just comes in out of the sky
Speaker 3: and lifts a tray You out of the mud. And
Speaker 3: this is how a tray You and Falcre meet Ah Falcre.
Speaker 1: I mean, who doesn't love Falcre. It's just such a
Speaker 1: great character and just wonderful creature design.
Speaker 3: In the movie, Falcore is yeah, a fluffy, white flying serpent,
Speaker 3: kind of like the like a like a Chinese dragon design,
Speaker 3: but very much with a cute dog's face.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, wonderful, wonderful design. I should also point out
Speaker 1: that the name is Falcore in the movie Falcre in
Speaker 1: the English translation of the book, but in the original
Speaker 1: German it's Fuker, but that was changed for the English translation,
Speaker 1: I think for obvious reasons.
Speaker 3: So a tray you wakes up next to Falcre on
Speaker 3: a mountaintop and they introduced themselves. Falcre explains that he
Speaker 3: is a luck dragon. He gets he you know, he
Speaker 3: gets where he's going with luck, and he has conveniently
Speaker 3: brought a tray you to the Southern Oracle. I don't remember.
Speaker 3: Does Falcore ever explain, like really where he came from.
Speaker 3: It just seems like he just showed up to help.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just lucky like that. I guess. So's it's
Speaker 1: something that, like I say, in the book, it makes
Speaker 1: more sense because they're sort of common prisoners. They meet
Speaker 1: on the road at a specific place and then their
Speaker 1: stories have become intertwined. It's a little more rush in
Speaker 1: this adaptation.
Speaker 3: Now here, it's in this part that a tray you
Speaker 3: and Falcore meet with the gnomes Ingywook and ergyll. Iningywook
Speaker 3: is like in this room that is kind of dusty
Speaker 3: and smoky. It's sort of a cave, but with gnarled
Speaker 3: roots everywhere and old scrolls and potions and all that
Speaker 3: Inywook is supposed to. He fashions himself as a scientist
Speaker 3: of some form, and he's always doing quote research, though
Speaker 3: I think this has played for comedy, like it's questionable
Speaker 3: of what value his research actually is.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, he's the foremost authority though on the Southern
Speaker 1: Oracle and has a lot of wisdom to share, but
Speaker 1: I mean he's these are cookie characters, like they're constantly
Speaker 1: fighting with each other, and yeah, it's uncertain how how
Speaker 1: much knowledge he really has to share about any of this.
Speaker 3: But he does actually get a traya there so and
Speaker 3: Inguwook leads a tray you up to sort of an
Speaker 3: observatory where they can look down upon the first of
Speaker 3: the two gates the tray you must pass to reach
Speaker 3: the Southern Oracle, and the first gate is a pair
Speaker 3: of sphinxes, these huge statues, and Ingewook explains that their
Speaker 3: eyes stay closed until someone who does not feel his
Speaker 3: own worth tries to pass by. And we get to
Speaker 3: witness this with sort of a paladin riding a horse
Speaker 3: to get through the pass and he comes up upon them.
Speaker 3: He's got his armor gleaming, he's holding a big spear.
Speaker 3: He looks pretty confident until the sphinxes open their eyes
Speaker 3: and then boom, they zap him with lasers. He sort
Speaker 3: of explodes off his horse and dies. But a tray
Speaker 3: who is like, well, I've got to get through there,
Speaker 3: so I'm gonna try it out. So we see him
Speaker 3: approach and he walks underneath these huge, imposing statues. The
Speaker 3: designs are pretty scary. It's good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was thinking they They always have looked to
Speaker 1: me kind of like Ray Harry hows and creations, like
Speaker 1: they might come to life at any second, but they
Speaker 1: don't really, aside from the eyes opening.
Speaker 3: I see that Ray Harry house in comparison.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as previously mentioned, the sphinxes definitely have nipples. Like
Speaker 1: I said, that always stood out to me, and for
Speaker 1: some reason I always interpreted that as a younger viewer, thinking,
Speaker 1: oh man, this this movie is serious, like this is
Speaker 1: kind of the whole This film isn't safe, Like clearly
Speaker 1: that the nipples indicate that this is not just for kids,
Speaker 1: that this could be who knows what could happen A
Speaker 1: tray who is not safe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's true and this is actually in the normal sense.
Speaker 3: Also a very scary scene a tray who, like, as
Speaker 3: he's walking up the dead paladin on the ground, his
Speaker 3: visor flips back when it's blown by the wind and
Speaker 3: you see like a charred face inside the mask. So
Speaker 3: this guy's burned up by the sphinxes and to tray you,
Speaker 3: he tries to walk through, but apparently he fails the
Speaker 3: test of faith in himself. He didn't have enough confidence,
Speaker 3: and the sphinxes open their eyes. They try to zap him,
Speaker 3: but he jumps. He just barely avoids the blast.
Speaker 1: It kind of gets through on this one on a technicality.
Speaker 3: So next he's got to face another gate. This is
Speaker 3: the magic mirror gate, and inkybook explains that when they
Speaker 3: look into the magic mirror, that people must face themselves.
Speaker 3: Kind men find that they are cruel, Brave men find
Speaker 3: that they are cowards. When confronted with their true selves,
Speaker 3: most men run away screaming. But something that's kind of
Speaker 3: interesting when a tray you goes and looks in this mirror,
Speaker 3: there's a kind of there's like a double exposure effect
Speaker 3: in the film, where we see a tray you looking
Speaker 3: and seeing himself what, we also see Bastion sitting there
Speaker 3: reading the book. Yes, And strangely, bastionen detects this. It's
Speaker 3: as if he reads a description of himself in the book.
Speaker 3: In this scene, he gets freaked out and he throws
Speaker 3: the book away. He says, this is going too far,
Speaker 3: but then he's also kind of tempted. He's got overwhelming curiosity,
Speaker 3: like what if they do really know about me and Fantasia?
Speaker 3: And so so he goes back, he retrieves the book
Speaker 3: he keeps reading, and a tray who walks through the mirror.
Speaker 1: Now in the book, the three gates are a bit different.
Speaker 1: I'll note Gate one is that if you're caught in
Speaker 1: the gaze of the Sphinxes, you have to solve every
Speaker 1: riddle in the world until you die. Gate two is
Speaker 1: essentially the same, the test of the true self. But
Speaker 1: then Gate three is a keyless gate that only opens
Speaker 1: once you no longer have the desire to pass through.
Speaker 1: But in the film, he basically comes finally to the
Speaker 1: Southern Oracle, which is basically the same two sphinxes from before,
Speaker 1: except now they're blue.
Speaker 3: Yes, it feels like maybe kind of a shortcut, but okay,
Speaker 3: and the sphinxes tell him. When tray Who arrives, they
Speaker 3: tell him, okay, here's the solution. Here's how to beat
Speaker 3: the nothing. The Empress needs a new name. And to Trey,
Speaker 3: who says, a new name, that's easy. I can give
Speaker 3: her a new name if you want. I can pick
Speaker 3: any name I want. But the Southern Oracles tell him, Nope,
Speaker 3: you can't do it. In fact, no one from Fantasia
Speaker 3: can do it. Only a human child can give her
Speaker 3: this new name. And he is like, well, where can
Speaker 3: I find a human And they say, you cannot find
Speaker 3: one inside Fantasia. There are no humans here. You have
Speaker 3: to look outside the world to find them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone in Fantasia is a dream, is a creation
Speaker 1: of the imagination, and a dream cannot itself dream.
Speaker 3: So he's got to get outside somehow to find one.
Speaker 3: But then the Sphinxes are crumbling. They tell him he's
Speaker 3: got a hurry, you know, we don't know how long
Speaker 3: we can withstand the Nothing. And here we're on to
Speaker 3: the next adventure. So a tray You and Falcore are
Speaker 3: flying through the clouds. They fly over many landscapes, mountaintops, deserts,
Speaker 3: and they're looking for the boundaries of Fantasia, though neither
Speaker 3: one of them knows where that boundary lies. And this
Speaker 3: scene I thought was kind of interesting because suddenly it's
Speaker 3: right after this dire scene where we learn about how
Speaker 3: close the Nothing is to destroying all, but then we
Speaker 3: go straight to flying around and there's this sense of exhilaration.
Speaker 3: There's laughter. A tray You and Falcore are both laughing.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I thought, it's notable that this scene
Speaker 3: is fun right after this horrible warning given by the
Speaker 3: Southern Oracle about impending doom if he does not find
Speaker 3: the human child that can name the Empress. I thought,
Speaker 3: maybe there's something going on here about the childhood experience
Speaker 3: with adventure narratives, or narratives more generally, the seeming paradox
Speaker 3: of the way that excitement for the human child who
Speaker 3: is reading is heightened by increasing the stakes within the story,
Speaker 3: the situation for the characters becomes more dire, the experience
Speaker 3: for the reader becomes more fun, And I think that
Speaker 3: maybe the film is suggesting something about the ongoing contagion
Speaker 3: between the worlds here, like Bastion's excitement with the story
Speaker 3: is infecting a tray you.
Speaker 1: I think that's a solid interpretation, because, yeah, within the
Speaker 1: context of what's actually going on in Fantasia, this is
Speaker 1: all just a failed surveillance surveillance mission, you know, it's
Speaker 1: they're just they're trying to find something and they don't
Speaker 1: find it. But it's a very fun sequence, Like these
Speaker 1: are great flying sequences. Who doesn't want to fly around
Speaker 1: on a luck dragon?
Speaker 3: After watching this back in the real world, we get
Speaker 3: a little scene where Bastian wishes that a tray You
Speaker 3: and Falcore would come and ask him to name the Impress,
Speaker 3: because he says his mother she had a wonderful name.
Speaker 3: He doesn't say what the name is.
Speaker 1: Yah.
Speaker 3: Now, when they're flying along in Fantasia, eventually a storm strikes.
Speaker 3: I guess this is the nothing. A tray you and
Speaker 3: Falcor encounter the nothing. It's like a storm and it
Speaker 3: knocks a tray You off of falcurs back. He falls
Speaker 3: into the ocean, and in this scene there is suddenly
Speaker 3: a storm in the real world as well, and it
Speaker 3: blows the windows open on the attic of the school,
Speaker 3: so Bastian has to go like refasten them and then
Speaker 3: keep reading. And in Fantasia, a tray You is washed
Speaker 3: ashore on a desolate rocky beach with these great stone
Speaker 3: ruins in the background, and he encounters the rock Bier.
Speaker 3: So we're full circle again. Rock Bier was in one
Speaker 3: of the earliest scenes in the movie, and we learned
Speaker 3: from him that the rock Bier couldn't protect his friends.
Speaker 3: He's looking at his big, strong, rocky hands but saying
Speaker 3: how even with these hands holding on to his friends,
Speaker 3: he couldn't hold them back from the nothing and they
Speaker 3: just fell away into it and now they no longer exist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, another absolute heart Renger.
Speaker 3: So it's a real dark Knight of the Soul scene.
Speaker 3: A tray You has lost the r n that fell
Speaker 3: off when he fell into the sea. He's lost falcrething
Speaker 3: seems hopeless, The nothing is coming. The rock Bier says
Speaker 3: he wants to surrender and let the nothing take him
Speaker 3: h And then a tree walks into the ruins of
Speaker 3: a city. It seems to be a temple of some
Speaker 3: sort where he sees paintings of scenes from the adventure.
Speaker 3: He just went on all the same characters, making you
Speaker 3: wonder kind of like weight was all of this foretold?
Speaker 3: And then there's the encounter with the Gomork. Finally, a
Speaker 3: tray you and the Gomork come face to face, and
Speaker 3: the Gomork is so scary.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, this is this great wolf there in
Speaker 1: the shadows, with its gleaming green eyes and its ferocious
Speaker 1: mauve teeth and this grumbling voice. Yeah, absolutely perfect. And
Speaker 1: rewatching with my son, it's like he's still he's almost eleven,
Speaker 1: and he still wouldn't really look this scene dead in
Speaker 1: the like dead on. You know, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: looking off to the side a little bit because it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty potent.
Speaker 3: So, I know you wanted to discuss differences between the
Speaker 3: scene in the movie and the first I guess I'll
Speaker 3: just describe it in the movie. Is that how you
Speaker 3: wanna do?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Okay, So in the movie, the Gomork says, you know,
Speaker 3: I am the Gomork, you can be my last victim,
Speaker 3: and a tray who says, well, I won't go down
Speaker 3: easy because I'm a brave warrior, and the Gomork says, well,
Speaker 3: if you're a brave warrior, then fight the nothing. And
Speaker 3: a tray who says, I can't fight the nothing, he
Speaker 3: wants to know why is Fantasia dying? Where is the
Speaker 3: nothing coming from? And Gomork explains Gomork actually knows. He says,
Speaker 3: because people have begun to lose their hopes and dreams.
Speaker 3: The nothing is the emptiness that is left, despair destroying
Speaker 3: this world. And Gomork has been trying to help the
Speaker 3: nothing because people who have no hopes are easier to control,
Speaker 3: and whoever can control them has power. Now I don't
Speaker 3: know if this is different in the book, but I
Speaker 3: think this line from the Gomork about how people who
Speaker 3: have no hopes and just generally I think are cynical
Speaker 3: is what he's sort of portraying are easier to control.
Speaker 3: I think that is actually truer and much more profound
Speaker 3: than you might notice at first, because it can easily
Speaker 3: sound like just boilerplate kind of positivity about life, hope
Speaker 3: is good, et cetera. But specifically the claim that people
Speaker 3: who have no hopes and dreams are easier to control,
Speaker 3: I think that is quite true, and by no means obvious,
Speaker 3: because many people behave as if they believe cynicism is
Speaker 3: actually an empowering type of wisdom, like believing in nothing,
Speaker 3: hoping for nothing, trusting in nothing makes a person smarter
Speaker 3: than everybody else around them and harder to control. You
Speaker 3: hear a million different versions of this. The person who says,
Speaker 3: you know, oh, I don't believe anything, anybody says I
Speaker 3: don't you know, oh I don't believe any politician. They're
Speaker 3: all the same, or whatever.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: There's a million versions of looking at the world this way.
Speaker 3: So some people think that makes them, you know, smarter,
Speaker 3: harder to control. But I think exactly the opposite is true.
Speaker 3: To embrace the kind of cynicism means you end up
Speaker 3: with no real power of discernment. You disarm yourself of
Speaker 3: one of the most powerful armaments you have mentally, the
Speaker 3: ability to discern truth from falsehood, and you end up
Speaker 3: with no real agency in the world. I think this
Speaker 3: type of cynicism not only leads to but is in
Speaker 3: itself actually a form of gullibility. And this is not
Speaker 3: obvious to many. Lots of people think they make themselves
Speaker 3: more powerful and more autonomous and more insightful by being cynical,
Speaker 3: But exactly the opposite is true. It is by having
Speaker 3: hopes and imagination and the ability to put your trust
Speaker 3: in good things that you become empowered to affect the world,
Speaker 3: and more than that, that you have integrity in yourself.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I think it's dead on. Yeah, And as I'll
Speaker 1: discuss in just a minute here, I mean I think
Speaker 1: all of that is present in the text as well,
Speaker 1: and that ultimately in the film they do nice job
Speaker 1: of sort of condensing it down and getting it on
Speaker 1: the screen in a way that you can easily absorb
Speaker 1: in this ultimately brief conversation, but a conversation that is
Speaker 1: still kind of in many ways kind of the heart
Speaker 1: of the conflict.
Speaker 3: Yees. So I found the scene in the movie on
Speaker 3: rewatching quite powerful, kind of gave me goosebumps and really profound.
Speaker 3: But anyway, so coming back to like how it actually
Speaker 3: plays out in the conversation, Gamork reveals, Okay, so he's
Speaker 3: serving the power of the Nothing. He is its servant,
Speaker 3: and he was sent to kill the only one who
Speaker 3: could stop the nothing, a tray. You and a tray
Speaker 3: who says, okay, well, if we're both about to die
Speaker 3: because of the Nothing anyway, then I would like to
Speaker 3: die fighting. I am a tray you so and Gamork attacks,
Speaker 3: so they fight briefly, but a tray you kills Gamork
Speaker 3: with his blade.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great sequence, And again it always gives me chill
Speaker 1: bumps to rewatch that scene now in the book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it has very much the same energy, just a little
Speaker 1: more drawn out and provides a little bit more detail
Speaker 1: on sort of the thesis statement. Here, it's still a
Speaker 1: pivotal scene in which the threat to our world Infantasia,
Speaker 1: is clearly laid out, and we learn about the Nothing,
Speaker 1: the motivations of the power behind the Nothing, and this
Speaker 1: strange creature known as the Gomork. And this is a
Speaker 1: section of the book that I've gone back and reread
Speaker 1: in isolation on more than one occasion because it's really good.
Speaker 1: So just to highlight some of the things that are different,
Speaker 1: I'm going to read a couple of passages as well.
Speaker 1: In the book, the Gomork is chained and the location
Speaker 1: the ruined city is spook City, the land of Ghosts.
Speaker 1: The Gomrk is described as a were wolf, and also
Speaker 1: the Gomork is weak and starving in the sequence, and
Speaker 1: he expects to die before the Nothing arrives and consumes him,
Speaker 1: and seems to believe that this is far preferable. He
Speaker 1: cannot bite through the chain because he was chained here
Speaker 1: by Gaya, the Dark Princess, who gave up hope and
Speaker 1: leapt into the Nothing with her people after chaining him,
Speaker 1: and then he he talks a bit more about the
Speaker 1: nature of were wolves and reveals more about his own past.
Speaker 1: He says, you know, only Fantastica. It's called Fantastica in
Speaker 1: the book as opposed to Fantasia. There are other worlds,
Speaker 1: the world of humans, for instance, but there are creatures
Speaker 1: who have no world of their own, but are able
Speaker 1: to go in and out of many worlds. I am
Speaker 1: one of those. In the human world, I appear in
Speaker 1: human form, but I am not human. And in Fantastica,
Speaker 1: I take on a fantastic in form, but I'm not
Speaker 1: one of you.
Speaker 3: Ooh, that is creepy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, almost kind of like you know, Dark Tower vibes
Speaker 1: to the sky, you know, he's almost like some sort
Speaker 1: of a Randolph Flag kind of a character. He goes
Speaker 1: on to reveal that humans who are consumed by the Nothing,
Speaker 1: they don't just vanish, they are transported to the human
Speaker 1: world as lies. The com work says, quote, you ask
Speaker 1: me what you will be there? But what are you here?
Speaker 1: What are you creatures of Fantastica, dreams, poet conventions, characters
Speaker 1: in a never ending story. Do you think you're real? Well? Yes,
Speaker 1: here in your world you are. But when you've been
Speaker 1: through the Nothing, you won't be real anymore. You'll be
Speaker 1: unrecognizable and you'll be in another world. In that world,
Speaker 1: you Fantasticans won't be anything like yourselves. You will bring
Speaker 1: delusion and madness into the human world. Tell me, Sonny,
Speaker 1: what do you suppose will become of all the spook
Speaker 1: City folks who have jumped into the Nothing? They will
Speaker 1: become delusions in the minds of human beings. Fears where
Speaker 1: there is nothing to fear, Desires for vain, hurtful things,
Speaker 1: despairing thoughts where there is no reason to despair.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, in short, the Fantasticans are Fantasians that jump
Speaker 1: into the Nothing will become live. And it's also related
Speaker 1: that humans hate Fantasia or Fantastica and everything that comes
Speaker 1: from it, so they want to destroy it. Though in
Speaker 1: destroying it they are only flooding their own world with
Speaker 1: more fear and delusion. In this section is also mentioned
Speaker 1: again that's staring into the nothing is like feeling as
Speaker 1: if you're going blind. And also in this sequence the
Speaker 1: Gamore in the Great Film sequence, the Gamore it mentions
Speaker 1: that he serves the powers behind the Nothing, and in
Speaker 1: the book this power is given a name, the Manipulators,
Speaker 1: and the Gomork says quote, when it comes to controlling
Speaker 1: human beings, there is no better instrument than lies, because
Speaker 1: you see, humans live by beliefs, and beliefs can be manipulated.
Speaker 1: The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts.
Speaker 1: That's why I cited with the powerful and serve them,
Speaker 1: because I wanted to share their power. And then the
Speaker 1: Gomore taunts a tray you about the sort of lie
Speaker 1: he may be transformed into when the Nothing takes him
Speaker 1: and tells him quote, the human world is full of
Speaker 1: weak minded people who think there as clever as can be,
Speaker 1: and are convinced that it's terribly important to persuade even
Speaker 1: the children that Fantastica doesn't exist. Maybe they will be
Speaker 1: able to make good use out of you. And so
Speaker 1: at this point when the Gomork relates his mission. He
Speaker 1: tells how he was captured by the Dark Princess and
Speaker 1: never got to find a tray you. A Treyo asked
Speaker 1: him why, like, why are you so he will want?
Speaker 1: Are you so full of hate? And the Gomork says,
Speaker 1: because you creatures had a world and I didn't, again
Speaker 1: touching on this idea that the Gomork is a creature
Speaker 1: of the between that he has. He has one form
Speaker 1: in our world, one form in Fantasia, but he is
Speaker 1: not a denizen of either. And then in the final
Speaker 1: moments of this whole sequence plays out much like in
Speaker 1: the film, except in the book, a Trayo's leg is
Speaker 1: chomped by the Great Wolf and so he is like
Speaker 1: grievously wounded in the process as well, and is like
Speaker 1: seems like he's going to be too slow to escape
Speaker 1: than nothing. But anyway, like like I was saying, like
Speaker 1: the the ideas that are more expressly presented in the book,
Speaker 1: I very much match exactly what you're talking about with
Speaker 1: your interpretation of the scene in the movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the Gomork serves powerful manipulators who want to
Speaker 3: control people, and they do that by militating against hope
Speaker 3: and imagination and trust and filling the world with malicious lies.
Speaker 3: It's a powerful vision of a sort of metaial conflict.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One thing that is interesting, you know in the
Speaker 1: book too, is that at this point in the book
Speaker 1: you are presented with this like greater understanding of the
Speaker 1: threat of facing Fantasia, but it's ultimately defeated bred it
Speaker 1: rather swiftly by like halfway through the book, so like
Speaker 1: the manipulators never really are an issue again, they're not
Speaker 1: really mentioned again later in the book. So there, I
Speaker 1: guess firmly dealt with, but it left me wanting more,
Speaker 1: which again is it's like that's one of the great
Speaker 1: things about any work. And it's actually something that Michael
Speaker 1: Into plays with a lot in the book. There are
Speaker 1: always these little moments where it sounds like he's about
Speaker 1: to go off on another tangent relating like what happened
Speaker 1: to secondary characters when they left the main events of
Speaker 1: the story, and he says, but that is another story
Speaker 1: and we'll be told another time, which I think as
Speaker 1: this feeling of the limitless nature of Fantasia, that it
Speaker 1: has no limits because the limits are just the limits
Speaker 1: of human imagination, which is almost beyond limit.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, after this conflict, the story is not fully
Speaker 3: wrapped up. Ultimately, a tray You and Falcre have to
Speaker 3: find a way to stop the Nothing, which they don't
Speaker 3: quite know how to do. But Falcore does find the
Speaker 3: orn that has sunk to the bottom of the ocean.
Speaker 3: He goes picks it up. He comes in and he
Speaker 3: rescues a tray You from being consumed by the Nothing,
Speaker 3: and together they fly through space as the land of
Speaker 3: Fantasia is literally broken into pieces. The land itself becomes
Speaker 3: like asteroids floating in the vacuum, and a tray You
Speaker 3: uses the Oran to find his way back to the
Speaker 3: Ivory Tower where the Empress is, and there's finally a conversation,
Speaker 3: a meeting between a tray You and the Empress. A
Speaker 3: tray You believes he has failed, but then the Empress
Speaker 3: tells him he hasn't failed. He has brought her the
Speaker 3: human Child. The Weirdly, in the scene, I think questionable choice.
Speaker 3: In the movie, they start calling the child the Earthling,
Speaker 3: which is not a term they've used before. I think
Speaker 3: that's an odd choice. But anyway, they're talking about the
Speaker 3: human child. They say he has suffered with you. He
Speaker 3: went through everything you went through, and now he's here.
Speaker 3: But he doesn't realize he's already part of the never
Speaker 3: ending story. And just as he is sharing your story
Speaker 3: to tray you, others are sharing his. So here we're
Speaker 3: being brought into the narrative as well. And they say that,
Speaker 3: you know, they were with him when he ran from
Speaker 3: the bullies, when he found the bookstore and all that.
Speaker 3: But of course, Bastian we come out to the real
Speaker 3: world in the movie and he's freaking out. Is he
Speaker 3: reading about himself in the book once again? And the
Speaker 3: Empress explains the boy just has to give her a
Speaker 3: new name, that's all, and then the nothing would be beaten.
Speaker 3: It would be so easy for him, but he refuses
Speaker 3: to believe he really has the power to save her
Speaker 3: by doing it, so he doesn't do it, and the
Speaker 3: Empress begs him to save them. Everything's kind of falling down.
Speaker 3: The tower is crumbling, a tray you falls, he might
Speaker 3: fall down dead, and Bastian finally overcomes his hesitation. He
Speaker 3: runs to the window. He throws down the book and
Speaker 3: he cries out a name into the storm outside, a
Speaker 3: new name for the Empress. I think we're to understand
Speaker 3: it's his mother's name, but interestingly, we don't hear what
Speaker 3: it is. It's muffled by the storm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's in the book. It is Moonchild. That's the
Speaker 1: name he chooses, which I guess is probably not his
Speaker 1: mother's name in the real world. But I was on
Speaker 1: this rewatch I couldn't understand what he was yelling either,
Speaker 1: and I was like, well, I'm just going to use
Speaker 1: the subtitles handily, click over the subtitles and see what
Speaker 1: he's saying. But the subtitles for the version I was watching,
Speaker 1: when he yells his mother's name, it's just like it
Speaker 1: just says yelling, so I guess. But as I leaned
Speaker 1: into it, it's like, I think I can hear him
Speaker 1: yelling Moonchild. I think he's yelling Moonchild, but it's not distinct.
Speaker 3: And this does something sort of everything goes dark and
Speaker 3: we're down to just the Empress, I guess, in Bastion
Speaker 3: together in this dark environment. The Empress in her hand
Speaker 3: is holding a single grain of sand that is glowing.
Speaker 3: She says it's all that remains of her vast empire.
Speaker 3: But she says Fantasia can be recreated if Bastian wishes
Speaker 3: all he has to do is wish for it, and
Speaker 3: he says, how many wishes do I get? And she says,
Speaker 3: as many as you want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this becomes crucial in the rest of the novel
Speaker 1: because we've learned that with each wish he makes, he
Speaker 1: loses part of his memory of his life in the
Speaker 1: real world.
Speaker 3: M I mean, I guess that's a different kind of story,
Speaker 3: with a new kind of complexity. But it is a oh,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say, a powerfully emotional ending for this story
Speaker 3: about the joys and potency of childhood imagination. You know,
Speaker 3: she's teaching him how to change everything with creativity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I mean it's ultimate, a real boost of
Speaker 1: a story, you know, the power of creative thought, the
Speaker 1: power of the imagination, the power of actual childhood and
Speaker 1: one's inner childhood. And then of course we get this
Speaker 1: very notable scene, right, we get one more great flying
Speaker 1: scene to end everything out. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, so Bastian himself rides Falcre. He imagines himself riding Falcor.
Speaker 3: So Falcre is back, and the rock bier is back,
Speaker 3: and a tray you and Artax and all the characters
Speaker 3: are restored just by him imagining them. They're now no
Speaker 3: longer destroyed by the Nothing. Now they're back to life again.
Speaker 3: They're carrying on with their lives. It's like the Nothing
Speaker 3: never was. But then, of course, the final merger of
Speaker 3: the two worlds happens when Bastion rides Falcre out into
Speaker 3: the real world over the streets and terrorizes his bullies
Speaker 3: like the ones who beat him up earlier, and Falcre
Speaker 3: chases them into the dumpster. Doesn't feel too vengeful because
Speaker 3: he doesn't actually hurt them, and Falcre is not going
Speaker 3: to hurt anybody. Falcor's sweet. It's just they just get scared.
Speaker 1: They got to get scared. Yeah, it's a very satisfying scene.
Speaker 1: I don't think this doesn't happen in the book. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure this is something doesn't happen in the book.
Speaker 1: It kind of runs completely opposite of the whole world
Speaker 1: building exercise that Enda's doing here. But I cannot fault
Speaker 1: it at all for just the pure cinematic experience of it,
Speaker 1: and also having watched it with my son at two
Speaker 1: different ages already, like, this is a real satisfying sequence.
Speaker 1: Kids love it.
Speaker 3: So I can tell exactly why I loved this movie
Speaker 3: as a child. But I loved it as an adult too.
Speaker 3: This one holds up great. I think it's a beautiful movie.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and yeah, and I encourage everyone out there, if
Speaker 1: you're a fan of this film and you haven't read
Speaker 1: Michael Linda's novel, pick it up because it's, like I say,
Speaker 1: the first half of it is going to give you
Speaker 1: a great literary version of what you've grown to love
Speaker 1: on screen. And then the second half of the book
Speaker 1: kind of goes in a slightly different direction, but is
Speaker 1: full of wonderful ventures and strange creatures and also lots
Speaker 1: of thought provoking material. So I highly recommend both of them.
Speaker 1: All Right, Well, on that note, I guess we're going
Speaker 1: to go and close this episode up. We're going to
Speaker 1: enclose the never Ending Storybook for this episode, but we'll
Speaker 1: be back in the future. Just a reminder that we're
Speaker 1: primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 1: but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns and
Speaker 1: just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: If you want to see a full list of the
Speaker 1: movies that we've covered on the show, you can go
Speaker 1: to a couple of places I have a blog at
Speaker 1: some newtomusic dot com where I blog about the films
Speaker 1: we're covering, and like with this film, I'll probably put
Speaker 1: in a bunch of like embedded examples of some of
Speaker 1: the music that I talked about here if you want
Speaker 1: to go check that out. I also include a link
Speaker 1: for the artwork that sort of thing. But also if
Speaker 1: you've used letterbox dot com, it's l E T T
Speaker 1: E R B O x D dot com. Well, we
Speaker 1: have a profile on there, weird House, and if you
Speaker 1: go there you'll find a list of all the movies
Speaker 1: we've covered, and sometimes they'll be even a a a
Speaker 1: preview of what's coming the next week.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
Speaker 3: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 3: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 3: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 3: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 3: dot com.
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