Thursday 30 April 2015

Me vs The Never Ending Story

A little while ago, a couple of friend and I got together for lunch. Over the course of the meal we started talking about fears and how irrational some are. Husband often tells me that my fear of being eaten alive by a cougar in my backyard is irrational. I disagree. That’s a perfectly rational concern.

What I will admit to is a completely irrational fear of werewolves. I’m not even a particularity big fan of regular wolves, so the were-variety is a big nope. I know they aren’t real (…werewolves that is. I have to assume plain wolves are real), and over the years I’ve even managed to watch movies that have them in it.

Grudgingly.  

That said, I still prefer it when the people turn into simple dog-like werewolves, rather than the nasty, slobbery, terror-beasts that Hollywood loves to throw at us.

The one exception to this slowly lifting embargo on werewolf movies is The Never Ending Story. Even writing the title makes me unhappy. I can’t put into words how much I hate this movie. It’s 107 minutes of nightmare-inducing time you can’t get back.

The whole thing from start to finish is just creepy. From the weird, depressed, given-up-on-life rock creature and snail man, to the completely macabre horse-that-tragically-dies-in-the-Swamp-of-Sorrow part, this is a terrible movie.

This is a KIDS movie!  The sheer volume of depressing imagery is just startling. Honestly, what part of this collection of terribleness did the focus group think was a good idea to brand as a positive childhood movie experience???

And if a dead horse and dying civilization wasn’t enough for the tender tween audience, then there was the luck dragon. This lump of animatronics was just disturbing. It was like a hairy snake that this disturbing kid chose to ride on.  Its face was weird, its body was weird, its script was weird. Nope. 
Creepy.

But the Nothing is what really killed this movie for me. That, and it’s weird werewolf manifestation/asshole sidekick that pretty much wanted to rip the world to bits piece by piece while the inhabitants sat there and took it like a bunch of disinterested captive pandas. 

I don’t even remember all the details, because all I know is that as a kid (and subsequently as an adult) it was scary as fuck and I’ve tried to forget as much of it as possible. I can’t even look at pictures of it without flashbacks to all the horribleness of the movie. Basically, it ruined me for all wolf-like creatures forever.

This article
pretty much sums up my feelings:

And then for some reason, they made a sequel. It was just terrible. 




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