As he settles in to read the book, the audience gets the feeling they are also experiencing the story in much the same way. As the story unfolds, it turns out he is truly experiencing the story and even the characters become aware of his involvement in stopping The Nothing! The story reveals that a terrible thing called The Nothing is sweeping across the magical world of Fantasia because children all over the world aren't reading and enjoying fiction and fantasy enough.
It's up to Bastian Bux, the young boy with the book, to save Fantasia by naming the Childlike Empress. It's one of those movies people remember fondly and enjoy showing their own children, but the making of the film suggests it wasn't the easiest movie to get off the ground. Like many other movies, it was plagued with production delays, went over budget, and was sometimes a nightmare to film. Watching the final product almost never reveals everything that goes into the making of a movie, but for The NeverEnding Story , there's plenty going on behind the scenes.
It was shot mostly in Germany and was directed by famed German director, Wolfgang Petersen. Petersen's biggest film prior to this one was Das Boot , which previously took the title of the most expensive film in German history.
Never one to not outdo himself, Petersen's budget for The NeverEnding Story greatly surpassed that of Das Boot, making it significantly expensive for the time.
Unlike Hollywood, the German film industry spent much less than that on most of their films in the '80s. Filmmaking is not without its risks, but for the actor who played Atreyu, it almost cost him an eye. Noah Hathaway was injured on more than one occasion while filming the movie.
In one case, he was thrown from a horse that then stepped on him. Fortunately, he wasn't seriously injured then, but he nearly lost an eye in the final scene where he fought the wolflike beast, Gmork.
During the scene, the robot that was Gmork malfunctioned somewhat and one of its claws slashed the young actor's face right beside his eye. It was incredibly heavy so when it landed on him, he completely lost his breath, which also injured him pretty badly. They only ever got the one shot of the scene due to how badly Hathaway was injured and that's what you see in the final cut.
When you're working with children on a film, you have to follow some rules. They can only work for a brief period of time and someone responsible for them has to be present. That's not a big deal and it's to be expected.
Something else that should be expected is that when you have an year-old playing a character, she might have some missing teeth. Tami Stronach, the actress who played the Childlike Empress lost her two front teeth in the normal course of growing up. Because they didn't want the character to be missing her two front teeth as that would detract from her otherwise stately appearance, she was fitted with false teeth.
Unfortunately, the falsies caused her to speak with a prominent lisp. It took her a considerable amount of time and diction training to overcome the lisp. Because much of the filming took place in Germany, a lot of the actors brought onto the production were German. This doesn't mean they couldn't speak English, but as it happens, a lot of the actors' dialogue was spoken in German and then dubbed over in English in post-production.
The same is true for the Rock Biter, which can be seen pretty clearly if you go back and watch their lips as they speak. In some scenes, it's not as obvious, while in others, it's pretty telling. This little detail is yet another reminder that The NeverEnding Story is not an American film, even if most people believe that to be the case.
There were a lot of aspects of the film that author Michael Ende didn't approve of. It wasn't just the fact that his vision was altered in a number of ways that he felt weren't in line with his book.
Some of the visuals disturbed him to no end. Considering this was a children's film, it makes sense he had some consternation with the sphinx statues. Not only are the states incredibly large in stature, they are much more voluptuous than necessary. Ende made specific comments to this effect, saying , "The Sphinxes are quite one of the biggest embarrassments of the film.
When Steven Spielberg was given the German cut of the film to edit, he didn't simply give it a viewing and move along. Spielberg focused on what would work for an American audience, which required some shuffling around of a few scenes, the editing out of a touch of profanity, and the removal of seven full minutes of video and dialogue.
That may not seem like a lot of time, but seven minutes in a film that is only 94 minut4es after Spielberg got his hands on it is significant.
Some of Spielberg's notable changes include increasing the Rockbiter's rumbling sound as he approached the Night Hob in the beginning of the film, trimming a few scenes, and generally boosting the pacing of the movie to make it play better for the American audience. By all accounts, the cast of the film was a pleasure to work with. The actor who played Bastian, Barret Oliver, was praised by Wolfgang Petersen as someone who was easy to work with and a joy to have on the set.
His legendary counterpart, Noah Hathaway, didn't get the same response. Brian Johnson, the special effects director for the film, said : "Noah Hathaway was a bit of a pain It was very difficult for Wolfgang to get anything out of him. In the film, Falkor appears out of the clouds when Atreyu is near death in the Swamp of Sadness, and in the next scene, they are on the mountain where the gnomes Engywook and Urgl live. The other cut scene found Falkor and Atreyu caught in a fight between four Wind Giants.
Instead, the scene was edited to be a brush with The Nothing, where Atreyu falls off of Falkor and comes to on a beach. After making a few more movies, Noah Hathaway left acting behind and tried out several other careers, including martial arts trainer and tattoo artist, the latter of which required him to revisit his NeverEnding past. Spielberg helped Wolfgang Petersen cut the U. The pacing needed to be a little quicker for U.
A pacing thing; a few seconds here, a few things here. He even tracked down Noah Hathaway and had him pose with the book for the listing. BY Andrew LaSane. The book's author called the movie "revolting.
Michael Ende was embarrassed by Fantasia's "strippers. Not everyone got along on the set of The NeverEnding Story. Wolfgang Petersen was a perfectionist. It took a while to train a horse to "drown. Bastian is outside of the school only at the beginning and at the end of the novel. At the beginning he is on his way to school when he stops in the bookstore and steals the book; at the end he goes home to his father and returns to the bookstore for a final meeting with Mr.
As its name implies, Fantastica is a fantasy land, a fantastic place that "rests on a foundation of forgotten dreams" of all humankind. The characters of fantasy stories live in it, and the settings of fantasy stories form its terrain, making Fantastica a constantly changing landscape inhabited by characters who are at times bizarre, touching, or Browse all BookRags Study Guides.
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