The Last Movie You Watched

[Rev. Rye]

This week in the Deep Hurting Project is The NeverEnding Story III: Escape from Fantasia. Honestly, I only watched the original two movies a couple weeks ago when it became clear that I would have to tackle this movie soon. They really weren't for me, but then again, I'm really not into fantasy movies. This movie, well, it was legitimately shocking how bad it was, and I'm legitimately baffled as to why this was even made; the first two films covered the plot of the entire original book, and there was no sequel to the original book. And the second film just had such a poor reputation (somewhat rehabilitated by this one being an even bigger fuckup) that one's seriously confused about why they even bothered. While I don't have an official story, my hypothesis is that someone wrote a script that someone found a bit too similar to the original movie and they just decided to make it a sequel instead of its own thing. That's how was made, and as far as I can tell, that's why this sequel was made.

• Let's start with the main antagonist. In the first film, it was an mysterious creature called the Nothing, a thing that personified the threat of non-existence. The next film, they had an evil sorceress. This time around, it's a group of bullies called The Nasties. Yes, school bullies. And their leader? Jack Fucking Black. Yes, they give him a unibrow and made him into a school bully, and, surprisingly (or not), he actually ends up the best part of the movie. He takes what was written as a one-dimensional bully and makes him an obsessed madman on par with Ahab, and he does Kubrick stares out the wazoo.
  
• Okay, full disclosure, I barely paid attention during the sequel, but since when does the NeverEnding Story itself talk about Bastian's life as well as what's going on in Fantasia? This is part of why I believe it was just an unrelated script that got shoehorned into the canon.
  
• Apart from Jack Black, nobody in this fucking movie can act. The humans are full of dull surprise, and the puppets are just obnoxious. Falkor is basically a flying white version of Scooby Doo without a speech impediment, the Rockbiters (yes, the Rockbiter has a wife and child) are basically a mix between the Flintstones and the Gorgs with none of the endearing personality traits from the original, and there's also a tree-bark guy who talks like a Borscht Belt comedian and keeps making wood-related puns. Honestly, the writing is on par with Doogal, but it's not like there's an excuse like Harvey Weinstein just wants to add American celebrities to make it accessible for American audiences. This was made this way.
  
• And speaking of the Gorgs, the Jim Henson Creature Shop actually did the puppetry work here, and I'm legitimately baffled that they could make something like this look so shit.
  
• The Childlike Empress is older than Bastian now, and she gives him the Auryn and forbids him from doing anything with it, even just saying "No, Bastian!" when he asks to just wish everything back to normal and send back the Fantasians who came with him by accident. And then, his new stepsister steals the Auryn and uses it to exploit mall employees. She's okay with this somehow. And somehow, she lets her wish everything was back to normal, just like Bastian tried and she refused to allow for some reason. And somehow, this makes the Nasties a group of studious youngsters.
  
• Also, there's this thing that looks like a bunny drawn by Ralph Steadman who keeps  getting run over? Dafuq?
  
• Also, this happens. Twice, once in the film proper, and once repeated during the credits, because they must have been proud of this shit:
  
  
  

I was hoping to say that this would be the end of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy films in the Deep Hurting Project, but I just checked the TVTropes history page for the So Bad It's Horrible Film pages. There's another shitty sci-fi sequel there, it's available at my local library, and, fortunately, it's one whose source material I'm more familiar with: Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation.