Did The NeverEnding Story (1984) Terrify Children Like Me On Purpose?

Today’s issue of Dust On The VCR is a subscriber request! And it is a long time coming, as today’s film was recommended by one “Aussie” Nate Johnston, whom I’ve come to know and love through The Deucecast’s supporter group (I don’t want to say “fan club” because that’s giving them too much clout). The NeverEnding Story is Nate’s favorite film bar none, and even though I would’ve been just fine living the rest of my life without ever seeing it again, I couldn’t deny him this request. Especially after Iowa State started their season 1-2. (Mediocre Cyclones football? Talk about a neverending story!) Anyway. Want to request a film for a future issue? Subscribe to the paid version!

Earlier this month, I hit a significant cinematic milestone: I “rewatched” The NeverEnding Story for the first time in nearly 32 years.

If you don’t know me, that statement could lead you to believe I’m roughly 50 years old, which is not (yet) the case.* Rather, I simply had not watched The NeverEnding Story since I was in kindergarten.

Though I’m sure I watched other features as a wee lad, this experience is my first actual memory of watching a movie.** I was with my first best friend, Clinton Cunningham, whom I’d befriended that first week of kindergarten when we both had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lunchboxes. I think The NeverEnding Story was one of his favorite movies—as much as a 5-year-old can have a favorite movie—so we put it on one day when we were playing in his den. And it scared the shit out of me.

I don’t think I even finished it. I think I cowered in a corner and cried. My fragment of a memory is a vision of the Swamps of Sadness—that cold, wet, gray place that looked like the most unpleasant thing on earth. And I remember Artax. Oh boy, do I remember Artax. Like many other 80s babies, I was scarred for life watching that horse sink into that swamp.

By the time I was 9 or 10, I was watching (certain) R-rated movies, and I started seeking out the scariest stuff I could find during my teenage years. But my bad memory of watching The NeverEnding Story in Clinton’s den was strong enough that I never had a desire to even think about rewatching (finishing?) that film.

Until now. I faced my fears, and I watched the film, and I didn’t even pee my pants or anything. In fact, I really enjoyed it.*** But by the time I was done, I couldn’t help but wonder: Was this film trying to traumatize children? Was that kinda the point?

The NeverEnding Story is thematically rich for a children’s film, but it’s not exactly subtle. The real-world side of the film centers around a 10-year-old boy named Bastian; not only has he just lost his mother, he’s getting the “grow up” speech from his dad, who tells him that he shouldn’t waste his time reading fantasy stories. It doesn’t help that he’s a top target of the bullies at his school.

And of course, the film’s corresponding fantasy story is an allegory for grief, trauma, etc. The land of Fantasia is being slowly consumed by The Nothing, which is, of course, what happens when we grow up and stop reading and imagining our own fanciful stories. It’s a remarkably effective parallel storyline capped off with a clever swerve into metafiction in the climax.****

I’m sure the internet’s full of thinkpieces about the way this film represents (or fails to represent) a child’s experience with a life-altering loss. But there’s one line that stuck with me, delivered to the hero Atreyu in a moment of reconnaissance by a healer named Urgl: “It has to hurt if it’s to heal.”

At face value, this notion is…a bit silly. Urgl’s merely commenting on the fact that her medicine stings a bit because it’s working, but the larger thematic point is a bit too matter-of-fact to be profound. Yes, one must be hurting in order for healing to be necessary.

Is it a bit ironic that a movie about a child overcoming his trauma would create fresh traumas for the children who watched it? Certainly. But maybe that’s exactly what the film wanted. Maybe young viewers like me were supposed to be devastated by Artax’s death and terrified by the mere presence of Gmork or overwhelmed by the thought of The Nothing creeping into our own imaginations. Maybe we were being made to hurt so that we could learn to heal.

Hell, it even got me wondering if being terrified by The NeverEnding Story somehow led me to my love of horror movies only a few years later. Gmork was kinda my first werewolf.

*This is no slight at my Gen X friends! I love y’all very much. But I just know I would feel my bones turning to dust if I said “I haven’t seen that movie in 30 years” to somebody.

**Or possibly my second. I don’t know which one came first, but I’ve always remembered the chorus of “The Fight Song” from Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation. “Sticking together we can make it! Nothing can stop us, we can’t go wrong!”

***The puppets are terrific, aren’t they? There’s something magical about Falkor, Gmork, and Rockbiter that CGI could never replicate.

****Spoiler: I really wish I’d been introduced to this film just a few years later, maybe when I was 7 or 8. I think hearing the Empress say that “others” are watching Bastian’s story just like he’s reading Atreyu’s would’ve blown my little mind.

*****It’s worth noting that The NeverEnding Story was released in the U.S. less than a month before the first PG-13 film (Red Dawn) hit theaters. I wonder if all the doom and gloom would’ve bumped it up a rating had it been released a few years later—or it they would’ve had to cut certain moments to qualify for a PG rating.

The NeverEnding Story is now streaming on Hoopla, and it is available to rent elsewhere.