Ep 43 - The Never Ending Story 2 - The Next Chapter (1990)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: The Never Ending Story 2 the Next Chapter, 1990 After Bastion forgets almost everything from the first movie, they go ahead and make a second movie where Bastion forgets almost everything. [00:00:13] Speaker B: Hello everybody, and welcome back to R Rating. The show where I get together with a couple of my friends, we take a look at a movie franchise, break it down by movie, give it a score and throw it up on the board. I'm joined as always, by my buddies, Will and Brian. Will, how are you doing this week? [00:00:26] Speaker A: Living the dream. [00:00:28] Speaker B: Fantastic. How about you, Brian? [00:00:29] Speaker C: Ready to end the story? [00:00:31] Speaker B: Excellent. It sounds about right. Now, this one, I believe we said we were all new to. And we're going to discuss the third movie today as well, which was brand new to all of us. But had either of you seen this one? Did this trigger any memories from childhood or is this fresh for you, Will? [00:00:47] Speaker A: I. I had seen the second one at least majority of the movie probably caught it on, you know, the TV as they repeat trash movies over and over again. So I think I've seen most of it when I was growing up, but conveniently forgot most of it as well. [00:01:04] Speaker B: Fair enough. What about you, Brian? Any. Any memories at all? [00:01:07] Speaker C: Yeah, ditto. That's the same thing. I didn't realize it, but I had seen most of the film and chose to forget it. And we'll probably do so again. [00:01:15] Speaker B: That's probably the best way to go. I don't remember anything of this. This is a completely fresh movie to me. We owned a two pack with Never Ending Story and this one, and I still had never watched it. And in fact I watched this with my daughter who did enjoy it, but I fell asleep on the couch next to her. So I had to watch this one twice in the last week, which was, let me tell you, a pleasure. [00:01:37] Speaker C: Now, Dan, when. When you came into this one, did you have high hopes? Because last week we went over the first movie. We all scored it pretty high for a variety of reasons, but it was, it was a solid film. Did you expect anything out of this? [00:01:52] Speaker B: I. You know what? It would have been interesting if, if one of us had a different take on the first movie. Not that one of us necessarily disliked it, but if one of us had not seen it before and could have come to it clear instead of with nostalgia glasses, because coming to this one with no nostalgia for it whatsoever, this was a rough watch. Now that's not the question you asked. You asked me did I have any expectations for this one going in. I can't say that I did. I looked it up ahead of time. And like the first movie on IMDb got like a 7.9, this one got like a 5, and the next one gets like a 2 and a half or something. So I knew it was going to be a pretty steep decline. I just, I. I think five is pretty generous for this one. I guess that's a bit of a spoilers for later in the show, but this is. This is not a 50% for me. I don't know. What about you, Brian? Did you have any expectations going into this one? Are you hoping for more than you got? [00:02:40] Speaker C: I was hoping to find something positive to latch onto because in the previous movie there were so many different things that were kind of amazing about these. Them, these ideas, the children dealing with anguish and pain and deep emotions and all that kind of stuff. And I was like, maybe they're going to have something like that in this. No, no. There was. There was no depth to this movie whatsoever. I was very. I was very disappointed that I couldn't find a single thing to latch onto. This was a horrible experience for me. [00:03:12] Speaker B: The one thing in this movie, and I feel like it was more accidental than anything, is like the first movie had the nothing, and then this movie had the hollow. That's exactly what I would describe this movie as, is just being hollow. The emptiness, sorry, whatever. The enemies crash and we're empty inside. [00:03:28] Speaker C: The nothingness, the emptiness. It's the same thing, just like a different angle on it. They couldn't come up with something. [00:03:35] Speaker B: Yeah, it just felt a little too on the nose for what the movie actually was. And it was kind of like, wait, do they know they're making a bad movie? Like, are they aware right now? [00:03:43] Speaker C: Okay, so one of the themes that I thought that they maybe were trying to do but failed, in my opinion, was that they had the evil empress lady who was kind of playing like this wannabe Bastion's mother character, sort of. And I felt like the movie neither played into that or steered around, was just kind of a coincidental thing, and it didn't work at all. And it was like, okay, you have this kid who misses his mother, and you have this woman who could play on those strings but never really did. Did you guys get that at all? Will, what do you. What do you think? Any themes that you caught on to? [00:04:29] Speaker A: Here's the thing. And anybody who's watched us go through these movies, these franchises may Notice this, and YouTube probably have noticed this as well. If it's a movie that has broken the mold or gone above and beyond or somehow made it against all odds. I'm really into it. I'm really into looking up backstories, how the movie was made, all these fun tidbits. I like to bring all of this fun trivia or lesser known facts to the table because I'm like, I'm, I'm, I'm involved. [00:05:02] Speaker B: I love it. [00:05:02] Speaker A: I love it. And then there's movies like this that come along and they're so mid, not even mid, they're so boring that I can't even be bothered to look up why this is such garbage. I don't even know if the emptiness was part of the book. I didn't even look to, I didn't even care because I was so disinterested in, by the lack of depth in the, in the themes and, and the, the storytelling and, and all of the messaging that is supposed to be put towards the child watching these movies that they had. In the first one, it was all absent, it was all empty. This movie was nothing like the first one and needed to be everything like the first one. [00:05:57] Speaker B: Well, and realistically, if the writers don't care, why should you as the audience? [00:06:01] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And they clearly didn't care. Neither did the set designers, neither did the cinematographers, neither did the lighting specialist. The actors clearly didn't know what they were doing. This was a travesty from start to finish. And if IMDb gave it a five, I think they gave it four too many. I, I was like, guys, I had a hard time finishing this film. I really did. I did not want to sit through this. It was horrible. [00:06:31] Speaker B: I'm not kidding. When I said I fell asleep the first time, like, I could not have stayed awake. And I tried, I tried being like, I have to watch this, we're gonna review it. I tried saying awake. And at one point I'm just like, you know, what effort? Like, I just, I passed out. I did watch it again. I've seen this movie all the way through. But yeah, it was, it was tough. It was not. And it's not even like, you know what? We just did the Home Alone movies. And as bad as those were, they were at least kind of fun bad. I really just didn't even have fun bad with this one. Like, it was. The problem, I think is it was also just kind of insulting to the first movie. Like a lot of the props, a lot of the design, a lot of the world building that took place in the first one, a lot of the character building, even that took place in the first one, they just completely got away with, like Bastion, the Childlike Empress. Everything feels like brand new characters. Almost like they were actually trying to get away from the first movie as much as possible. Even to the point where. Like, the whole point of the first movie. Well, not the whole point, but like a big story point of the first movie is that he names the Childlike Empress. He gives her a name. And then in this one, there's no mention of wild child or no moon child. Sorry. She's just the Childlike Empress again. All the actors are different with the [00:07:41] Speaker C: one example of credits. [00:07:43] Speaker B: Sorry. [00:07:44] Speaker C: I think her name was Zyla or something weird like a Z or. [00:07:48] Speaker A: That was the. That was the Mistress of Emptiness, I think. [00:07:52] Speaker C: Okay. Yeah, but they didn't. They didn't call her a moon child. Yeah, they didn't. They didn't go on that. I don't know why you had the headband. I thought that looked dumb on him. I was like, are they trying to make him more Native American? Is that what they're, like, going for? [00:08:07] Speaker B: Here's the thing. Like, you took a movie, which I was wrong. I looked it up again. I looked up the Never Ending Story the first time, and it said it was made for 27 and made 15. And I was like, oh, it failed. No, it did not. It made, like, 100 million-plus. Like, I was looking at only Germany or something. Incorrect. So I apologize for that. The first movie was a massive success. It took them seven years to come out with this after the massive success of the first one is a larger budget and every single thing in this movie looks cheaper. [00:08:35] Speaker C: Everything. [00:08:36] Speaker B: Every single thing. Like, even Atreyu's costume looks awful by comparison. [00:08:41] Speaker C: Did they use a new falcor for this one? Because it looked like they didn't have either. Either they use the same animatronic FAL core, but the guy controlling it sucked. Or it was like missing an arm or something. Or they had a bad fal. Like, it was just terrible. [00:08:59] Speaker B: It looks like he was modeled off of the first one, but they made a new one. Whereas the one in the third movie, when we get to that, that is like a whole different beast. [00:09:08] Speaker C: Yeah, and. And his voice was terrible, too. Like, the. The new voice that they used was not fun or matched up to the lips at all like it was. And the set design, man, the set design was so cheap. The first one had these amazingly, like, in depth costumes with makeup people with multiple heads, different sized people, all kinds of like. I mean, and this when he's going through jungles and forests, like, it looks so real and so immersive and this one looked cheap every aspect. It was just people in flamboyant, cheap costumes. They, they didn't have anything special. No different sizes. Like there was a guy with multiple heads and he did not look good at all. It was very disappointing to see that they use it had a bigger budget and failed so miserably on that front. [00:10:01] Speaker B: So the thing that I had, the. One of the many things I had an issue with is exactly what Brian's talking about is when you get to the. The Diamond City, it's not the Emerald City, but whatever, wherever the, the Crystal palace or whatever Crystal palace, everybody's dancing around. Nobody looks like anything. Like when you get to that throne room scene at the beginning of the first never ending story, like you can see all these different creatures in the background and they're not focusing on them necessarily. They're just there. And like, you can kind of make up the world however you want it to be based off what you're looking at. But each character, a variety of cultures, unique. And this is just people dancing around in different colored things. They're all the same outfit, just different colors of the same thing. You're just like, all right. And he falls down that trash compact or whatever that is, and he runs into like four actually unique characters for like a second. [00:10:48] Speaker C: Yeah, the mud people or whatever they were. [00:10:50] Speaker B: There was a mud person and a woman who has to sing everything she says and the woman who's like dancing in a windstorm and you're just like, okay, like, you know what? Technically you understood the assignment, but no, [00:11:01] Speaker C: the Crystal palace scene reminded me of the scene in the Marvels when they go into that like town or village or whatever and everybody's dancing and singing and stuff. [00:11:10] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:11:12] Speaker C: That's what it reminded me of. They're just really colorful and dancing around in flamboyant. But none of it really made any sense. Had its own life or anything. [00:11:21] Speaker B: The, A lot of the characters, the enemies, specifically the crab walking enemies, like, just screamed Power Rangers to me. And then you had Zia or whatever the woman was. I was like, that's absolutely the, the Power Rangers main bad guy, whose name I'm completely blanking on. [00:11:37] Speaker C: I don't know. Something. [00:11:38] Speaker B: Yeah. But like, it just. This movie felt very Power Rangers to me. I think it's before Power Rangers technically, but that's the feel that I got from this. Whereas, like the first ever ending story felt unique and, and kind of interesting and new. But then you had Tri Head. Like his name is Tri Head. And when he spins around, he's clearly got like 400 heads in there. And I'm like, your name means three headed. The fuck? Why? Why? Like, why don't. Like you don't see the other heads anyways. Why not just have him three heads? [00:12:11] Speaker C: He was trying to show off all of them, but he couldn't because he could only show three of them. [00:12:17] Speaker B: I know that's a really stupid little thing to get hung up on, but that bothered me. [00:12:21] Speaker C: I hated the, the, the monsters, the giants or whatever. [00:12:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:27] Speaker C: And he's like, like, like he, he wishes to like beat him up or something. I forget what his wish was. Was like really stupid. Like he wished like a spider wishing [00:12:37] Speaker A: for the spray can. [00:12:38] Speaker C: The spray can? Yeah, I'm like, wish for a sword or something. Like, I know you're not gonna wish for a gun in a children's movie, but was spray. [00:12:48] Speaker B: You know what, though? It's almost worse. Like, not the gun necessarily, but like if he'd ordered like a stick or something. Like, sure, you don't want to hit a kid with a stick, but like, oh, we lost Will to the stream. No, no, I got. I'm continuing on, just wanting to get Will back. [00:13:04] Speaker A: Sorry. [00:13:04] Speaker C: There we go. [00:13:05] Speaker B: Like when he wishes for a weapon, I understand they don't want to give the kid a gun or something, but everybody's house has a spray can in it. And you're just giving kids the idea, like, hey, look, spray somebody in the face of the spray can. You're like, why? I understand you don't want to shoot a kid in the face, but why pick something that is so readily available to kids everywhere and choose that to be your weapon? [00:13:24] Speaker C: It's like, okay, when it comes to the wishes, the absolute dumbest scene, absolute dumbest scene in the movie. I wish for another step. I wish for another step. He uses up all his wishes going one by one of the side of the freaking cliff. It's like, just wish for a fucking escalator already. Like, this is dumb. Oh, terrible. [00:13:49] Speaker A: There's huge problems with the wishing in general. It's. And in that scene specifically, it's like the wishes are playing against him as well because he wishes for another way in to this palace and it gives him a half ladder. It doesn't even give him a full wish. So in itself, it's already just completely [00:14:11] Speaker B: trash the, whatever the medallion thing is a monkey's paw the entire movie. And yeah, especially in the scene you're talking about. Now, admittedly, he doesn't know that the wishes have A negative side to him. Like, that's not explained to him until much later on. So I get that. But even it's just inefficient to be like, and another one. And another. Like, just give me a stairwell. Give me wings. Give me literally anything. Teleport me to the top. Literally anything. But then later on, like, every wish. He's hot seems to have some sort of a negative. Like, he wishes for a dragon, and then he has to go and chase down the dragon. He wishes for a ladder and only gives him half a ladder. He has to wish for, like, each step individually. And then the movie ends. And I'm sorry to kind of jump ahead here, but the movie ends with this really ambiguous wish where he's like, I wish you had a heart. And I'm just like, really? That that's how we're ending this? Like, what if she just got a cow's heart? And he's like, I wish you had a heart. His last one is just like. He's like, well, that was a waste. We win. Like, why was that what you went for? And why did that kill her? Why did gaining a heart, like, okay, you filled the emptiness. Congratulations, you beat the cl. But, like, why did she explode and everything go back to normal? Because she felt bad all of a sudden. [00:15:22] Speaker C: Because the writers didn't care. They did not care. They were like, hey, let's use this name brand over here that made a bunch of money, and we'll just crap out another film and collect our paycheck. We don't care. And neither do I. This film was garbage from front to back. There is no redeeming quality. I really did not like it. And if we're going to talk about the next movie, I think we should try and wrap up all of our hatred here pretty quick. Give this thing a rating. [00:15:55] Speaker B: You think we're going to talk about another movie and this will be the end of our hatred? Because I got some words for you. [00:16:03] Speaker A: All right, all right. I've got some positive things to say here. [00:16:07] Speaker B: I was hoping he would. No, this is Ryan Wilsoner. [00:16:10] Speaker A: Not really. But of all the horrible things this movie obviously threw at my eyes and I had to keep them open, [00:16:22] Speaker B: there [00:16:22] Speaker A: was a couple of interesting things. I didn't mind the bird character, whatever his name was. Diddles or whatever. [00:16:29] Speaker B: Nibbly or something Nibbly. It was not Tittles. Diddles the bird. That's a different movie. [00:16:38] Speaker A: Anyway, I liked he. His makeup, his. His character. He was cool, and he was kind of torn between doing good and bad Couldn't convince a kid to make a wish for the life of him, which is more the kids issue than his. But his character was, like the only interesting character in the whole movie. And then Atreyu, they actually cast an indigenous actor. So props to that because they didn't do that in the first one. So that, I guess, was a positive thing. Is there anything else? It ended. That was good. It was good when it ended. And then at the end, they kind of played the original never ending story song a little bit. So that was nice. I could remember. [00:17:28] Speaker B: I could remember butchered version of it. [00:17:29] Speaker A: I know. But at least we got a taste of something that we loved at one time, you know? So there was that. We don't even get that in the third one. [00:17:39] Speaker C: And then. [00:17:39] Speaker A: Okay, so here's my gripes, though. This whole story, the whole theme, the whole message is Bastion is afraid of heights. So let's go to the Neverending Story and. And sort that out. And then it's not even really about that or anything. [00:17:56] Speaker C: It's. [00:17:57] Speaker A: Now I can make wishes when he's been wishing. He wished the whole freaking Fantasia back into existence in the previous movie, like, right from the get. Right from the jump. This movie is completely flawed. And so it just spirals out of control from there. And that's the problem. And that's a telltale sign that this was just a money grab. Went horribly wrong. And so you want me to rate this thing 29 out of 100. [00:18:26] Speaker B: Damn it. I wish I kept you online on screen for, like, a second longer. It doesn't matter. [00:18:30] Speaker A: It doesn't matter. [00:18:31] Speaker B: It's fine. Um, I. You know what? I. If I have to give it a positive. The diving scene where, like, the world falls away and there are just, like, waterfalls, you can tell, like, it, it, it's. It's. It's not the worst depiction I've seen of showing that somebody is afraid of heights. [00:18:47] Speaker A: Right. Okay. [00:18:47] Speaker B: Once you see it at the end of the movie and you're like, oh, there's the waterfalls. We'll just see doing that over again, it's kind of like, okay, whatever. But, like, as it was happening at the beginning of the movie, I was like, okay. Like, it's, it's. It's not great. But you tried something. You didn't just have him be up there and, like, what's that thing they do with the camera where they kind of, like zoom out but they're staying in the same position? It kind of see that weird vertigo jaws. Does it? [00:19:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:19:09] Speaker B: Like, they could have easily just done something like that and be like every other movie you've ever seen and be like, okay, they tried something different. I'll give them some props for trying something different. [00:19:17] Speaker A: Yeah, they also tried something different being like, oh, you want to join the swim team? Well, the first thing you have to learn on swim team is how to high dive. Because that's what swimming is all about. [00:19:28] Speaker B: Well, and day one, let's go up 30 stories. [00:19:31] Speaker C: That, that's what ruined the scene for me. Welcome to swim class, says the coach. Let's go to the high dive. And they all look up and up and up and up. And I'm like, he's 12 years old. You're gonna push him off a two story building. Like what the hell it was. It didn't make any sense at all. Not to mention the coach's acting was so atrocious in that scene too. [00:19:52] Speaker B: Just everyone else. [00:19:55] Speaker C: Yeah, but I mean like that set the pace for the whole film. And then, yeah, everything will said I agree with completely. I did like Nibbly. The, the character, the costume, all that was the best part of the worst movie ever. For, for me, this, this came in at a 22. For me. I hated this experience and I don't want anybody to ever see this again. [00:20:24] Speaker B: Well said. Well said. Rourke, if you're still there, I do appreciate you. I don't usually do shots on this show, but you already paid for it. But don't do it again. [00:20:31] Speaker A: And you know what? This, this movie has caused us to drink. Let's be honest, that's pretty much. [00:20:38] Speaker B: Oh man, water is soft. Yeah. Is it all right? I, I don't have a whole lot to say that the other guys didn't really say. There was really nothing. You know what? This movie is pretty great because I cuddled with my daughter and I had a nap and that's a pretty good way to end the day. That's really the only positive I have for this movie. She enjoyed it, so there's that. But again, she might have enjoyed it because she was, you know, sitting with her parents watching a movie more so than she was super invested. The artwork on this, like everything about this vote's so cheap. When Atreyu is like riding through the jungles and stuff like that and it's clearly like a painted background which like you can get away with sometimes. But like in this it just didn't work. All the characters felt really bad. None of the designs or characters felt like they were carry over from the first movie like this. Everything about this just Felt like a brand new experience and not in a good way. Yeah, I'm. I'm gonna be right there in like the 2020 range on this one. It was just, just awful. And even, as I said, like, even the Home Alones were bad, but they were kind of fun. This was just painful to sit through. There's no other way of wording it. And with Brian, I agree. Don't watch this. Watch the first one, end there, call it a day. [00:21:56] Speaker A: There are no sequels to the Never Ending Story. That's fine. [00:21:59] Speaker B: All right, so there we show. After just two movies, it went from being tied with the top spot for being up at the 80s there, now it's way down to the 52. It is still technically a pass. It is above the 50 mark. [00:22:13] Speaker C: But, like, as a franchise. [00:22:15] Speaker B: As a franchise? Oh, yeah. No, no. The first. This movie tanked hard. But yeah, I don't know this. It's unfortunate to see Never Ending Story so low. But at the same time, they did this themselves. Like, like we're just reacting to what they did and their effort was so low. And this is where it ends up. [00:22:33] Speaker C: So this is a franchise. You've got to remember that, viewers, this is the rating as a franchise. So if you like the first movie, be sure to check out the previous video and see us talk about our nostalgic feelings for it and how wonderful that film was. And you can enjoy that. That's not this film. It's not this film at all. [00:22:52] Speaker A: Yeah, that's why we like to rate them individually. Because a movie can be good, a franchise can be bad. [00:23:00] Speaker B: At some point, I'm very tempted to go through and do like a giant poster with all of the movies rated for the three of us. Or go through and be like, here is Will's R rating. And just like, see how different those lists actually are. What's at the top of Will? What's the top? For me, stuff like that could be fun. Just like as a. I don't know, maybe the anniversary episode or something. Have a couple of different charts to go over and be like, look how different Will scores are from mine. Because they will probably be pretty drastic. [00:23:26] Speaker A: Yeah, they fluctuate a bit, for sure. I mean, I think there would be some strongholds in the top and bottom that will just naturally be. But you're right, there would be some variation which would be interesting to see. [00:23:37] Speaker B: All right, so that's our rating of Never Ending Story so far. We're going to talk about Never Ending Story 3 next week. But what's your thoughts, leave them down below. I'd love to hear from you. And then once we're done with the Never Ending Story, we're going to talk about 28 weeks later. The new movie, 28 years later, is coming in theaters very, very soon, and we're very curious to check it out. So make sure you hit the like and subscribe button if you want to see our thoughts on that. So we see you in the next one, Sam.