La storia infinita 2

I am a fan of The Neverending Story the book. This movie did not live up to my expectations at all (when I saw it again recently)

The movie covers part of the book's story, with Bastian meeting Xayide. Although part of it is followed closely, Nimbly did NOT work for Xayide, there was no Memory ball thing (AURYN made Bastian lose his memories on its own) and the end was a cheesy replacement for the Fountain of Life.

In the original story, there was much more substance.

And the thing that annoys me most: If Bastian met the Childlike Empress in the last movie, why did she appear to him in this one? If they had only researched the story better, they would have discovered that you can only meet the Empress ONCE. No matter how many times you meet her, she wil have no memory of you ever meeting her previously.

Good movie. The thing that bugged me the most was that they went through all the trouble to do a sequel to cover the other half of the book, and then left out HUGE rather important chunks and put other junk in. If it could be done right, I would love to see the book done as a mini-series covering EVERYTHING. For a sequel, I give it high marks. As the other half of a wonderful book, not so high.

So the original is a classic and people really love it (deservedly so) - but with almost everything that is succesful, you will get at least one sequel. And it should have stayed at one sequel to tell you the truth, but more about part 3 elsewhere. This one takes the story where we left off, but has different actors in the same roles - which makes sense because many years had passed but they wanted to still have kids in the main roles.

So while this does not hold up to the first one, this is a decent effort overall. As an adult you can see where this is going, but for some kids this may still work. So it is the audience that matters a bit when watching this. There are character traits and downfalls and the puppet work is exceptional again. There are worse movies out there for sure

The Never Ending Story 2 did not seem to be as good as its predecessor, however this movie wasn't all that bad. Sure it would of been nice if it had ALL of the original actors from the first one in it and that could be a reason why this film didn't do as well. I bet we would of all enjoyed this movie much better if it did have the original actors in it. I am a big fan of the novel (greatest novel I have ever read) and that could be why I happen to like this movie. This is actually the last half of the book when Bastian visits "Fantastica" and meets Atreyu and all the others. However one downfall was this film seemed a bit distant to the original making it seem like they are two totally different stories when in fact they are one. It just didn't seem to capture all the magic of the book. But all in all this was a pretty good movie and it wouldn't hurt to get an idea of what the second half of the story is all about. But the first film is the greatest and will put its spell over your entire family!!!!!!! I give The Never Ending Story 2; 7.5/10.

There are so many things wrong with this movie its hard to pinpoint. I myself am one of the biggest Neverending Story fans around, both of the book and the 1984 film. But while that film didn't stray from the book much, this movie simply takes characters and puts them in entirely new situations.

The aesthetic complaints I have about this movie are further. Bastian and Atreyu look completely different (I know the original actors had aged), Pyorncrachzark (Rock Biter) had a child, and shots from the original film were used for horse-riding sequences. The childlike empress is older as well. She can't age! This truly is a children's film, whereas the original was a truly beautiful movie. Shortly, avoid this movie and see the original again. Wambos can jump in the Nothing.