The Neverending Story is a matter of my heart. Not many films have so much imagination, so many non-digital tricks. In the early 80s, director Wolfgang Petersen was very well known in Germany and this film was a big success for him, not only beyond European borders. It blazed a fine trail, no small trail, for him to make Hollywood big budget films in America, including many disaster films such as The Perfect Storm, Air Force One and, of course, the historical big budget film Troy and the drama on the Poseidon.
There are a few interesting facts about the film:
- The author of the book, Michael Ende, was not happy with the film version, nor did he want his name to appear in the opening credits.
- The queen's (Tami Stronach) front milk teeth fell out before filming, so she filmed with false ones and learned to speak so she wouldn't grin.
- Although Noah Hathaway (Atreyu) played the lead role, he was banned from promotional activities and forbidden from attending the premiere. In fact, filming was extended from three months to ten, for which Noah was not paid, and his parents sued the filmmakers (he later received some of the money).
- The name Bastian almost indecipherably screams into the night is „Moonchild“.
- Noah Hathaway was injured twice during filming. First he fell off his horse, which then stepped on him again, and then while filming in the swamp his foot got caught in an escalator and he was pulled underwater. When he resurfaced he was unconscious.
Source of interest: CSFD.cz.
The film is one of my collection of gems, so I'll critique its rewrite more. The packaging says it is a remastered edition. So anyone who buys this film expects it to be, at the very least, a meticulous transcription that is similar to recent films in terms of quality. Unfortunately this is not the case, this is an old transcription that computers have not paid that much attention to. The producers of the film didn't even consult with the director to advise them on how to get it right, and so the film has a lot of flaws that should be corrected.
The image is not stabilized and there are minor scratches. Therefore, the film would not be harmed by a new release that undergoes the necessary digital editing and a gold edition release. The only digital edits have come with color enhancement and a slight DRN with preservation of film grain.
Although the film delivers 2x DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, the age of the film has taken its toll on the English original. And you can hear on the Czech dub that it's the original/only dub that was slavishly transferred from the 1986 mono track. The Czech dub suffers. A translation tailored to a time when the Czech dubbers didn't get as much of the original source material as they needed to get the translation right. The film therefore suffers from Czech invention of new lines and their meaning, like the first dubbing of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I still can't get the Queen's new name out of my head, which is "Mamí" in the Czech dub and "Moonchild" in the original.
This Blu-ray couldn't have used more effort to bring the transcription closer to the quality of the other discs. Not just from American producers, but a new dub would have been useful to undo the mistakes of the 1980s dubbers.
The disc also features a documentary about the film that surprises with its length. It's an hour-long documentary that isn't full of Hollywood talk about how perfect the film was and how it was worked on. You get a look into the whole pot of filming, including the making of the difficult trick sequences. Admittedly, the digital transfer suffers from many ills, both in image quality and processing, but the hour-long documentary is the optimum bonus feature for an 80s film.
The price of £399 may entice you to buy The Neverending Story. It's the first Czech release on such a high-quality medium, so the price is reasonable considering we're getting an 80s film and an hour-long bonus feature that shows us the other side of the film.
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Bitrate
Screenshots from the Blu-ray
Original release of this article May 21, 2015 – Kritiky.cz
