The Trailer

The Plot

Once again, Bastian is transported to the world of Fantasia which he recently managed to save from destruction. However, the land is now being destroyed by an evil sorceress, Xayide, so he must join up with Atreyu and face the Emptiness once more.
(Source IMDB)

The Breakdown

Who is in it? Jonathan Brandis
Genre: Adventure-Fantasy
Was it adventurous? Sure.
Would this movie be for every adventure-fantasy fan? If you’re really young.
Should you see it? If you liked the first one, sure.

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The Verdict

The story of this movie is much weaker than the first one. The original movie was basically a metaphor for life. Don’t sink in the swamp of sadness or you’ll sink… Be confident… blah blah. This movie tried that but is really cut short, and also all of the characters are changed which always sucks because you lose that sense of familiarity with the characters. We start out with Bastian and his father in the kitchen and we learn through dialog that him and his father are distant towards each other. Bastian tries out for the swim team but lacks the courage to jump off of the ridiculously tall diving platform and doesn’t make the team. He wanders into the book store where he stole the book called ‘The NeverEnding Story’ and basically steals it again because stealing is ok. Hows that for a life lesson?

Upon reading the book he finds himself once again in the magical world of Fantasia and in a boat heading for a place called ‘Silver City’. To make a long story short, Fantasia is once again being destroyed by a force that only Bastian can name which he cleverly names ‘The Emptiness’. The force is imprisoning the Child-Like Empress and Bastian must travel to ‘the castle that looks like a hand’. Thats seriously the name of the castle, and Atreyu joins him on his mission. Bastian can also make wishes to help him on his journey but through some crafty work by the bad chick that lives in the stupid looking hand castle, he loses one memory every time he makes a wish. The bad chick controls all that is empty, and with each wish Bastian makes he forgets more and more about the real world. The more he forgets, the more she can control him.

Bastian and Atreyu break in the castle and force the bad chick to free the empress but she says she cant do it from there. So everybody goes on a journey to the Ivory Tower to free the empress but the bad chick leads them in circles and makes Bastian wish for things. Bastian loses all but two of his memories and the bad chick turns him on Atreyu and he kills him. After killing his friend he learns of the bad chick’s plot and rushes back to Atreyu’s corpse but see’s Falcor’s creepy-ass taking him away to god knows where to do god knows what. Bastian steals Atreyu’s horse named Artax and he chases Falcor to whats left of the silver city. Bastian uses one of his remaining two wishes to bring back Atreyu. Hows that for another life lesson… You kill your friend but it’s ok because you can always wish him back to life!

The bad chick shows up to crash the party and finds a reanimated zombie corpse of Atreyu and Bastian with one remaining memory and one last wish. She tells him to wish his way home so she can rule Fantasia. But for whatever reason he wishes for her to have a heart. So the bad chick gets her heart and she cries a single tear. Once the tear touches the ground it restores Fantasia. The only way for Bastian to leave to the real world is to dive off of a huge raging waterfall which gives him the courage he needed to make the swim team. The movie ends with him and his father saying that they love each other. The End. This movie was ok, but the ending was effing terrible! I can get over the fact the characters are different because the acting was way better, but that ending sucked hard. I rate this movie a 5/10.

Official Nutshell-Movies Explanation

The NeverEnding Story 2 – The Next Chapter (1990): A kid finds the courage to jump off of something high into water from making wishes inside an interactive book.