You can say a lot about the eighties that's derisive, but for all the negatives, there were a lot of great changes taking place. Don't think for a moment I'm talking like those damn baby boomers who endlessly drone on about how they saved the world by smoking pot and throwing rocks at National Guardsmen until someone got shot. There's nothing more sickening than someone claiming their generation single-handedly held back evil with enough self-righteousness to float the Bismark. To them, it was an era where every teenager and college student was an active proponent for all that was morally right, they were the only ones to ever have a truly open mind, and no one ever, ever, wrote a bad rock and roll song. (You can see what I'm talking about by checking Star Trek: Voyager, wherein saving Riker so he can prevent the Borg assimilation of the entire human race is put on the same level as preserving Woodstock. God, I wish I were kidding). I'm not going to pretend the era was something magical just because I remember it fondly... there were many unpleasant aspects to it. The Cold War looming over us was one, and the fear of nuclear annihilation that came with it. You can tell it was real; the Cold War ended and we were so overjoyed we even elected a fat philandering hillbilly president just for the entertainment value. What I'm referring to about the eighties was the revised place of technology in the homes. Home video game systems became a staple. Cable television gave us a small increase in programming variety, and uncut movies without commercials! And let's not forget the VCR, which let us watch a movie any time we wanted! Personal computers in their various forms began their insidious insertion into our homes paving the way for the Internet culture that now allows you to hear me gripe about circle-jerking baby boomers. I'm not going to pretend this all came to us during the eighties, but what I mean is that this aspect of our current culture, this use of technology for home entertainment went beyond radios and televisions that gave you a handful of stations to watch and a stereo system utilizing records the size of serving platters that made it sound like the performers were actually in your living room and had fallen through the floor into the basement. It had become easier and easier to not have to bother scheduling your entertainment, but to decide between them for the moment, and then maybe change to something later if you feel like it. Our modern world has taken that even further, so much so that what was once considered our unyielding master, the television (referring to the broadcast shows rather than the device itself; the set is just a picture that makes noise, after all), now must fight tooth and nail to convince us to find time in our schedules for it. When Flaming Bears Attack Midgets struggles vainly to get people not to instead fire up a DVD, video cassette, Xbox, Playstation 2, Gamecube, on demand movie, or TiVo, and that's only items that involve the television itself. I'm not saying this modern world exists because of the eighties, but I'm saying that the first real popular movement in this direction began at that time.

The eighties music, however... okay, there's a bit of hit or miss. First of all, at the very least, it ain't f*cking disco, and that's important. Disco is the work of evil itself, the audio symbol of all this is soulless and foul. When disco plays, you can actually smell brimstone in the air. The only exception I will offer is Disco Inferno and Abba, and both only for their comedic value. But there is plenty of shameful music that spawned during the eighties, I'll freely admit. There was also the love affair with the then new use of electronic music. This resulted in a lot of very successful porno tracks, but absolute hell just about everywhere else. About the only exception was Information Society's stuff and the theme for Terminator, which still manages to work.

It was a very different era then from now. Let me explain, although you may want to make sure you're sitting down for this part, because this may knock you off you're feet. Okay, ready? You've been warned:

Saturday Night Live was actually funny.

No, I'm not kidding either.

Okay, so what does all of this have to do with this entry into bad movies? Well, it's a two-pronged hit actually on this film, the sequel to a great eighties film called The Neverending Story. First, the music. This is quintessential eighties music. There's lots and lots of sythesizer work in this piece. However, much like the Terminator theme that is so very simple it works, the themes in Neverending Story really work. You could never expect to hear that in a modern film, because it sounds too much like a victorious battle in Final Fantasy, but I really can't imagine it not having those tones. Also, the only vocal piece, an eighties rock piece without doubt, nevertheless stands up despite the years. Maybe it's because it so faithfully "got" the whole film's bit about fantasy. It's the kind of song you wouldn't in a hundred years download an mp3 of off the web, but you'd rewind and re-watch the credits of the movie just to listen a second or third time.

The other way The Neverending Story ties in with the eighties motif is the way it struggles against the intrusion of that home entertainment into our lives. Bastian, our viewpoint character, is atypical of children because he's so interested in books, the other medium that you can use for personal entertainment in your own time and your own pace. The book store owner, whom I'll get to later, is the focal point of this view, directly the lad to the arcade and telling him contemptuously that books are something that "require a little effort on your part... there are no 'beep beep beeps!'" If this were a modern picture, the message would be beaten into the audience members, but the story does a fine enough job with the brief monologue before the book store owner realizes his mistake in underestimating Bastian.

In The Neverending Story, we meet up with Bastian, who seems to be having some trouble in school in the wake of his mother's death. We also see him get an asskicking from some neighborhood bullies, which is how he winds up in the book store to hide from them. When confronted by the Captain Kangaroo-like man, he protests that he knows about books, and that he has 186 of them back home. "Bah, comic books!" grouchy old Captain Kangaroo says.

Funnily enough, it wasn't very long after this that comic books broke out of their routine. Starting in 1985 comics began moving in far different and more creative directions than they had previously. DC's Crisis on Infinite Earth's which told a robust story at the same time that it cleaned up its continuity. Marvel's Secret Wars, the pioneer for multi-book crossovers that pit dozens of heroes against dozens of villains. The familiar was redone as well; the Hulk stopped being a green angry idiot and became a crafty gray anti-hero. Spider-man gave up his old red and blue suit for the black and white costume, and then settled down with Mary Jane Watson. Batman escaped the shadow of camp cast by his own TV series and became the dark knight. Neil Gaiman released Sandman, a book which gave comic book readers a new face for Death, the inspiration for a Magic: The Gathering card (City In A Bottle), and legitimized the medium. The stories often held to the same previous notions of heroes versus villains, but often held a bit more depth to them. It wasn't until 1991 when Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, and Todd McFarlance walked into Marvel President Terry Stewart's office, setting the stage for Image Comics and sending the industry into a period of glitzy shit that nearly destroyed it.

Bastian protests the remark, rattling off a series of classic books like 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and Tarzan. Funnily enough, you could probably take that 186 book collection and fit it all easily on a CD-ROM, one of the other uses for the developing home computer. Duly impressed, the book store owner carefully uses reverse psychology to convince Bastian to take the book (he leaves a note that he'll return it, at least). Bastian arrives at school late, discovers there's a math test, and decides to sneak into the attic and read rather than go to class. This is where we watch him reading the tale that is played out. Normally this would be a rather silly bookend for the tale itself, but it's actually key to the entire piece (this is in some contrast to The Princess Bride, which could have been told without the storytelling aspect without damaging the story, though I will also admit the story is better for its presence).

We meet a colorful threesome in the woods, a little man with a racing snail, a nighthob and his stupid bat, and a giant rockbiter with his huge stone bicycle. They quickly set the stage by saying they're traveling to see the Empress at the Ivory Tower because their lands are being threatened by a great Nothing (an emptiness where things used to be). Upon arrival they see all of Fantasia is threatened by this Nothing, but that to save them a great warrior named Atreyu (Ah-tray-you) has been summoned. He's actually still a boy, but he's famous and the spokesman for the Empress asks him to go on a quest to find out how to stop the Nothing. He's told "No one can give you any advice except this: you must go alone and you must leave all your weapons behind. It will be very dangerous." All of which sounds pretty damn counterproductive when you think about it, and as an adult you'd probably roll your eyes at this and say IITS (It's In The Script, a bit of bad movie jargon for when you see people doing things that make no sense, like splitting up in a dark house to look for a killer). However, we'll see that for once this advice was spot on.

Atreyu goes on his quest, losing his horse, meeting interesting characters and adversaries, and all the while the nothing goes stronger. He eventually learns that only a human child can stop the Nothing, but he doesn't know how to find one. Finally he's confronted by G'mork, a huge wolf-like creature that had tried to kill him earlier to stop his quest. He reveals that the Nothing is what happens when human beings stop dreaming and hoping, it leaves a void. G'mork has helped it because "people who have no hopes are easy to control." Atreyu then reveals his true warrior skill by taking up a piece of sharp rock and battling the giant wolf, killing it. But the Nothing continues to grow. Atreyu is rescued from it for the moment by his luck dragon, Falkor, which looks less like a dragon then a very long white dog, but hey, it can fly, which is useful because all the land of Fantasia is now gone, leaving just an asteroid field.

Still, the Ivory Tower still exists, and Falkor takes Atreyu to it to see the Empress. She's a girl, who reveals that despite all appearances, Atreyu has succeeded. By going on his quest (alone and unarmed, remember?) he's brought a human child along through all his adventures, that it was the only way, in fact, to do so. Bastian, reading the story, is flabergasted, but the Empress reveals facts about Bastian that would be impossible for anyone who had written a book to have included. It sets up the most powerful part of the movie, where the Nothing is overtaking the Ivory Tower itself. Atreyu is in a panic, clearly confused and seeing the end near, wondering why the human child doesn't appear to stop this. Bastian has been shocked; he says "It's only a story. It's not real. It's only a story." As if in response to his disbelief, another quake strikes, killing Atreyu to Bastian's horror, leaving him and the pleading Empress. "Why don't you do what you dream, Bastian?" she begs.

Finally, Bastian gets up and does what needs to be done: gives the Empress a new name. Sadly, there's so much racket going on that it's impossible to tell what it is. I turned on the closed captioning, and it said "[Yelling]" so that was a big help. It sounds like he says "mazel tov." In any case, it works, and we see Bastian with the Empress and the last grain of sand of Fantasia. With it, Bastian can make wishes, and the more wishes he makes, the more magnificent Fantasia becomes. His first wish is to ride across Fantasia on Falkor and see it all, then in a little bit of indulgence he and Falkor chase the three bullies who tormented him at the start of the film.

I won't call the film flawless, but it was an excellent achievement. Eight years before Jurrassic Park and its computer technology that has been a blessing and curse ever since, the effects proved very effective. It was directed by Wolfgang Peterson, the same man who brought us Das Boot. Seven years later, we are returned to the story of Bastian and Fantasia in....

On To Page Two