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And the wheel turns...
Feb. 27th, 2009 05:36 pmFriday cause of inappropriate amusement: I've stumbled across three posts now which complain that Hollywood plans to film The Never-Ending Story again and call this a desecration of "the original film/movie". Why does this amuse me? Well, because Michael Ende, the author of the original novel, which happens to be one of my favourite novels full stop, hated that movie. And when I use the term "hate" I do not speak in lj hyperbole. He was absolutely horrified by it, raged in every interview he gave after seeing that film about how it managed to get the characters wrong, the themes, and how it completely cheapened and hollywoodized (his term) everything. He cursed the director and the producer (Peterson & Eichinger, respectively), he hated the set design and the way the creatures looked (especially the dragon, because he had been rather specific in his descriptions of Fuchur; second in his authorial ire came the palace of the Child-Like Empress and the Child-like Empress herself - "they made that poor girl look like as if she was in an American beauty pageant"), and his editor at the time, Roman Hocke, told me how rage about the movie contributed to Ende's failing health. He didn't quite blame it for Ende's death, but you get the general tendency.
Now, given this, I can't quite decide whether our late author upon hearing this news would react with "not again" or "revenge at last!"
Personally? As a reader of the novel who was a teenager by the time it was filmed, I found the movie mildly disappointing, both because Bastian Balthasar Bux wasn't the fat bespectacled boy described but your avarage thin good looking movie kid, and Atreyu didn't have green skin, but most of all because it only covered half of the novel. But there were sequences that worked for me, and on the whole, I didn't come out raging, I just never felt a need to watch it again. The radio production, btw, was superbly done, by contrast. Now I rather doubt a new film version will be closer to the book, though I might be wrong here, but I certainly don't feel it would be sacrilege. The book already made it through the first film and two sequels who looked horrid even in the trailers, which is why I didn't watch them. So another film version really doesn't make a difference. They do it to Jane Austen all the time.
Now, given this, I can't quite decide whether our late author upon hearing this news would react with "not again" or "revenge at last!"
Personally? As a reader of the novel who was a teenager by the time it was filmed, I found the movie mildly disappointing, both because Bastian Balthasar Bux wasn't the fat bespectacled boy described but your avarage thin good looking movie kid, and Atreyu didn't have green skin, but most of all because it only covered half of the novel. But there were sequences that worked for me, and on the whole, I didn't come out raging, I just never felt a need to watch it again. The radio production, btw, was superbly done, by contrast. Now I rather doubt a new film version will be closer to the book, though I might be wrong here, but I certainly don't feel it would be sacrilege. The book already made it through the first film and two sequels who looked horrid even in the trailers, which is why I didn't watch them. So another film version really doesn't make a difference. They do it to Jane Austen all the time.
