Neverending Story Meets Contemporary Grown-Up

Recently I saw The Neverending Story for the first time since childhood, when I adored it. It's the story of Bastian (Barret Oliver), a middle schooler reading the story of Atreyu (Noah Hathaway), a child warrior sent to fight The Nothing. I remembered Atreyu, Bastian and the scary wolf G'mork. I remembered wanting to ride Falcor the luckdragon as he flew through the air of Fantasia. But there was a lot I didn't remember, so I was excited to relive this beloved 1984 classic again.

One of the things I had forgotten about The Neverending Story was how pretty and girlish Hathaway was as Atreyu. Like in a Lacey Chabert-during-the-later-years-of-Party of Five kind of way. I was a little disturbed by this. Hathaway could not have been more than 12 when the movie was filmed, and he spends almost the whole movie with his shirt slightly open to reveal his bare, hairless chest. When the movie ended, I went right out and bought the book to see if what I saw as a bizarre pseudo-pedophilia in the film is evident in the book, and it isn't. Now, I'm not saying the filmmakers are pedophiles who took a nice children's story and turned it into "Atreyu's Homoerotic Adventure." But I can tell you I wasn't the only one giggling during the showing.

When Atreyu is introduced, the old centaur and the messengers in attendance at the Ivory Tower want nothing to do with him because he's merely a child. This is a theme in both the book and the film. The bookseller who lets Bastian steal The Neverending Story doesn't like kids. Morla the Aged One is allergic to youth. In the book this takes on a simple "children should be seen and not heard" vibe, but in the film, it seems more ominous: You get the sense that, uh-oh, Atreyu is going to run into someone who does enjoy children.

After Atreyu loses his horse Artax in the Swamp of Sadness and Morla tells him to buzz off, we see poor Atreyu trudging through the swamp, covered in mud and turtle snot from Morla's sneezing, still with his bare chest peeking through. It makes for a pretty gruesome scene. And, I submit, troubling, because if Atreyu were being played by Jessica Alba or Kate Beckinsale, it would be pretty hot watching them saddened, helpless and filthy. To watch a young, girlish boy like this is unsettling. The film is also better equipped to juxtapose Atreyu and Bastian's experiences, as, while the young warrior is staggering, we see Bastian becoming scared while reading the book due to the storm outside and his being in the school attic all alone. We have two young damsels in serious distress here.

It's also here that the film diverts from the book. In the film, as Atreyu is about to collapse in the swamp, Falcor the luckdragon saves him from G'mork the wolf. In the book it's Artreyu who saves Falcor from a gigantic spider, thereby becoming Falcor's "little friend and master." What we also see in the film that we obviously wouldn't in the book is Bastian's reaction to the rescue, as he puts the book down, collapses and sighs as if he's just had an orgasm.

Then begins the scene you'll see on a number of Web sites, which does not occur in the novel. Falcor the luckdragon, an appreciative servant in the original story and adorable, dog-like dragon in my youth, becomes a slightly creepy, would-be pedophile. Whereas everyone else in this journey dislikes children, Falcor is just the opposite. Atreyu wakes up in Falcor's arms, strangely cleaned and with his wounds dressed. He tries to tiptoe away, but Falcor, who was pretending to still be sleeping, says, "Leaving so soon? Hmm?" in this come-hither voice. Then Falcor says the three words that made everyone in the theater laugh (and that are definitely not in the book), "I like children." Falcor knows everything about Atreyu and his mission because, he claims, Atreyu talks in his sleep. He then asks the boy to scratch behind his right ear and responds in near-orgasmic bliss, "That's so good," when Atreyu obliges. I was just waiting for Chris Hansen to enter and ask Falcor to have a seat.

The two are later separated, and we again witness Atreyu in all types of would-be sexy conflict, from being cold and snowy to glistening with sweat as he approaches the Southern Oracle and yells for Falcor. (By the way, the sphinxes of the Southern Oracle each have massive breasts — I know many sphinxes do, but perhaps in a children's movie they shouldn't be so exaggerated.) Then, when the two are reunited, Atreyu climbs on top of Falcor and the ass shots begin. The viewer gets a number of glances at Atreyu's panted young boy bottom as they fly through Fantasia. The head-on shots appear mostly when the lad screams with pleasure at the thrill of flight.

We later get ass shots of little Bastian as well, both when he himself rides Falcor and when he climbs up to shut the attic windows during the storm. All in all, Bastian gets quite a makeover from book to movie; in the movie, he's chastised by his father for drawing unicorns during class, and skipping tryouts for the swim team and wanting riding lessons. These activities aren't mentioned in the book. There, Bastian is merely a fat kid who was held back in school the previous year. There's certainly nothing hot about that.

As Falcor carried another pre-teen on his back and Limahl's awful song hit the soundtrack, I walked away from this picture in shock. One of my favorites films from my childhood seemed like a prime candidate for a NAMBLA date night.

But then I has to stop and ask how much things have changed in 25 years. Inappropriateness is in the eye of the beholder, and the means of beholding have changed. My perception of this film probably has less to do with the film itself than it does with the current cultural climate and its assumption that every adult is a predator and every child is prey. I felt uncomfortable viewing this in the same way I would being alone in a public restroom with a child or even consoling one who is hurt. You can't be too careful these days, whereas no one really thought about it back then. If The Neverending Story was released today, Atreyu would probably be given a nice Harry Potter cloak or something to cover himself so he doesn't catch cold, and today's CGI, Jim Carrey-voiced Falcor would be too busy being test-marketed to say anything that could be perceived as creepy.

Think about Back to the Future: It's a movie every family saw together back in 1985, but at the end of the movie, Biff casually hurls racial epithets and attempts to rape Marty's mother. It's easy for us children of the '80s to think that decade wasn't so long ago, but if you measure it by the very telling yardstick of what's OK'd by popular culture, we are now absolutely ancient. The silver lining to all of this is that by the time our kinds our grown everyone will understand what an absolute filthfest Bee Movie is.