The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter

1990

Directed by George T. Miller

Welcome back to Movie Monday, where we continue our methodical journey through my personal countdown of the 100 worst movies I’ve ever encountered. This week brings us to number 42: The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter, a 1990 sequel that serves as a masterclass in how to systematically dismantle everything that made its predecessor magical. It’s a film that takes the infinite possibilities promised by its title and somehow makes them feel depressingly finite, trading wonder for mediocrity with the efficiency of a corporate restructuring. And yes, as always, this reflects my personal opinion – if you found genuine enchantment in this follow-up’s hollow spectacle and budget-conscious imagination, then we clearly experienced different movies altogether.

When I was ten years old, I walked the few blocks from my house to catch this film at our local theater, arriving late to a packed screening room and spending the entire runtime perched on the side steps watching from an awkward angle. Even at that age, sitting uncomfortably in the dark, I sensed something was fundamentally wrong with what I was witnessing. Maybe the physical discomfort colored my perception, but I doubt it. Some disappointments transcend viewing conditions, and The NeverEnding Story II would have been a letdown whether I’d watched it from the best seat in the house or hanging upside down from the ceiling.

The original NeverEnding Story, released in 1984, captured something genuinely special – a sense of limitless imagination wrapped in a story about the power of belief and the importance of hope in the face of overwhelming darkness. It understood that the best children’s fantasies work because they take young audiences seriously, addressing real fears and genuine emotions through metaphor and wonder. The sequel looks at that foundation and apparently decides what children really wanted was less depth, cheaper effects, and a plot assembled from leftover ideas that couldn’t find their way into better movies.

When Magic Becomes Mechanical

The fundamental tragedy of The Next Chapter isn’t that it’s technically incompetent – though it often is – but that it feels so thoroughly disinterested in the very elements that made its predecessor memorable. Where the original film treated Fantasia as a living, breathing world with its own internal logic and emotional weight, the sequel treats it as a collection of set pieces designed to move characters from one predetermined plot point to another.

The story follows Bastian Bux (now played by Jonathan Brandis, replacing Barret Oliver who had naturally aged out of the role) as he returns to Fantasia to combat a new threat called “the Emptiness,” brought about by the evil sorceress Xayide. It’s a premise with potential – the idea of emotional emptiness as a consuming force certainly resonates with the original’s themes about the importance of imagination and hope. Unfortunately, the film treats this concept as window dressing rather than exploring what it might actually mean.

Xayide, played by Clarissa Burt with all the menace of a department store mannequin, represents everything wrong with the sequel’s approach to conflict. Where the original film’s antagonist was the Nothing – an abstract force of despair and apathy that felt genuinely threatening precisely because it couldn’t be punched or defeated through conventional means – Xayide is just another generic villain with generic villain motivations. She wants power because… well, because the script needs someone to want power. Her plan involves stealing Bastian’s memories through a contrived device that strips away his recollections each time he makes a wish, which sounds clever on paper but plays out with all the emotional weight of a board game rule.

The memory-stealing concept could have been genuinely affecting if the film had bothered to explore what those memories actually meant to Bastian, or how their loss affects his character beyond making him temporarily confused. Instead, it’s treated as a mechanical plot device, a way to create artificial tension without doing the emotional work necessary to make audiences care about the stakes.

Production Troubles and Their Consequences

The six-year gap between the original film and its sequel tells a story of its own, one of legal battles and creative compromise that helps explain why The Next Chapter feels so disconnected from its source material. Michael Ende, author of the original novel, had been so horrified by the first film’s adaptation of his work that he sued to prevent this sequel from being made, calling the original “a gigantic melodrama of kitsch, commerce, plush and plastic.” While Ende ultimately lost his legal battle, his assessment proved prophetic for what was to come.

Producer Dieter Geissler’s insistence on making a trilogy from Ende’s novel might have made business sense, but the forced nature of that expansion becomes painfully obvious in the final product. The sequel draws from the second half of Ende’s book but feels obligated to hit certain plot points and character beats without understanding why those elements worked in their original context. It’s adaptation by checklist rather than creative interpretation.

The production challenges become even more telling when you consider the constraints faced by director George T. Miller (not to be confused with Mad Max director George Miller). Child labor laws limited the working schedules of the young cast, leading Miller to minimize rehearsal time and shoot with multiple cameras simultaneously to maximize efficiency. While this approach might have been necessary from a logistical standpoint, it resulted in a film that feels rushed and under-rehearsed, with performances that lack the natural chemistry that made the original’s young cast so appealing.

The decision to build only two stages instead of the planned three forced the production to shoot first and second unit simultaneously on the same stage, creating a chaotic environment that prioritized efficiency over artistry. Ironically, Miller’s fear of falling behind schedule led to the film finishing ahead of schedule, but with unfinished effects work that shows throughout the final product. It’s a perfect metaphor for the sequel’s overall approach – so focused on meeting external demands that it forgot to ensure the final product was actually worth watching.

The Recasting Dilemma

Perhaps no single element illustrates the sequel’s challenges more clearly than the necessity of recasting its young leads. Noah Hathaway and Barret Oliver, who played Atreyu and Bastian in the original, had naturally aged beyond their characters during the six-year production gap. Over 600 children were auditioned to find replacements, a staggering number that suggests just how difficult it was to recapture the original’s magic with new performers.

Jonathan Brandis, who takes over as Bastian, brings considerable charm and earnestness to the role, and his performance represents one of the sequel’s few genuine bright spots. Brandis understands that Bastian should feel like a real child with real insecurities, not a miniature adult delivering exposition. His scenes dealing with his fear of heights and desire to join the swimming team feel authentic in ways that much of the surrounding film does not.

Kenny Morrison’s Atreyu faces a more challenging task, following Hathaway’s iconic portrayal of the young warrior. Morrison handles the physical demands of the role competently, but lacks the natural gravitas that made Hathaway’s performance so memorable. This isn’t necessarily Morrison’s fault – the script gives Atreyu less interesting material to work with, reducing him to a more conventional heroic sidekick rather than the complex character he was in the original.

Alexandra Johnes takes over as the Childlike Empress, and while she brings appropriate otherworldly presence to the role, the character feels diminished by a script that treats her more as a plot device than the powerful, mysterious figure she was meant to be. Thomas Hill’s return as bookstore owner Carl Conrad Coreander provides the film’s only direct link to the original cast, and his scenes carry a weight and authenticity that highlight just how much the new elements struggle to find their footing.

Technical Ambition Meets Budget Reality

The shift from the original’s blue screen and scale model approach to more life-sized model work and matte paintings represents an interesting creative choice that unfortunately highlights the sequel’s budget limitations rather than overcoming them. Where the original film’s effects felt magical precisely because they embraced their artificial nature – creating a world that felt like a living storybook – the sequel’s attempts at more “realistic” effects often fall flat, creating a world that feels cheaper rather than more convincing.

The creature designs, while technically proficient, lack the memorable quality of the original’s inhabitants. Falkor returns, but feels less majestic and more mechanical, a victim of the production’s emphasis on efficiency over artistry. New creatures like Nimbly (voiced by Martin Umbach) feel designed by committee rather than born from genuine imagination, serving plot functions rather than expanding the world’s sense of wonder.

The film’s most ambitious sequences – particularly the climactic battles and Xayide’s various magical displays – reveal the strain of trying to create spectacle on a reduced budget. Effects that should inspire awe instead call attention to their limitations, breaking the spell that fantasy films desperately need to maintain. It’s not that the effects are incompetent, but they’re uninspired, functional rather than magical.

The Emptiness of Emptiness

The sequel’s central concept of “the Emptiness” as an antagonistic force carries obvious parallels to the original’s “Nothing,” but the execution reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what made that earlier threat so effective. The Nothing worked because it represented something genuinely frightening – the loss of imagination, hope, and meaning itself. It was an existential threat that couldn’t be defeated through conventional heroics, requiring instead an act of faith and creativity.

The Emptiness, by contrast, feels like a generic magical threat that happens to have a somewhat philosophical name. It manifests through standard fantasy movie means – withered landscapes, obviously evil magic, and the usual array of monster attacks. Where the Nothing felt like a force of nature that demanded personal growth and emotional courage to overcome, the Emptiness feels like something that could be defeated with a sufficiently powerful spell or weapon.

Xayide’s plan to steal Bastian’s memories and leave him empty should resonate with these themes, but the film treats memory loss as a temporary inconvenience rather than exploring what it means to lose the experiences that define us. When Bastian’s memories are restored in the climax, it feels like a mechanical reset rather than a meaningful recovery of identity and purpose.

Missing the Heart

Perhaps the most damaging aspect of The Next Chapter is how thoroughly it misses the emotional core that made the original so powerful. The first film worked because it understood that children’s fears and insecurities are real and deserving of serious attention. Bastian’s struggles with bullying, grief over his mother’s death, and feelings of inadequacy were treated with genuine respect, not patronizing simplification.

The sequel pays lip service to Bastian’s continued character development – his fear of heights provides a physical manifestation of his internal struggles – but never develops these themes with the depth or sincerity necessary to make them meaningful. His relationship with his father (John Wesley Shipp) feels obligatory rather than genuine, existing primarily to provide exposition about Bastian’s disappearance rather than exploring their emotional connection.

The romantic subplot with Denise (the film introduces a love interest for Bastian, though this element feels particularly forced given the character’s age) represents the kind of misguided attempt to “mature” the material that often plagues sequels to children’s films. Rather than deepening the themes that made the original work, it introduces elements that feel inappropriate and unnecessary.

Commercial Success and Artistic Failure

Despite its creative shortcomings, The NeverEnding Story II achieved significant commercial success, particularly in international markets. The film grossed over $17 million in the United States and found more receptive audiences overseas, proving that brand recognition and family entertainment hunger could overcome critical disappointment and creative mediocrity.

The German opening, where the film earned over $3.8 million in its first week and attracted more than 800,000 admissions, demonstrated the continued appeal of the franchise in its country of origin. For Warner Bros., it represented their biggest German opening ever, a testament to the original film’s enduring popularity rather than confidence in the sequel’s quality.

This commercial success, while understandable from a business perspective, ultimately validated the sequel’s approach of prioritizing familiar elements over genuine creativity. Audiences were willing to accept a diminished version of what they loved rather than demand something that lived up to the original’s standards, setting a precedent for franchise filmmaking that prioritizes recognition over innovation.

Critical Reception and Lasting Legacy

The critical response to The Next Chapter was appropriately harsh, with most reviewers noting the film’s failure to recapture the original’s magic while successfully identifying its numerous technical and creative shortcomings. The 14% score on Rotten Tomatoes reflects a rare critical consensus that the sequel had fundamentally misunderstood what made its predecessor special.

Richard Harrington of The Washington Post criticized both the plot and special effects, noting that many of the new creatures felt like refugees from late-night comedy sketches rather than inhabitants of a magical world. This observation perfectly captures the sequel’s tonal problems – where the original felt like a genuine fantasy, the sequel often feels like a parody of one.

Even more generous reviews tended to condemn with faint praise, suggesting that while children might find entertainment value in the film’s spectacle, it lacked the cross-generational appeal that made the original a genuine classic. Chris Hicks of the Deseret News noted that it might be “enjoyable to children” while acknowledging that “the first film was enjoyable to the entire family” – a backhanded compliment that highlights the sequel’s reduced ambitions.

The Nostalgia Factor

It’s worth acknowledging that The NeverEnding Story II likely holds fond memories for some viewers, particularly those who encountered it during childhood when the film’s flaws might have been less apparent. Nostalgia can be a powerful force, and the sequel does contain moments of genuine imagination and spectacle that could reasonably appeal to young audiences.

However, nostalgia shouldn’t excuse creative failure, and the film’s inability to work on multiple levels – the way truly great children’s entertainment does – represents a fundamental misunderstanding of its audience. Children deserve better than condescending simplification, and the sequel’s failure isn’t that it aimed for young viewers but that it aimed so low while doing so.

The film also benefits from the continued affection for the NeverEnding Story franchise as a whole. Viewers who love the concept and characters might be willing to overlook significant flaws in exchange for any opportunity to return to Fantasia, even in diminished form. This loyalty is understandable but shouldn’t prevent honest assessment of the sequel’s artistic merits.

Why The Next Chapter Earns Its Spot at Number 42

The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter lands at number 42 on my worst movies list because it represents a particularly painful form of creative failure – the squandering of genuine potential and beloved source material in service of commercial expedience. This isn’t a film that fails because it lacks resources or talent, but because it fundamentally misunderstands what made its predecessor special.

The sequel demonstrates how production challenges, legal complications, and commercial pressures can combine to create something that technically fulfills its basic requirements while completely missing the point of its own existence. It’s a movie that exists because the original was successful, not because anyone involved had a compelling story to tell or a genuine desire to expand the world they’d been given.

Most frustratingly, the film’s failure feels entirely avoidable. The source material provided a rich foundation for exploration, the young cast showed considerable promise, and the technical resources were adequate for creating genuine magic. Instead, we get a product that feels assembled rather than crafted, designed to meet market expectations rather than exceed them.

The sequel also serves as an early example of the franchise thinking that would come to dominate Hollywood in subsequent decades – the assumption that audiences would accept inferior sequels as long as they featured familiar characters and concepts. While this approach might generate short-term profits, it ultimately diminishes the very properties it seeks to exploit.

The Bottom Line

The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter stands as a monument to missed opportunities and misplaced priorities. It had every advantage necessary for success – beloved source material, adequate resources, and a built-in audience eager for a return to Fantasia – and still managed to create something that feels hollow and uninspired.

The film succeeds as a technical exercise in franchise extension but fails utterly as entertainment, storytelling, or genuine fantasy. It demonstrates that having the rights to make a sequel doesn’t automatically confer the wisdom to make one worth watching, and that commercial success can sometimes be the cruelest form of artistic failure.

In the end, The Next Chapter feels less like a continuation of The NeverEnding Story and more like a corporate attempt to monetize its memory. For those of us who found genuine magic in the original, watching this sequel feels like witnessing that magic being systematically drained away, replaced with something functional but fundamentally lifeless. It’s a film that proves that some stories, no matter how neverending they claim to be, can definitely reach a point where they should have stopped.

Next week on Movie Monday, we’re examining another film that takes beloved source material and drains it of its essential appeal as we dive into Unfaithful, a movie that somehow makes adultery boring. Join me on December 22nd as we explore how you can take one of literature’s most compelling themes and turn it into something that feels as emotionally vacant as watching paint dry. Until then, remember: not every story needs to continue forever, and sometimes the kindest thing you can do for a cherished memory is leave it untouched.

What are your thoughts on The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter? Did you find elements to appreciate in its attempt to expand the original’s world, or do you agree that it represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what made Fantasia magical in the first place? Share your experiences in the comments below – I’d particularly love to hear from those who encountered this film during childhood and whether it holds up to adult viewing.