The Enid Blyton Society

Courtenay wrote:Definitely 1985. We got the computer game version (which was actually pretty good for its time, when it decided to load... it took about 10 minutes to do so and frequently crashed along the way) later that year when we got our Commodore 64.

Ahh, interesting. I am not sure I have seen it. I know that there exits such game, but I have it not in my mind. But If I see the screenshots of the "ocean"-Company, which was a great company, I must say looks great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE36zmksYbA http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=5192&d=18&h=0

Yes, that's it, Sönke. It was pretty sophisticated for 1985!! It was a "text-based" game, where you had to type in what you wanted to do next and hope the computer would understand and let you do it, but it also had graphics, as you can see from the video — many computer games of that time weren't so visually advanced. My dad helped us make maps of the game with the places you could go to and what you needed to do there in order to get to the next part. We did get through it all and reach the happy ending! But again, the game, like the film, only went as far as the first half of the book.

It would be interesting to think what they could do if they made a new film of The Neverending Story, perhaps in two parts to cover the two halves of the story, AND made it more faithful to the original — with today's CGI technology they could probably do a lot more than was possible for a film in the 1980s. But considering the two sequels to the first film got more and more hokey and a later cartoon version was even worse, maybe it's better if they leave well enough alone...

On the other hand, I always loved the film's portrayal of Falkor the luckdragon — a bit furrier and more like a dog than he is in the book (where he has a more lion-like head). My dad used to say our late dog, Sandy, was "doing a Falkor" when she raced across the beach with her ears streaming back in the wind!

Meanwhile, I've just discovered some enterprising fan has been selling her own hand-made toy Falkor online and has been so inundated with requests for him that she now only sells the DIY pattern! Gosh, if only I could sew that well...

My partner loves the film, but I never saw it as a child so I lack that rosy nostalgia which tends to make films seem much better than they might otherwise. I'm not sure that I knew it was a book either, I'll have to ask him if he knew/has read it.

I have never seen the movie but I believe it's really good. The book was just a wonder. I have never read such a masterpiece. Michael Ende is certainly one of my favourite authors.
By the way, my father really found it "never-ending"

Courtenay wrote:Yes, that's it, Sönke. It was pretty sophisticated for 1985!! It was a "text-based" game, where you had to type in what you wanted to do next and hope the computer would understand and let you do it, but it also had graphics, as you can see from the video — many computer games of that time weren't so visually advanced.

My only recollection of playing a computer game in the 1980's was 'Dungeons and Dragons' on a ZX Spectrum!

Machupicchu14 wrote: By the way, my father really found it "never-ending"

Meaning he never got to the end of it? Glad you like it too, Maria Esther. Do read Momo, also by Michael Ende, if you haven't already — a quite different kind of story (and much shorter), but also really good.

The original film (1985) follows the first half of the book quite faithfully, but then finishes at the point where Bastian enters Fantastica (or Fantasia) — we're simply told he went on to have many wonderful adventures, "but that's another story." It would have been excellent, I think, if they'd done a sequel immediately after and made it likewise faithful to the second half of the book. But there were no follow-up films until years later, and then they were lower budget and nowhere near as good, so I wouldn't recommend them.

You might enjoy that first film too, though. I agree with Fiona that there's a bit of "rosy nostalgia" about it for those of us who grew up watching it (I was 3 years old when it came out and it was a big favourite with my family), but it was still pretty good for its time, especially with no digital special effects and so on in those days. The book itself is definitely the best, though.

Courtenay wrote:

Machupicchu14 wrote: By the way, my father really found it "never-ending"

Meaning he never got to the end of it? Glad you like it too, Maria Esther. Do read Momo, also by Michael Ende, if you haven't already — a quite different kind of story (and much shorter), but also really good

Well, the fact is that it took him so long we thought he was never going to finish it

Yes, Courtenay. Momo is probably my favourite Michael Ende book. It's absolutely fascinating. Momo is a very poignant, sensitive and excellent character, which I very much like. The plot is also a good one (maybe Michael Ende was trying to show how the world was going to become) although it scared me a bit when I first read it.

Do you mean the 1985 movie? I will try to find it and watch it.

Yes, I did mean the 1985 movie — it's available on DVD through Amazon and probably elsewhere as well. (It seems it was actually made in 1984, but it would have been 1985 by the time we saw it in Australia, I'm pretty sure.)

Glad you love Momo too!

I suppose it's sad that there exists not a dubbing version of the old Jim Button series, which is in Germany most popular of it's adapted works. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... uppenkiste

Ah, that's so cute! I know Jim Knopf has been published in English (as Jim Button), but I haven't read either of the books. I must look out for them.

Yes, I have also read that it was also published in English. There are so many parts of these books are so cute. E.g. Mr Tur Tur the illusory giant, Nepomuk the half-dragon, Lummerland in general etc.

It must have been pretty forward-thinking (and brave) of Michael Ende in the 1960s to write stories with a black boy as the hero, too! I hope they haven't been subjected to the sort of "political correctness mania" that has led to golliwogs and other black characters being removed from modern editions of Enid Blyton's books.

As far as I know quite a lot of publishers turned down "Jim Knopf" before Ende found one willing to publish it.

Wolfgang wrote:As far as I know quite a lot of publishers turned down "Jim Knopf" before Ende found one willing to publish it.

Ohh interesting, have googelt it http://www.focus.de/kultur/buecher/lite ... 39001.html. -- Like J.K.Rowling later, but he kept his name Michael Ende.

I recently re-watched the original film of The Neverending Story on my flight from the UK to Australia the other day — first time I've seen it in almost 30 years, probably. (It was my and my sister's favourite when we were little.) I must say it has aged pretty well and is still a really good film — the big drawback, as I know I mentioned earlier in the thread, is that they only included the first half of the book, while the second half is arguably the more interesting and exciting part of the whole story!

I found out afterwards (looking it up online) that there were plans to make a sequel immediately after the first film, using the same cast and dramatising the second half of the book, but it never came about for some reason. I wish it had, as by the time the sequel did get made some years later, they had to use different child actors and the whole thing was poorly written and just fell flat. But the first film was well worth seeing again and a real nostalgia-fest for me — and just after the closing scene where Bastian goes riding on Falkor the luckdragon, as the theme song was playing over the end credits, our plane hit some rather bumpy turbulence, so that made it feel like I really was flying on Falkor!! (And I've had the song stuck in my head ever since, too: "Nev-er-end-ing Sto-o-ryyyyy... a-a-ah, a-a-ah, a-a-ah..." )