"The Neverending Story" is one of my favorite movies from my childhood. Personally, I think it did a great job adapting the first half of the original novel, and while it wasn't a 100% faithful adaptation, I think it captured perfectly well the main essence and themes from the book.
Sadly, the same thing can't be said about the sequels: The first one was a completely forgettable cash grab that butchered many plot points from the second half of the book (Turning it into a conventional "good vs evil" story) and third film was simply embarrassing, changing the serious tone of the first two movies into a cheap dumb comedy.
Now, this animated series could have been the chance to do the faithful adaptation of the original book the fans always wanted: Considering the episodic nature of the second half of the book, this format would have been perfect. Being an animated series, it also wouldn't have the budget problems the live-actions movies had, and it would have been able to do justice to the marvelous imaginary world created by Michael Ende.
Sadly, instead of that this animated series preferred to be a typical Saturday Morning Cartoon with forgettable plots, stereotypical characters and predictable morals that simply didn't add anything new or interesting to the original story.
This animated series borrowed elements from the 3 movies and combined them with a few details from the original book (This is the only adaptation of The Neverending Story where Atreyu is green) and some new plot elements, which sadly aren't anything worth of mention. What a shame, considering this could have a great animated series.
Oh yeah, there are also two other live-action TV series, but both are simply not worth-watching, adding a lot of stupid stuff instead of trying to do at least a somewhat faithful adaptation of the book. The whole situation is very similar to what happened with the Oz series of L. Frank Baum, which had a fondly remembered film version and many other movies, specials, "unofficial sequels", parodies and TV shows inspired by that movie rather than the original books.
Sadly, the same thing can't be said about the sequels: The first one was a completely forgettable cash grab that butchered many plot points from the second half of the book (Turning it into a conventional "good vs evil" story) and third film was simply embarrassing, changing the serious tone of the first two movies into a cheap dumb comedy.
Now, this animated series could have been the chance to do the faithful adaptation of the original book the fans always wanted: Considering the episodic nature of the second half of the book, this format would have been perfect. Being an animated series, it also wouldn't have the budget problems the live-actions movies had, and it would have been able to do justice to the marvelous imaginary world created by Michael Ende.
Sadly, instead of that this animated series preferred to be a typical Saturday Morning Cartoon with forgettable plots, stereotypical characters and predictable morals that simply didn't add anything new or interesting to the original story.
This animated series borrowed elements from the 3 movies and combined them with a few details from the original book (This is the only adaptation of The Neverending Story where Atreyu is green) and some new plot elements, which sadly aren't anything worth of mention. What a shame, considering this could have a great animated series.
Oh yeah, there are also two other live-action TV series, but both are simply not worth-watching, adding a lot of stupid stuff instead of trying to do at least a somewhat faithful adaptation of the book. The whole situation is very similar to what happened with the Oz series of L. Frank Baum, which had a fondly remembered film version and many other movies, specials, "unofficial sequels", parodies and TV shows inspired by that movie rather than the original books.