Imagine if, after Stranger Things Season 1, Netflix had waited about a decade to do Season 2, and had wanted to keep all the characters roughly the same age. Today, you could imagine a bunch of digital de-aging and other shenanigans to make it all work. But in 1991, if young actors had grown too old to do a direct sequel, recasting was the only option. Such was the strange case of a forgotten fantasy film sequel, which attempted to continue a story that, perhaps, should never have been called The NeverEnding Story.
Even casual fantasy fans know the 1984 film, The NeverEnding Story, which bravely attempted to adapt a piece of Michael Ende's beloved novel of the same name. But even those born in the 1980s and who came of age in the 1990s will struggle to remember the sequel, The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter. And if you revisit this bizarre flop today, you’ll instantly understand why we’ve all memory-holed this strange, unnecessary film.
