Fridge / The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter

Fridge Brilliance

• Why doesn't Bastian just wish for Fantasia to be saved and be done with it? The last time Bastian interacted with Fantasia, Atreyu got sent on a grand quest to find a human child, only to be told that He Was Reading About You All Along. And, the threat to Fantasia is a manifestation of humanity's growing apathy towards dreams and stories. Again. A quick resolution might not keep Fantasia safe for very long.
  • Same with getting all the characters back in 3, and the wishes-cost-memories machine in 2. If he just wishes for everything, there's no story. Fantasia is literally a storybook fantasyland, and with no story to revolve around, it all falls to ruin. Like how Alan Wake had to stay true to the story's internal logic or it would have had a The Bad Guy Wins Downer Ending, instead of the Bittersweet Ending it did have. A copout ending is incredibly bad news.
  • This arguably causes terrible Fridge Horror: Everyone who dies/gets consumed by the Nothing in the first film stays dead, because it's not the original characters Bastian wishes back, but his version of the characters.
    • Alternately, the magic from the single grain of sand that remained may have been enough for Bastian to be able to wish for Fantasia and its inhabitants to be restored.
  • Also to consider, the core of any story is the conflict or plot. Take away the plot, the story goes, too. The whole conflict in this movie was that no one was reading books anymore, so taking away the plot - the reason to read a book in the first place - would be very bad.