The Neverending Story (Breaking the Fourth Wall)

The Neverending Story (Breaking the Fourth Wall)

I grew up loving the childhood favorite movie The Neverending Story. I just re-watched the movie again just a few minutes ago. There was a line of dialogue that clearly breaks the fourth wall that I never noticed before.

This is so meta...

When the entire planet is destroyed by the Nothing. The Childlike Empress talks about the movie-going audience in the third act. She reveals that Bastian is reading along with their story and that there are many people watching him read their story. She gives us details about things that happened earlier in the movie and points it out to us watching.

And, I realized they basically doubled-broke the fourth wall. The Childlike Empress knows she's in a book about a kid in movie. The character knows Bastian is in a movie about the Neverending Story. It is very creepy that she knows this and almost has smirk on her face when she reveals this truth. And, I never realized this point until now. I only caught that the Empress knew about Bastian reading her story, but never realized that SHE KNOWS about us watching the movie as well.

From IMDB, ((then again, and as the storm rages in Bastian's World (is the Nothing destroying his world too?), she mentions that someone, somewhere, is living the adventure through Bastian, a concept that once again escapes his comprehension. Note that at this point, she's looking directly toward the camera - towards you, who's watching the film! In this part, she's speaking to the audience, complementing what G'mork said earlier, but in a higher layer of truth, referring to Bastian's World as another extension of what could be called our world's Fantasia. The Childlike Empress is breaking the Fourth Wall between the film itself and our world. ))

Side Note: The only other character that is fully aware that they live in a fictional world is the villain G'mork, the wolf creature. I wonder if that has a meaning to the overall story. Good and Evil are two sides of the same coin. G'mork is just the bad side of the Empress.

((G'mork: Foolish boy. Don't you know anything about Fantasia? It's the world of human fantasy. Every part, every creature of it, is a piece of the dreams and hopes of mankind. Therefore, it has no boundaries. ))

Side Note II: The book also seems to rewrite the story to conform to the reader.  The main hero turns out to be a Native American because Bastian had a backpack with a Native American hunting a buffalo.  Heck they even mention the buffalo in the story.