7 Deeply Unsettling Unanswered Questions In Kids' Movies

5. The NeverEnding Story - What Makes A Horse Sad?

If you've never seen The NeverEnding Story, your childhood has been sincerely disadvantaged. It is a glorious piece of campy 80s fantasy involving fantastical creatures and an heroic quest. It also happens to be one of the most relentlessly morbid movies ever made with children in mind as the key audience. Likeable characters are killed off without a second thought; the whole world of Fantasia is slowly being engulfed by a marauding Nothing; and a wolf that will haunt the nightmares of any child to have seen the movie relentlessly hunts down Atreyu, the hero of the story. But the pinnacle of depression in this movie comes fairly early on in the quest, when Atreyu and his faithful steed and companion Artax have to attempt to cross the Swamps of Sadness. The name of that swamp is a bit of a giveaway to just how cheery the place is, and the trick to survival is apparently to "not let the sadness in", because if you do, you'll lose the will to continue, and simply allow yourself to be swallowed by the swamp. Which is exactly what happens to Artax, and it is quite probably the most upsetting scene anyone has ever filmed and then shown to children as entertainment. But it does beg the question; what exactly does Artax have to be sad about? The character is, after all, a horse. Horses are creatures not known for their intelligence, let alone their deep emotional range, so what could he possibly have lurking in the back of his mind to drag him to the point of losing the will to live? Granted, this is a fantasy movie, so the horse may be of super-intelligence, so does that mean the horse is regaling his demons with alcoholism? Perhaps the memory of all his loved ones being shipped off to a glue factory became simply too overwhelming in the gloomy atmosphere of the swamps. We may never know, but it certainly must be traumatising for him, as the scene is most definitely wildly upsetting.