Those berries (spoilers)

To me they were alive since the guy says "no they're just sleeping", and that the berry thing was just another superstition Paddy believed. Just like the pot of gold rainbow thing.

read the actual movie description of the second movie. They describe the baby as Orphaned. How does a kid get orphaned? When its parents die. Solution, problem solve debate over.

Dude. Those berries was a reference to Snow White and the Seven Drawfs

Sonic will be hearty forever.

A lot of wild red berries are poisonous. Paddy was probably just heeding caution. They slept on the boat at the end out of dehydration and pure exhaustion.

At the beginning of Return to the Blue Lagoon we aren't sure exactly how much time passes before Em and Richard are dead. It's one of the first scenes, but that could mean that they were alive for a day. The boat was full of people dying from Cholera and Rich and Em were already weakened from days of no water and the sun beating on them. The baby could have still been breastfeeding and was probably sheltered from the sun.

If it did take a day before they died, it's likely that they would have been placed with the rest of the sick on the boat to get better - only sealing their fate.

the three books are canon, they are what "really" happened, although I still have trouble with the way Stacpoole sank the whole island in book 3 (so he wouldn't have to write any more stories about it?).

the first film is the canon heavily fictionized, and the second film didn't happen.

However, I like to combine the first book and film with Arthur's attitude in the second book and rather than bring them back to civilization he moves back to the island with them. If you've read the second book, remember how he reacted to seeing their house and the fish spears? He loved the island, he lived there for the rest of his life and believed "his kids" would come back to him there. So if they'd been found alive and the ship's doctor was able to wake them, I think he'd have done just what he did in the book, asked to be left on the island with them.

Let's just say that God doesn't believe in me.

The ending dialogue confused me though. When the man said "No, sir they're asleep." why the hell didn't he wake them up? Or better still: Why didn't Richard and Emmeline WAKE UP?! The boat is crowded with men and they sleepon?!

That made no sense at all.

I figured either they had pulses but were dying just then(likely answer) or he was mistaken.



"I'd say this cloud is Cumulo Nimbus."
"Didn't he discover America?"
"Penfold, shush."

As long as you steer clear of the book sequel and the movie sequel, then let's just say that they were just temporarily asleep at the end of the movie. That's how I like to think of it.

In interest of up front disclosure, the only reason I joined this site was to reply to this 13 year old thread with my own thoughts on the matter. BTW so nice to find a site that doesn't achieve stuff that is worth discussing. But about the post length limit...?!

I watched this film last night for the first time since it came out in the 80s. Back then, it was so much consensus that they lived, for the reasons mentioned above: Paddy was wrong/lying, but mainly the crewman's statement that they are "just asleep". But as an older, wiser, and more appreciative of the many religious metaphors in the film, version of myself watched the film last night, I felt that it had to be more than a mere coincidence that at various points in the film, characters use being asleep as a euphemism for death. Actually more than a euphamism, it's used in a religious sense in that the body is asleep but the person's spirit is alive in heaven. So, as their father had previously discussed with the children (and maybe even the members of the crew who find the dingy in the end with him) that dying is going to sleep, when they find the people they've been looking for for a decade, and they are both dead, would you expect "yup, dead as a doornail?" Remember, in the time the books were written, the entire Western audience for those books would have believed in heaven and the afterlife as firmly as they would believe that grasping a hot iron would burn your hand. That's how real it was to them. So in my opinion, and as supported by the unambiguous opening of the second book, the author intends them to mortally perish. It fits the plot arc where Eden is found by children ignorant of sin, but they cannot exist in the universe of Adam and Eve which contains the knowledge of sin. The trouble is in the way the line is delivered. And in that, I say that the director and/or studio "doctored it" to suit a 1980s audience that would not have found "sleeping with God" a happy ending.