Sounds nice.
I watched the movie, too, before reading the book. I think I was in elementary school. And Artax' death hit me, too. But the ancient Morla was great in the movie. And disgusting how she sneezed on Atreju. LOL
We had a teacher in 5th grade who let us watch several movies and analyse them. And write stories in the style. We also watched Ivanhoe, Prince Valiant and Princess Bride.
I always played I was Atreju. I even played the swamp scene with Artax dying, which was difficult, but I maneged to use some mud from the garden. LOL. My mother was not amused.
And I once sat on the original Fuchur in the Barvaria Filmstudios in Munich. It is still there.
In the movie Bastian did say the empress' new name. It was during the storm, everything was very noisy and he called her "Mondenkind". Only once, but he did it. I'm sure the name has been translated. In English it might be Moon Child or something like that. She cried a lot and said " say my name" several times, but he still refused to believe she was really talking to him, until she called him by his name.
I still hate it, when animals die in movies or books. Each time I watch a new movie and there is a dog, I warn the movie not to dare to let the dog die! But most of the time they do. With a few exceptions.
And I cried when Hedwig died!!!!