Hey, nice to come across this. The book was one of favorites growing up as a kid and the movie was my first “They ruined the source material!” moment. As an adult, I get why they changed what they did and can appreciate it as its own piece. But the book and movie are just so different in tone. The entire sections describing the scientific method (they even had a control group) used on the rat experiments, Jenner and Nicodemus having full on debate, the rats pondering a future where there could be more than one intelligent species on earth, would have been boring in a movie but little me loved it. It honestly might have been my first foray into Science Fiction as a vehicle for thinking about larger concepts. It’s also funny that from the perspective of NIMH they are the protagonists in a sci fi horror movie about having accidentally made potentially dangerous intelligent rats that could go out and completely upset the balance of the planet if left to breed and run free in the wild.
Mrs. Frisby doesn't have a first name because she is a mid-20th-century married woman, and to use her first name would imply a level of intimacy that we, the audience, do not have, or a youth that she doesn't not fit into. It's a remainder of the style of sexism of the time period, older even than the film itself. A little more concurrent with the book's publication. It was standard to refer to married women by their husbands' names in newspapers through even the 80s, and continued in a lot of Southern US newspapers into the 90s. Basically, it's emphasizing her positive qualities as a modest and correct married mother.
The other mouse Mr Ages had a last name, but no mentioned first name in the movie (I don't remember if the book had one). Auntie Shrew didn't have any name, she was just "shrew." But I see your point. Did mice mentally evolve differently?
Hey, nice to come across this. The book was one of favorites growing up as a kid and the movie was my first “They ruined the source material!” moment. As an adult, I get why they changed what they did and can appreciate it as its own piece. But the book and movie are just so different in tone. The entire sections describing the scientific method (they even had a control group) used on the rat experiments, Jenner and Nicodemus having full on debate, the rats pondering a future where there could be more than one intelligent species on earth, would have been boring in a movie but little me loved it. It honestly might have been my first foray into Science Fiction as a vehicle for thinking about larger concepts.
It’s also funny that from the perspective of NIMH they are the protagonists in a sci fi horror movie about having accidentally made potentially dangerous intelligent rats that could go out and completely upset the balance of the planet if left to breed and run free in the wild.
Nimh stands for the national institute of mental health
Mrs. Frisby doesn't have a first name because she is a mid-20th-century married woman, and to use her first name would imply a level of intimacy that we, the audience, do not have, or a youth that she doesn't not fit into. It's a remainder of the style of sexism of the time period, older even than the film itself. A little more concurrent with the book's publication. It was standard to refer to married women by their husbands' names in newspapers through even the 80s, and continued in a lot of Southern US newspapers into the 90s. Basically, it's emphasizing her positive qualities as a modest and correct married mother.
My elementary school library had the sequel book, Rasco and the Rats of NIHM. I must haves that book out at least 7 times to reread it.
The other mouse Mr Ages had a last name, but no mentioned first name in the movie (I don't remember if the book had one). Auntie Shrew didn't have any name, she was just "shrew." But I see your point. Did mice mentally evolve differently?
And a movie