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In case there was ever any doubt (I really doubt it, but...), I'm going to tell you all now: The (loose) basis for the movie was the book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. It is quite loose, as anyone who has ever read it then seen the movie, or the other way around, knows. Anyway, I took some time to read the book again, the first time since the first time I saw the movie. I was surprised to notice how many things were taken right out of the book, though I knew from my memories that the book was way better than the movie. Of course, part of the reason to re-read the book was to post my thoughts on the web, but it didn't make the story any less fun to read.
The best thing about the book is that it is the REAL story. After I first read the book, which I thought was great, I saw the movie, which was so far gone from the book that I didn't like it (at least not as well). In the book, there was no magic, no glowing skulls, no mystical amulets, and nothing that nearly resembled them at all. They even changed Mrs. Frisby to Mrs. Brisby, that was the worst change of all! I guess I was so naive to think that the movie should come out just like the book.
The next thing that was better was the in-depth history of the Rats of NIMH. Nicodemus left nothing out in the book when he told how they were captured, how they became super-intelligent, how they eventually escaped, and how they came to live in the huge underground cave on the Fitzgibbon's farm. Nicodemus' story in the movie consisted of starting as ordinary street rats, getting captured, getting injections, then somehow looking down from their cages to realize they knew how to get out. The movie is only 84 minutes long, a few minutes short of a usual movie. Imagine what kind of difference it would have made had they added a few extra things to fill in the gaps in that story!
The third thing that was so much better about the book was the amount of detail it contained about everyone and everything. The movie does a good job of detail, unfortunately, it's not the same as the book. Mr. Ages home was a hole in the basement of an old abandoned farm house. Brutus was an irregularly large rat who could have taken Dragon, without a battle axe! The rats' lair was extravagant, with an arched entryway, carpets, holes in the wall for lights, and a huge cave where hundreds of rats worked tirelessly to complete "The Plan."
The fourth thing that's better about the book is that everyone was nice and polite. When Mrs. Frisby visited Mr. Ages, he helped her without hesitation. When he visited the rat's lair the first time, Brutus didn't slam down his axe in front of her face as if to say "Now you die," but rather asks how she got herself in, then orders her to leave or to be escorted out. Even the Great Owl wasn't as as frightening. Of course a mouse would have to worry about facing an owl, but Jeremy knew that the owl could help and had no fear.
And the fifth better thing about the book was the ability to use your imagination! Because of the great detail, you could see in your head what everything was like. The mind is a great TV.
There weren't a whole lot of similarities between The Secret of NIMHand Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, but there were a couple things that were strikingly similar. It really surprised me to find such statements to be so close, since the rest of the movie was so far off. So, here they are:
As if the opposite of Dragnet, the story is different but the names stayed the same (except of course the main mouse family's last name "Frisby"). The movie made it clear who each of them were and the roles each play in the story (for the most part). Of course, if there were too much deviation here, it wouldn't be proper to think that the book had any influence on the movie.
There were numerous lines in the book that were nearly copied into the movie, and I mean nearly, not exactly. For instance, all you fans can recognize the line "You can unlock any door if you only have the key." Well, that was undoubtedly derived from a line early in the book, one Jonathan's old sayings, "All doors are hard to unlock until you have the key." Well, one certainly flows better than the other, and sounds better when etched in gold, which is most probably the reason for Don Bluth changing it.
Another line that was surprised to also find in the book, was the part where Jenner denounces all supporters of The Plan as "idiots and dreamers." It might be just a small coincidence, maybe hardly worth noting, but amazingly enough, that Jenner uses those exact words to describe all those who dreamt up the Thorn Valley Plan in the first place.
Another such line, though very much less impacting on the story, is Auntie Shrew's description of the rats. "Great hulking beasts" she called them in both the movie and the book, but that wasn't as striking as the other two lines.
So, you are interested in the real story about the Rats of NIMH and their friends, the Frisby's? Well, "I have just one thing to say..." Read the Book!
Would you like to read more about the Rats of NIMH? Check out these sequels written by O'Brien's daughter:
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