The Secret of NIMH

The film rights to the book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH had reportedly been offered to Walt Disney Productions in 1972 but they were turned down.[5]

The Secret of NIMH was the first feature film to be directed by Don Bluth. In September 1979, Bluth, fellow animators Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy and eight other animation staff left the feature animation department at Disney to set up their own independent studio, Don Bluth Productions. The studio worked, at first, out of Bluth's house and garage, but moved to a two-story, 5,500-square-foot (510 m²) facility in Studio City, California, several months later.[6] While they were still working at Disney, they produced the 27-minute short film Banjo the Woodpile Cat as a side project to gain other production skills that the company and their animation program were not addressing. Bluth asked Ron W. Miller, Walt Disney's son-in-law and the president and CEO of the company at the time, to view Banjo, but Miller declined. As Goldman recalled, "that pulled the enthusiasm rug out from under us. We had hoped that the studio might like what we were doing and agree to buy the film and allow us to finish the short film in the studio, which would allow us to recoup what we had spent in terms of money and the many hours that we and the other members of the team had invested in the film."[7]

Before they started making Banjo, artist and story writer Ken Anderson had been getting into Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, which he called "a wonderful story". He gave the book to Bluth for him to read and make a film out of after Bluth finished the animation direction of Pete's Dragon. Bluth later showed NIMH to Disney animation director Wolfgang Reitherman, who turned down Bluth's offers to make a movie based on the book, stating, "We've already got a mouse [named Mickey Mouse] and we've done a mouse movie [called The Rescuers]." However, Bluth also presented the novel to the other staff that would work for Don Bluth Productions later on and they all loved it. Two months later, former Disney executive James L. Stewart, who now had started Aurora Productions, called Goldman and told him about Anderson's idea of making a film based on NIMH.[7] At Bluth, Goldman and Pomeroy's request, Aurora Productions acquired the film rights and offered Don Bluth Productions a budget of US$ 5.7 million and 30 months to complete the film, tighter in both budget and schedule than most Disney animated features at the time.[8]

Goldman described the casting process as "exciting, fun, and sometimes strange".[7] He stated that focusing on the characteristics of each character, the voices and acting abilities were crucial, saying that using voices that added to a movie's texture was part of the team's philosophy in the development of a film. Goldman found the strangest casting decision to be Dom DeLuise for Jeremy the Crow, which Goldman, Bluth, and Pomeroy had considered after they watched the 1978 film The End.[7] Elizabeth Hartman was cast as Mrs. Brisby, with Goldman calling her performance in A Patch of Blue "so believable and sincere that we all felt that she was right for the part." Pomeroy suggested Derek Jacobi, who starred in the 1976 miniseries I, Claudius, to play the part of Nicodemus.[7] Peter Strauss, whom the team previously saw in another miniseries from 1976, Rich Man, Poor Man, was cast as Justin.[7] Paul Shenar was assigned to play Jenner; the staff liked his "dark, powerful voice".[7] Shakespearean actor John Carradine was "perfect for the dark, ominous Great Owl", while Aldo Ray was assigned to voice Sullivan, whom Goldman said "also had a great distinctive voice".[7]

Mrs. Brisby meeting Nicodemus. Backlighting techniques are used in this scene to give Nicodemus's eyes a bright glow. According to the 2007 DVD release, Bluth wanted Nicodemus and the Great Owl to be seen as aspects of the same character, accounting for some similarities in their designs.

The production of The Secret of NIMH lasted from January 1980 to early June 1982.[9] The studio set out with the explicit goal in mind of returning feature animation to its "golden era", concentrating on strong characters and story and experimenting with unusual and often more labor-intensive animation techniques.[8] Bluth believed older techniques were being abandoned in favor of lower production costs and the only way that animation could survive was to continue traditional production methods. Among the techniques experimented with on The Secret of NIMH were rotoscoping, multiple passes on the camera to achieve transparent shadows, backlit animation (where animated mattes are shot with light shining through color gels to produce glowing areas for artificial light and fire effects) and multiple color palettes for characters to fit in different lighting situations, from daylight, to night, to warm environments, to underwater. Mrs. Brisby had 46 different lighting situations; therefore there were 46 different color palettes, or lists of color, for her. Two modern, computerized versions of the multiplane camera were also manufactured for this production.[10]

To achieve the film's detailed full animation while keeping to the tight budget, the studio strove to keep any waste of time and resources to a minimum. The crew often worked long hours with no immediate financial reward (though they were offered a cut of the film's profits, a practice common for producers, directors and stars of live action films, but never before offered to artists on an animated feature);[2] producer Gary Goldman recalled working 110-hour weeks during the final six months of production. Around 100 in-house staff worked on the film, with the labor-intensive cel painting farmed out to 45 people working from home.[11] Many minor roles, including incidental and crowd voice work, were filled in by the in-house staff. The final cost of the film was $6.385 million. The producers, Bluth, Goldman and Pomeroy and the executive producers at Aurora mortgaged their homes collectively for $700,000 to complete the film, with the understanding that their investment would be the first to be repaid. The film was the sixth animated feature to be presented in the Dolby Stereo sound system.

In animating Justin and Jenner's sword fight, the animators referenced similar sequences in films such as The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and The Vikings (1958).[11]

One of the earliest drafts of the film was written by Steven Barnes, who received a creative consultant credit in the final product and was closer to the original novel.[13] The story would have focused more on the rats and their time at NIMH as it did in the book, which was reduced to a short flashback in later revisions to bring Mrs. Brisby and her plight into the forefront. It also included a female rat named Isabella (described as "a young, cute, somewhat motor-mouthed rat with a crush on Justin"), who was ultimately left out and much of her dialogue given to Nicodemus. A revised synopsis dated July 2, 1980 by an unattributed author would take the movie closer to its completed form, which ended with the mysterious disappearance of the rats, leading the characters and audience to wonder if they ever really existed, or were just an elaborate illusion.[14]

Bluth himself would later make several changes to the story, most notably with the addition of mystical elements not present in the original novel.[15] He explained "Regarding magic, we really believe that animation calls for some magic, to give it a special 'fantastic' quality."[16] This was most apparent in the magic amulet given to Mrs. Brisby, which was meant to be a visual representation of her character's internal power; something harder to show on film. The object was also meant to introduce a spiritual aspect to the plot, with the director remarking, "The stone or amulet is just a method of letting the audience know that Mrs. Brisby has found 'Courage of the Heart'. Magic? Maybe. Spiritual? Yes."[16] In the same vein, Nicodemus was made into a wizard to "create more mystery" about himself and the rats' colony. The antagonist Jenner was given much more prominence in the movie, being only mentioned as a traitor who leaves in the book, to "add drama" to the narrative by giving it a more visible enemy. Justin also now succeeds Nicodemus as the leader of the rats to give his character more of an arc and allow him an opportunity to "grow and change."[12] Unlike the original work, Justin does not rescue Mrs. Brisby from the cage at the Fitzgibbons' house and she now helps her children without the rats' assistance by using the amulet; once again giving focus to her personal story. As Bluth put it, "The Secret of NIMH is really a story about Mrs. Brisby and her need to save her children. If the rats save her children, then she hasn't grown in the film."[12]

During the film's production, Aurora contacted Wham-O, the manufacturers of Frisbee flying discs, with concerns about possible trademark infringements if the "Mrs. Frisby" name in O'Brien's original book was used in the movie. Wham-O rejected Aurora's request for waiver to use the same-sounding name to their "Frisbee", in the movie. Aurora informed Bluth & company that Mrs. Frisby's name would have to be altered. By then, the voice work had already been recorded for the film, so the name change to "Mrs. Brisby" necessitated a combination of re-recording some lines and, because John Carradine was unavailable for further recordings, careful sound editing had to be performed, taking the "B" sound of another word from Carradine's recorded lines, and replace the "F" sound with the "B" sound, altering the name from "Frisby" to "Brisby".[17]

All music is composed by Jerry Goldsmith.

• Sally Stevens – vocals (track 3)
• Paul Williams – vocals, keyboards (track 7)

Tim Hildebrandt spent two weeks painting The Secret of NIMH's promotional poster.[29]

The film's distributor, MGM/UA Entertainment Company, barely did any promotion for the film, leading Aurora to finance the advertising campaign themselves. The financiers had expected the film to open in wide release in 1,000 venues, but MGM opted for a limited opening weekend in 100 theaters, with its widest release in only 700. Although in competition with the blockbuster E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial directed by future Bluth partner Steven Spielberg,[30] it performed better in those theaters alone in its opening week than Poltergeist, Rocky III, Firefox, and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.[31] However, as a result of its release and competition with other summer fare, NIMH became only a moderate success, grossing nearly $14.7 million in North America,[3] though it was more successful on home video, cable, and foreign releases, ultimately turning a profit.[31]

The Secret of NIMH received widespread critical acclaim upon its release. It holds an approval rating of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 26 reviews, with an average rating of 7.11/10. The consensus states, "The Secret of NIMH is a dark, well-told tale that respects its young audience enough to not tone down its subject matter."[32] The film also has a weighted average score of 76 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 15 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews".[33]

Critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave the movie two positive "yes" votes on a July 15, 1982, episode of their television program Sneak Previews, with Ebert stating "Walt Disney would've liked The Secret of NIMH."[34][35] In his print review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, calling it "an artistic success", praising the quality of its animation and that it "contains that absolute rarity among feature-length animated cartoons, an interesting premise".[36] However, Ebert found that NIMH may not resonate as well on an emotional level with younger viewers, since "it has so many characters and involves them in so many different problems that there's nobody for the kids in the audience to strongly identify with."[36] Siskel, writing for the Chicago Tribune, found the movie "charming", but stated that the narrative was "littered with too many unimportant characters" and that Dom DeLuise "insert[ed] too much of himself" into the character of Jeremy.[37] Despite this, Siskel found the film, particularly the second half, to be a "genuine pleasure" and felt that even adults will be drawn into the story by the end, giving it three stars out of four.[37]

Vincent Canby of The New York Times noted the film's animation was "something of a technical and stylistic triumph" in comparison to that of Disney's golden age, but expressed dismay at the narrative finding it too complicated and lacking in an "easily identifiable central character."[38] In his review for the 1990 VHS re-release, Jeff Unger of Entertainment Weekly gave The Secret of NIMH a grade of "A", calling it "a wonderful adaptation" of the original book, adding that "Bluth and his animators, bless them, chose to revive an endangered art form – classically detailed animation. They drew their characters exquisitely and gave them individual personalities. The entire ensemble – artists, actors, animals, and musicians – created something unique: the world's first enjoyable rat race."[39] Similarly, Richard Corliss of Time magazine called the movie "something gorgeous to look at".[40]

The Secret of NIMH won Best Animated Film of 1982 at the 10th annual Saturn Awards, where it also received a nomination for Best Fantasy Film, losing to The Dark Crystal.[41] In his acceptance speech, Bluth remarked, "Thanks. We didn't think anyone had noticed."[22] The film was also nominated for Best Family Feature for Animation, Musical or Fantasy at the 4th annual Youth in Film Awards, being beaten by E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,[42] while the home video release received an Award of Excellence from the Film Advisory Board.[43] In 2008, the American Film Institute nominated this film for its Top 10 Animation Films list.[44]