Headscratchers / The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy to the Rescue

• Martin's character design when he's evil is nothing like his usual character design other than his eye color. And even then, Martin can somehow control the appearance of his eyes, like the hypno spiral. His fur is much darker. He had a cream colored pelt and a white shape on his chest (you know, the type in every animated show with a talking animal) but now he has dark gray (green in some shots) fur. Who does his dye job? They did a crappy job sense his fur color changes back. He seems (he's wearing a cloak) to have lost weight and grown taller. Fine, I can understand that but these he then shrinks and gains back the weight. And now he has a British accent. Fine, Stockholm Syndrome would explain that if the humans were British. But he becomes American again once he's good and his voice also becomes that of a fifteen year old as opposed to Evil Martin's quite adult voice. How does that work?!
  • I don't consider the sequel to be canon. I know it technically is, but it's so out of touch with the original. See if that helps.
    • I don't consider it good form to give a response that boils down to "it doesn't matter, because it's Fanon Discontinuity" because it tends to stifle discussion. That's the right of anyone here, though, so, meh. To the original troper, I say that it's an Evil Makeover, which happens enough to be a supertrope of its own. In-story, because Evil Is Dark according to whatever magic gave him the hypnosis eyes, a more menacing expression and posture can do a lot to change someone (especially if they exude an aura of evil or at least not-niceness a la Mr. Hyde), and that sort of British accent is cool. Out-of-story, because he needed to be turned into an Obviously Evil Moustache Twirling Villain so the poor, dull-witted kids wouldn't be confused about why Martin was suddenly rampaging around and being a mean person, and be happy when he turned normal.
    • Maybe the DNA he was given in the lab to make him smart had been derived from a British-bred lab mouse with a different fur color?
    • Just speculating, but considering how Martin appeared to have become something of an evil Nicodemus, complete with robes and psychic powers, and how during his Villain Song he appears to switch back and forth between his old and new appearance, while changing the background into an evil candyland, it's possible his change in appearance is some kind of mental illusion to intimidate Tim, either psychically or through the use of some new device he created. Kind of how some people speculate that the God-Emperor of Warhammer 40,000 didn't actually look half as impressive as he appeared, and that his golden armor and blinding aura were illusion.
  • Maybe Martin is like Tom Holland and he can just masterfully switch between British and American accents.
• Now to quote the old name of this page, this one Just Bugs Me. Where is the electricity gone in this movie ?!? In the original, the whole point of the rat is that they know complicated mechanics, especially electricity lighting and the likes. At the end of the movie they're on their way to Thorn Valley where they are supposed to rebuild their civilization but this time without stealing. And then… in this sequel, the rats barely have any complicated or sophisticated machines. We see some cartoony clockwork in the Parade scene, and Mr Ages's lab still contains some chemistry items, but no electricity whatsoever !?! Granted, maybe that's because the writers of the sequel paid too much attention about the rat's remarks that "stealing electricity from the farmer is wrong", but couldn't they make electricity generators/dynamos using steam power or a dam on the river we do see in Thorn Valley ? And even if they can't, electricity aside, their Thorn Valley building still look too primitive and rural compared to what the rats were able to do under the Rosebush (the Council room and all that).
  • And please, what I'm asking for is some sort of canon/plausible in-universe explanation, not "the writers didn't pay attention" or the likes.
  • Well, there are two answers, one from the films, one from the books. As you noted, the first movie had Justin explicitly talk about how the rats wanted to abandon the use of electricity because they felt it was wrong to steal from the humans; I can't recall if they stated it directly, but I always got the implication that they didn't just feel bad about stealing, but that they'd come to see their overall heightened technology/society itself to be wrong, and that the move to Thorn Valley would involve abandoning it completely to have a more primitive, closer to nature (albeit still uplifted) society. This would also explain another reason why Jenner would be against it, and even add a bit of depth since, prior to him going off the deep end into villainy, he would actually have a point that, morality and the danger from NIMH aside, it seems a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater to just reject electricity and technology entirely. The sequel to the original novel, from what I recall (it's been a number of years since I read it) also suggested this was what the rats had done once they got to Thorn Valley, and it retained Jenner being against it without him becoming a villain, and for the same reason (not wanting to simply abandon technology just because it might be dangerous). The fact Jenner's attachment to technology was played as an obsession that was unhealthy and eventually killed him aside, there was definitely an Arcadia theme to the rats' desire to move to Thorn Valley, so the loss of the electricity just seems to fit into the same mindset. Granted, it's likely the makers of Timmy to the Rescue never read the sequel book, but even without that, I think the implication from the first movie does offer an explanation.
  • At the end of the Secret of Nihm they had to leave the rose bush in a hurry, before the Thorn Valley plan was completely ready. Also as Mrs Brisby is still alive in the sequal, even after the time skip they can’t have been living in Thorn Valley more than a few years. Presumably they’re simply not back to that level of technology yet, they’re essentially a post apocalyptic society. They may also be trying to to draw attention to themselves with things like steam and electricity causing noise and light polution.
• Where's all of Mrs. Brisby's credit? She was the hero of the first movie, and she's barely in this one! They only talk about Jonathan.
  • Mrs Brisby definitely should’ve been the one to get a statue.
• Why are the Rats stealing from humans again? Seriously, they bust into a grainary storage that has a big guard dog. Didn't they move to Thorn Valley to become self-sufficent and specifically NOT do things like that? I realise the makers of this movie probably didn't care, but it still sticks out.
• It makes no sense for Jeremy to have scammed other animals out of money since animals shouldn't need money.
  • I don’t understand the animals having money or baubles either, even though Nicodemus had the Stone in the first movie. But crows love shiny objects, so that at least makes some sense. Maybe the animals stole things from humans when Jeremy asked for pretty, shiny things. The credit card shown was odd, though some cards are shiny.
• Timmy mentions that Mr. Ages was trying to teach him it's okay to wear the same underwear 3 days in a row makes no sense given that they weren't even wearing pants.

---