Sullivan

Ah, the character we all know and....are puzzled by. Sullivan, who has been forsaken by fan artists and authors alike! (Except for Edmund, of course.) Yes, I too am guilty of this. Where's the Sully love, yo?

I don't know why I started wondering about him lately. How did he get mixed up with Jenner to begin with? We see so little of him in the film that it's hard to say.

A lot of people have imagined that Jenner had a family. I wonder if Sullivan did, too? It's possible. Kids? Hmm.

Any thoughts?

--Meg

Yes, it would seem that our old friend Sulliven has fallen victim to a common case of 'time and money' in movie production (Not to say Bluth was greedy, just that he was on a certain time limit to complete the film). I would agree that Sulliven did indeed had a family at one time. I mean. he had to get all that sense (what he showed of it) of morality from somewhere.

Perhaps he was a rat who was separated from his family at the time of the NIMH employees gathering rats for their experiments. Further living a partially lonely life amongst the colony who kept to himself. And I guess Jenner took him in, whether he needed a companion or a puppet.

I think you might be on to something there. I live a lonely life, and I would hang out with anyone who would accept me as an equal. Maybe not quite like Jenner, but maybe Sully didn't know how bad Jenner was until it was too late to back out.

I guess one of the reasons Sullivan stands out as such a great character is that, unlike Jenner, he had more of a conscience in terms of justice and rightiousness.

I think Sullivan was against the Thorn Valley Plan, but he was obviously unwilling to commit murder, but also too scared of Jenner to back out until the end.

If memory serves me correctly, I seem to remember reading in the book upon which this movie is based upon, that Sullivan was something of an engineer. He along with another rat whose name escapes me for the moment, were primarily responsible for putting together the various pieces of apparatus that was needed to move the Frisby/Brisby home. So here you have an obviously intelligent rat whose personality might not be intrinsically evil, but yet is of the type that could easily be lead to the brink of, if not evil itself.

Peace :)
NIMHmaniac

I'm also on the road to being a socially outcast engineer. Just working on the engineer part. Perhaps it takes both to be desparate enough to join the evil side for acceptance.

I'm also on the road to being a socially outcast engineer. Just working on the engineer part. Perhaps it takes both to be desparate enough to join the evil side for acceptance.

Engineers are most toying with us, on my job they make equipment that works well, but is a pain to repair.

Sullivan, is but a short part in the movie and book, but in Fan-Fics I find more of him.

I 've always figured Sullivan to be one of the original twenty rats, and so very likely did have a wife and children. Something I've always wondered, though how come he was never referred to by name? The first few times I saw "NIMH", it was almost a process of elimination to figure out who this "Sullivan" character was in the credits!

No idea. I guess since Jenner is pretty much the only one that even interacts with him, he didn't really need to be referred to by name. He's only important to the story as Jenner's assistant.

on the commentary Don and Gary addressed the fact that they never named Sullivan during the film which was by accident.
They would be asked: "Aldo Ray was in your film? Who did he play?"
And they would answer: "You know, we never addressed his character by name during the film."

Something else about Sullivan I meant to include last time. Obviously at least one critic was also confused about who this guy was whose name was in the credits but who was never referred to by name Time magazine’s Richard Corliss, who said, “Sullivan, a feline too mean for the Official I Hate Cats Book, is given the voice of gravel-garbling Aldo Ray.” It was obviously close to deadline, but still…the only feline in sight was Dragon, and one could hardly miss the fact that he didn’t have a voice, that is a speaking one.
The full article, with tons of others, can be viewed at

http//www.vanden-eykel.com/nimharchive/articles/time82.jpg

I personally liked how Gibbs treated the character of Sullivan. It allowed us to see the more forgiving side of Mrs. Brisby and offered a nice bit of foreshadowing. I can see Sullivan as a good guy who's been put in a hard situation, which is how Gibbs portrayed him and Jonathan in Mrs. Brisby's eyes.