The toys in MWTB were from much farther in the future than the black bag. OTTOMH the anatomically correct doll has lost its appendix and pinkie and has an entirely new system in its body (the nature and purpose are never explained). There is IIRC no connection between the two futures.
MWtB is only a great title to fantasy-lit nerds. For your average Hollywood marketer, it’s a nightmare (and imagine the MoviePhone guy trying to pronounce it). Most people wouldn’t get it, and anything they don’t get keeps them away out of fear and confusion.
TLM, on the other hand, is an even worse title because it makes no sense to anyone, it doesn’t sound enticing or provocative (“Hmmm–what’s a mimzy? Gotta go Friday night and find out!”), and it sounds like a Beatrix Potter spinoff for 10-year-old girls. I don’t know the story at all, and though it may be cool and creative and fun, the title is a complete buzzkill.
The result: the film is tracking as poorly as is measurably possible. It may be a quality film, but its prognosis is toast.
Dude!
How about a descriptive thread title?
I clicked this link accidentally, backed out immediately, registered “Mimsy,” and returned.
I would have been very cross with you indeed if I went another day without knowing about this project. Very cross indeed.
I recall “Mimsy Were the Borogoves” from some anthology or another. “The Hugo Winners,” maybe? Read it in 1988 and it made quite an impression. (Total Lewis Carroll freak, here. Can recite “Jabborwocky” with no hesitation, and frequently do, much to the irritation of anyone within earshot.
(Depressing how many people don’t even recognize the source. “Is that Old English?”)
Ach! I originally meant to include the movie title in the header (no, really), but got caught up in the moment…
Obviously, i have disappointed you. The shame!
I die. My putrefying corpse filters through the soil and pollutes the water table. Cattle drink water drawn from sour wells causing calves to be stillborn. Runoff from irrigation poisons streams, rivers and lakes killing all fish. Crops are unnaturally stunted and bear no fruit causing starvation on a global scale. All die…
I changed your thread title to add the movie’s name, and to help make it (the thread title) more descriptive, octothorpe.
Apparently, adding the title to the thread killed it. 
I just watched the trailer and this looks pretty cool! I have not read the story–I’ll save that until after the movie. I just wanted to add that I noticed **Brian Greene ** in the trailer. He’s a well-known string theorist and author of The Elegant Universe. Adds to my interest a little.
I recognized it immediately from an anthology of sci fi stories (Science Fiction Hall of Fame I best short stories from a long time ago). It is one of my favorite stories- I hope they capture the feel of it- the slowly dawing understanding that Something Is Not Quite Right.
I was very excited!
There’s a sneak peek of The Last Mimzy in Chicago today (Saturday March 10) and there might be in other cities too. We’re going to catch the 5:30pm showing at River East 21, preceeded by the 3:15pm showing of 300, and followed by the 7:30pm showing of The Host. Should be an interesting day at the movies.
I think the title of the movie should be:
*The Toy That Came From The Future (And The Two Children That Learned From It)[sup][1][/sup]
[sup][1][/sup]aka Mimsy were the Borogoves*
Then everyone will be happy!
What does it mean to say a movie is “tracking zero”?
-FrL-
In this case, it means nothing. The movie doesn’t open until March 23, so as of now it has no reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, because, duh, no one has seen it.
I missed the edit window. I was wrong, because I didn’t scroll down on the RT page. There are 2 reviews. I didn’t read the entire reviews because I’m wary of spoilers, but from the blurbs, one doesn’t like it because they say there are too many things going on. One does like it and calls it “reasonably engaging” and “appealing” with “fun special effects.” There are 2 other listings but they’re not reviews, they’re both just a synopsis of the plot.
In any case, it’s tracking zero because there aren’t enough reviews yet.
Ok,
I’ve never read these stories but Mimzy, to me, sounds like a name a child may give his security blanket.
The trailer isn’t grabbbing me either. The guy from the office is kind of bugging me.
Where did you read that. There is a ‘tracking report’ that is done for the studios that gives an idea of how much a film will make it’s opening weekend. There is a lot of polling and the report tracks ‘awareness’ of titles and which choice “first, second” a particular title is for movie goers. Now family oriented features don’t track accurately. Almost always lower than they actually do, but if it’s tracking at ‘zero’ now, then the film is in trouble.
If that’s the tracking you’re refering to.
At the link given in post number twenty two on this thread.
I believe it is, thanks.
-FrL-
It was kind of late, I must have missed it that link.
Well, family films don’t track that well and of course, the big thing for a movie is how much profit it makes. TLM looks like it had a very modest budget. March 23 could be a good release time if they are planning to take advantage of spring break. It’s also seems to me that who ever wrote that article had a real ax to grind with Bob Shay, so I would take what it says with several grains of salt.
I saw the trailer and imediately thought of the story I’d read with the same plot. I didn’t know who wrote it, but I knew they used his idea.
We saw The Last Mimzy Saturday and liked it. It’s not a great movie, and I suspect adults who’ve read the story might be disappointed, though that’s hard to say since I haven’t read the story. It wasn’t a magical experience at the movies, not one where I walked out tingling and thinking “I LOVED THAT, I HAVE TO SEE IT AGAIN!” such as when I saw other fantasy movies like Return To Oz (or, ha, The Fellowship of the Ring). It was fairly straightforward, good special effects, decent acting, nothing especially special about it, and nothing especially bad about it. Some of it was fascinating, such as the kid’s ability to communicate with spiders. This is the director’s first film and I don’t see a flair that’s going to blossom in the future, but I can’t know if I think that because of who directed it (Bob Shaye) or if I would have thought that about anyone who directed it.
I’m really trying not to let my ire toward Bob Shaye get in the way of how I feel about the movie. He may be giving Peter Jackson some unfortunate shit about The Hobbit, and The Last Mimzy may in fact be a stepping stone to his directing The Hobbit himself, but he did give the ok for the 3 Lord of the Rings movies in the first place, so I have to always love him for that, even as I want to smack him upside the head. I will never pay to see a Hobbit movie directed by him or anyone else other than Peter Jackson.
In any case, I think older kids will probably like The Last Mimzy (the title is explained in the film), and it’s not so dumbed down that adults will fall asleep.
Wait, I did think of one bad thing. It had one glaring and horrific “OH COME ON!” moment that had nothing to do with the fantasy.
The Department of Homeland Security gets involved because of the blackout caused by the kids, and the family is taken into custody. The kids excaped, yeah right, and they’re followed to their summer house where all the final action takes place. After the final action, the Homeland Security guys just say, ‘we were wrong to hold you, sorry, bye’ and left! I mean really, something that major happened and they just left without even trying to get an explanation of what the hell just happened? Give me a break.
Otherwise, we did enjoy it, though just not as much as the other two movies we saw that day, 300 and The Host.
It’s clear from Equipoise’s comments that this movie is wildly different from the short story. It appears that they took the opening incident of the short story and ignored everything else in it. I haven’t seen the film, so I can’t comment on whether I think it’s good or not.
Could you give a synopsis of the short story in spoiler tags so I can tell if it really is that different? What’s the “opening incident” and what’s “everything else”?
Here’s a quick gist of the movie’s plot. I’d had it in spoiler tags but I took them out because I’m not giving the end away and most of what I say is in the previews:
The movie opens in the future, with children playing in an amazing meadow filled with multicolored flowers. They sit down in a circle and the teacher starts to tell them the story of The Last Mimzy. It seems the world had come near to the brink of dying, and a scientist tried and tried to send a message back to the past, because something they had in the past was desperately needed in the future, but no living thing could survive the journey. They settled on sending an AI stuffed animal, a rabbit (though not a walker and talker like Teddy in the movie AI) called Mimzy, and sent several Mimzys to various time periods hoping that one of them would be returned with the thing they needed. For some reason I didn’t catch, the Mimzy that the children in the movie find is the last one that can be sent. The last Mimzy. One that was sent earlier found its way to, I can’t remember, either Alice Liddell because she’s pictured with a Mimzy, or Lewis Carroll because he uses the word mimsy. I’m not sure why the spelling was changed and who changed it.
Anyway, the kids find a metal box in the surf at their summer home by the ocean and open it up. There are strange objects within, and secrecy, confusion and intelligence (except for the Patriot Act and the DoHS, such idiocy I could have done without) ensues.