- Adorkable: Star. So very much. He's a small, meek, timid Butt-Monkey with an adorably awkward personality who gets kicked around by Nikki and Kaltag, and whacked in some shape or form anytime he says one thing.
- All Animation Is Disney: It's also commonly mistaken for a Don Bluth film, especially given its similar style of character design. It doesn't help that it's produced by Steven Spielberg and distributed by Universal, just like An American Tail and The Land Before Time, and thus it's often advertised alongside those films. Adding to the confusion is the fact that Amblimation, the studio that did make it, also produced An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, which many think Bluth worked on.
- Alternative Character Interpretation: The white wolf from the original film. A lot of Epileptic Trees stem from its almost ethereal appearance, the way it vanishes and reappears in the thick blizzard, and the fact that it only appears in a single scene with Balto alone. Is it real? Is it a memory from Balto's past? Is it a hallucination? Is it a spirit guide? Is it a visual metaphor for Balto's acceptance of his heritage? The ambiguity of the scene is what makes it so brilliant. Granted, the Direct-to-Video sequel removes all the ambiguity, but there are fans who do not count the sequels as canon. Neither do the original movie's writers, who intended this wolf to be male.note
- Ass Pull: After Balto takes over the medicine sleigh team, Steele watching them depart somehow manages to get ahead of them and marks trees everywhere to make the journey home for Balto's team confusing, even though he had just tumbled down a hillside, and should be injured and exhausted.
- Awesome Art: Its fluid and expressive character animation and absolutely beautiful environments rival many Disney films.
- Awesome Music: The soundtrack by James Horner for the original film is absolutely stunning. Just try and listen to "Heritage of the Wolf"
without choking up. "The Journey Begins"
and "Balto Brings the Medicine!"
deserves a mention too. The best one, hands down, goes to Steve Winwood's "Reach for the Light"
, a hauntingly powerful ballad which sums up Balto's journey to greatness. - Base-Breaking Character:
- Star, Kaltag, and Nikki on whether they're funny or just annoying. Same goes for Muk and Luk.
- Jenna is either a compelling character who adds depth to the film or a one-dimensional Satellite Love Interest depending on who you ask.
- Steele is a very divisive character within the Balto fandom. One half sees him as an effective villain and Foil to Balto, find his arrogance, dark humor, and chilling Sanity Slippage-filled performance from Jim Cummings to be very unsettling and genuinely scary, making his rejection and abandonment by the town dogs to be richly deserved. Others would argue that he’s a flat, one-dimensional, generic Gaston-type character that has an underwhelming defeat, and some have argued that the film didn’t need a villain, with the threat of nature itself and the race to get the antitoxin to the children being more gripping and weighty topics for the film to tackle.
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: That squeaky cat toy... thing.
- Broken Base: Over the sequels as to whether they're decent or just plain awful. And even then the fanbase is divided on which one of the two sequels is superior over the other as well as which one should be considered canon.
- Catharsis Factor: While it's only in a deleted scene, seeing Steele getting his collar snagged on a lever after trying and failing to kill Balto in rage and then getting buried under coal and falling into the coal pit is immensely satisfying after how colossal of a Jerk Jock he's been throughout the entire movie.
- Complete Monster: Steele starts out as a Jerk Jock before becoming far worse, Driven by Envy at Balto being placed on his sleigh team. Angrily trying to sabotage their efforts to get medicine delivered to sick children, Steele spitefully tries to make them lose their way on the path to the village, uncaring for the lives of the dogs or kids. Returning to the village on his own, Steele claims his teammates died in a blizzard while he was unable to save them, caring nothing for anything save his own glory.
- Contested Sequel: The sequels have their fans, but are generally considered vastly inferior to the original Balto for their decline in animation quality along with some weird plots and characters.
- Critical Dissonance: Balto received mixed reviews from critics, but is generally well liked by its target audience and is considered by many to be a classic.
- Cult Classic: Wasn't a huge hit when it was released, but has a very large and active fanbase today in part due to television runs and home video releases.
- Draco in Leather Pants: Steele and Niju, despite being the Big Bad of their respective movies, have their share of fans. At least Niju has the excuse of just being afraid of losing his home. Steele, on the other hand, is repulsive, inside and out. But as always, that doesn't stop fanfiction and fanart from depicting Steele somehow performing a Heel–Face Turn and Niju getting paired with Aleu. Though Steele was actually in the original script for the third movie, where he was supposed to help Kodi find Balto along with several others. He was left out for reasons unknown, possibly by Steele's unsympathetic character in the first movie.
- Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Star from the first movie. Sadly, he wasn't in the sequels. Same goes for Kaltag and Dixie as well.
- Besides Kodi and Aleu, Balto and Jenna also had other puppies (named Dingo and Saba in the credits, although two more unnamed pups exist); we only see them like in two minutes of the second sequel (there's not even any consensus on which of the puppies is supposed to be who!), and yet they are very popular in the fan base.
- Evil Is Cool: Steele has quite the fanbase just based on how obvious it was that the animators loved drawing him as the most evil dog ever seen. EVERY moment he's on screen has him looking and acting pure evil, and it's glorious.
- Fanfic Fuel:
- A sizeable chunk of fanfics center on how Balto's parents met. Given how little we know about either of them, save which sub-species which parent was, there's a fair bit of variation. It gets a very passive mention in Wolf Quest, simply saying that Balto's father "had puppies" with a wolf.
- Some fics make an effort to squeeze Togo
back into the story in some way, usually by reimagining him as Balto's father. - Many fanfics set after the second film focus on Aleu's adventures with her new wolf pack, and whether or not she ever reunites with her family back in Nome.
- Steele (who for some reason doesn't appear in any of the official sequels) coming back to get revenge on Balto and his family for having him be shunned at the end of the first movie and/or eventually performing a Heel–Face Turn is also very common in fanfics.
- Fan-Preferred Cut Content: After the discovery of a Deleted Scene where Steele gets his collar snagged on a lever leading to him falling into a coal pit and being Buried Alive, many fans have stated this would've been a more satisfying defeat for a sociopathic narcissist like him than simply being abandoned by the other dogs, as well as to justify his absence from all of the sequels.
- Friendly Fandoms:
- There's a lot of fanart and fanfiction crossing the characters from this film over with Don Bluth's All Dogs Go to Heaven, another Renaissance-era animated feature starring dogs. It helps that most of the animators for that film also worked on the two Bluth films Spielberg produced, so their character designs compliment one another to the point that many mistake Balto for a Bluth film.
- In part due to the similar art styles, the series shares its fans with Oliver & Company, The Fox and the Hound, 101 Dalmatians, and the two Lady and the Tramp films.
- There’s quite a lot of crossover fan art and videos between this film and the 2002 film Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. Not only are both movies Historical Fiction stories told from the perspective of animals, but they also have rather similar art styles, likely due to the overlap of staff who transferred from Amblimation to DreamWorks Animation, such as animators Kristof Serrand and William Salazar.
- Genius Bonus: Boris once compares Balto, Muk, and Luk's issues to Dostoevsky novels.
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The movie (and to a lesser extent its sequels) fared much better in Japan, if the amount of merchandise coming from the country back in those days was any indication.
- Growing the Beard: Amblimation's first (and ultimately only) success at a weightier story and heavier drama.
- He Really Can Voice Act: Most people were surprised to learn that Balto's voiced by Kevin Bacon and this is (as of 2022) the only major voice acting role in his career, which is a shame since everyone agrees he gives it his all.note
- Jim Cummings as Steele really gets to stretch his vocal chops, making him go from smooth and charismatic, to his character’s true colors as a smug, threatening narcissist, and finally, a psychotic, vengeful feral beast. His snarled delivery of “Touch that box and I’ll TEAR you apart!” to Balto at the climax, is legitimately scary and disturbing.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- It's kinda funny that Brendan Fraser originally recorded Steele's dialogue, only to get replaced by Jim Cummings. Years later, with Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Cummings had recorded some of Taz's dialogue, only to get replaced by Fraser in the final film!
- Bob Hoskins putting on a Russian accent.
- Muk and Luk were ostracized from the other polar bears and consider their "uncle Boris" as family. Thirteen years later comes another animated film featuring a chubby bear adopted by a goose after being separated from his own species. It's also worth noting that Muk and Luk's main animator, Nicolas Marlet, later went on to be a designer for various DreamWorks films, Kung Fu Panda included.
- The telegraph operator is voiced by Gerrick Hagon, best known for playing Biggs Darklighter, which is an interesting coincidence, considering Mark Hamill would voice Niju in the sequel. Doubly so, since Jim Cummings (Steele) would later go on to voice Hondo Onaka.
- Steele, the film's Big Bad, was created since the writers did not want to anthroporphize a disease, the real main threat faced in the movie. Osmosis Jones and its TV spinoff, Ozzy & Drix, on the other hand, made most of its villain characters anthropomorphic diseases.
- Iron Woobie: Despite all the turmoil Balto went through, he managed to go on a long and dangerous journey to get the medicine.
- Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Balto and especially Jenna are prone to Crossover Ships.
- Love to Hate: Steele, so very much. He is an utterly despicable individual, yet it's for this exact reason why viewers find him so intriguing.
- Memetic Mutation:
- Pretty much anything that Star says, really.
- Muk's famous entry quote: "Uncle Boooorrrrriiiiiss!"
- Moral Event Horizon: Steele is an arrogant blowhard in the opening of the first movie, but he sails over the line into outright villainy when he deliberately sabotages Balto and the sled dog team's efforts to reach Nome, thus endangering not only the sled team, but the dying children who desperately need the medicine being delivered. And all of that was simply because Steele was jealous of Balto trying to help Steele's team, and then forced to take it over as a last resort.
- Most Wonderful Sound: Any time Balto howls like a wolf.
- Narm: While Steele is undoubtely a threatening villain the fact that Jim Cummings sometimes slips into Pooh and/or Tigger's voice can make him lose his intimidating factor. Though this could be count as Narm Charm since it's proof that he can perfectly voice both funny and frightening characters.
- One-Scene Wonder: The white wolf in the original movie. The sequel made it out to be Balto's mother, although the creators of the original stated it wasn't meant to be.
- Popular with Furries: Several of the characters (most commonly Balto, Jenna, and Steele) have a lot of furry fans.
- Retroactive Recognition:
- Apparently Rosy grew up to be Professor Sprout.
- Star's voice actor, Robbie Rist (already somewhat notable for playing the original Cousin Oliver), would later go on to voice Choji Akimichi.
- In the Polish dub, with Arkadiusz Jakubik voicing Balto a few years before starring in some acclaimed movies and becoming one of the most recognizable actors in the country.
- Ron the Death Eater: Strangely enough, Balto is this for the Alpha and Omega fanbase, with fan fictions usually portraying him as a villain trying to take over the valley. Whether it's just to troll or genuine malice against the fanbase is up in the air. May count as Fandom Rivalry.
- The Scrappy: Dixie and Sylvie. Dixie, for her annoying, nasally voice, blind worship and adoration of Steele, to even pushing Jenna in attempting to get with him, not caring what her friend thinks or her feelings, and while Sylvie isn’t as hated, due to only a few lines and a much smaller role, is also disliked for believing in the rumor that Jenna is “running with” Balto, i;e, mating with him. Even after Jenna stands up to Steele’s manipulations, they barely try to help her and just let him brag about himself, with zero concern for anyone but themselves. Although they do find out Steele’s lie and leave him along with the other dogs at the end, it’s only AFTER a random dog told them Balto was coming with the medicine, and they don’t even apologize to him, making you wonder why Jenna is even friends with the two of them.
- Signature Scene:
- The White Wolf towards the end of the first film.
- Balto howling when he's sledding.
- Balto and Jenna seeing the lights together.
- Jenna forming the Northern lights as a beacon to guide Balto and the sled team home.
- Spiritual Successor: Since the story is about a wolfdog hybrid in Alaska, it has quite a lot in common with the works of Jack London, such as The Call of the Wild and White Fang.
- Strawman Has a Point:
- We're meant to consider the sled dog musher an inconsiderate jerk for refusing to use Balto on the medicine run. But the reasons he gives—that he's a random half-wolf who's unpredictable and has never pulled a sled before, and he doesn't have the stamina to be part of a dogsled team— are perfectly legitimate ones.
- Same goes for Rosy's father being reluctant to let Rosy pet Balto. Wolfdog personalities are often highly unpredictable, and even discounting his heritage, Balto is still a stray dog.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
- Togo
is nowhere to be seen despite being the lead dog of the sled team that traversed the toughest (and longest) parts of the medicine run. Though one could argue that, given the hell he goes through in the movie, Balto is a Composite Character of the two. Although mercifully Togo would get his own film. - The wolf pack that Balto encounters right before Boris' "not a dog, not a wolf" monologue. They could have played a bigger part in the narrative, perhaps serving as allies on Balto's journey and helping him to accept his heritage by acting contrarily to stereotypes of their species. Instead, they only interact with Balto once and are never seen again.
- Oddly enough, some have pointed out that Balto became this during the closing portions of the original film due to being given very minimal dialogue.
- Jenna is barely used in the sequels as she is turned into a secondary character and barely has much screentime with her own pups.
- Togo
- The Woobie:
- Star from the first movie. It's impossible not to just want to hug him after Kaltag keeps hurting him. It's thankfully dropped at the end with a much needed smile from the latter.
- Luk can also count, when he whimpers about Balto not coming back from his journey, and his brother reassuring him that he will come back not doing anything to calm him.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ymmv/Balto
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