Brown Wolf wrote:
Even Aleu looked off. Yeah, she was pretty, but the anatomy in Wolf Quest and Wings of Change was entirely wrong.
The results - anatomy wise - in both those films are really proof what happens when the original team of the first film don't return for a second or a third. Wolf Quest and Wings of Change had two separate teams.
*shrugs*
Here we are, once again, with the questionable comparison of design and anatomy between the first
Balto movie, and the two sequels. How Balto fans love to pick nits. lol Now, I DON'T mean this personally, Brown Wolf, because you're hardly the first person to bring this up (and it has been brought up a lot over the years), but I am going to go back to the same refutation I have used repeatedly whenever someone loves to trash the anatomical flaws in
Wolf Quest and
Wings of Change (and I cannot deny that there ARE anatomical flaws in the characters in both movies) as opposed to what they seem to think is the pinpoint accuracy of the anatomical design in the first movie. Let's look at some screen shots compared with real animals:
First, Siberian Huskies. Everyone LOOOOVES to decry the horrid lack of accuracy which apparently plagues the Siberian Huskies, and our Siberian Husky-wolf crossbreed hero Balto, in both sequels. They cite physical anomalies not only in comparison to the artistic "integrity" displayed in the first movie, but also against real Siberian Huskies. Huh. Really? Let's look at some noteworthy examples of Siberian Huskies portrayed in the first movie (and note again in the screen shot of Nikki down the post a bit):

And now, before I respond, here are two pictures...one is a fine example of the modern-day, post-American Kennel Club recognition (of 1930) of the Siberian Husky breed...and the other is a modern-day example of what is now known as the "Seppala Siberian Sled Dog"...a very rare sled dog breed which actually WAS the "Siberian husky" of the time period (before 1930). This breed was preserved, under the new name, after the AKC, and those Sibe breeders who stuck to the ridiculous strictures imposed by the club's "breed standard", started changing the fundamental physical characteristics of the breed. The Seppala Siberian Sled Dog represents the Siberian husky as it was back in the 1920s.
(Sources:
http://caninehealthanswers.com/siberian-husky-canine-health-news/ and
http://www.raskbb.com/sybilsden/viewtopic.php?f=100&t=10226 respectively)
Does anyone see the problem in the comparison above? One word: FAT. There is a preponderance of FAT Siberians in the first movie. Not fuzzy. FAT. Overweight, double-chinned, fat dogs (and nowhere is that more evident than in the dogs on Steele's team who run behind Kaltag and Nikki, but also in the dog who asks "what about them little ones?" in the boiler room scene). In fact, the only sled dog characters in the first movie who AREN'T fat are Balto, Steele, Kaltag, Jenna (who's not really a sled dog, but is still, nevertheless, a husky) and Star (who is listed on the movie's imdb.com page as an "Alaskan Klee Kai"...a breed which didn't even come into
existence until some 50 years AFTER the 1925 Nome serum run XD). In other words, most of the main characters. Not only is the overweight thing entirely inaccurate to an actual working sled dog (then as well as in the modern day), it doesn't even properly represent what they looked like during the time period. To wit:
Not really seeing any fat dogs in there. And, in fact, a fat dog would be a deadly liability to a musher and his team...for the dog, the musher and the team. It just DIDN'T happen.
So what about the sequels? Okay...we saw almost NO Siberian Huskies in
Wolf Quest. That one focused on Balto, Aleu and the wolves. But
Wings of Change? There were several. And they seemed, under Phil Weinstein's directorial supervision, to go on crash diets (AND to lose any instances of weird, inaccurate tiger-stripe markings). lol To wit:
Anatomy "entirely wrong"? I don't know...from where I am standing, it seems to me that the artists and directors did a better and generally more accurate job with huskies in
Wings of Change than they did in
Balto. In fact, the only husky who ISN'T really fat in
Balto is the title character himself, and he's not even a full husky (in the movie).
One area that did seem to have a problem through all three movies was excessive tails. Occasionally, huskies could be seen sporting tails which were laughably too large for their bodies. Even in the first movie:
Yeah...Jenna's tail? That's too long. A real Siberian Husky just wouldn't have a tail of that length. That problem, along with a few other minor ones (leg dimensions and width in female characters, paws, etc.) were definitely a problem across the franchise.
But what about other characters in the movies? Were they accurate?
DIXIEWe do not know her breed for certain. She's a light purplish/gray toy breed of SOME kind. And it's been said, by most fans, that they think of her as a Pomeranian. Okay...but if the first movie is so terribly accurate, what's with that mop of hair on top of her head (let alone the lavender/gray coloration)?
Is that like any Pomeranian you've ever seen? I've never seen anything like it. All I've ever seen is this kind of thing:
NIKKIHere's another character for which we, as fans, have speculated about his breed, but for which there is no hard, official information. Most people presume he's a Chow Chow. And it's reasonable, given his general physical appearance. Er...however, a real Chow Chow is not an amorphous blob (the "show" cuts of show dogs notwithstanding; and folks, working dogs like sled dogs are definitely NOT show dogs--in my opinion, they're better for it). Nikki, in almost every scene of the first movie, is one big, brown amorphous blob...with inexplicable fat tiger stripes running down his back (and again, we have the FAT huskies in line with him):
A real Chow Chow, either of the modern times (as in the first photo, or back in the early 20th century (as in the second photo) has definition. And DOESN'T (as Nikki and some other dog characters, like Star, do in the first movie) EVER have thick tiger stripes running down their backs!
MELOnce again, here's a character (this time from the third movie rather than the first) whose breed we fans haven't been officially notified of. One might
presume he's an Airdale Terrier. He's certainly got the characteristics (markings, bushy face, cropped tail, folded ears).
But Mel's short. I once, therefore, postulated that he was a Welsh Terrier...an almost identical breed to the Airdale, but shorter. Nevertheless, the gang who did Wings of Change did a pretty darned good job with his physical characteristics (and even gave him the nervous energy and stubbornness of a terrier):
So much, once again, for the design and art flaws in the sequels.
MUK & LUKThese two are basically comedy relief throughout the franchise (all three movies). However, their physical designs and characteristics were laid out in the production of the first movie:
As amusing as these two CAN occasionally be, and as useful as they are as comedy relief characters, do either of them look much like this to you? Really? (Granted, Muk gets a LITTLE close...but size-wise he's way off...)
The fact is that
Balto is just as rife with glaring errors in anatomical accuracy and design as either
Wolf Quest or
Wings of Change. The major difference with the first movie is ONLY that, because it was designed, produced and marketed as a theatrical release, rather than as direct-to-video, it had a much higher production budget, so there was better artistry in general, and better materials used to create that art. This doesn't mean, for a moment, that the artists and designers did a better job with animal anatomy or design. Because, for the most part, they didn't. The characters are as cartoonish and whimsical as they might be in any other animated film or television series. And fans ought to start recognizing that fact rather than giving the first movie yet another pass just
because it is the first movie.