by Carl » December 6th, 2013, 4:36 pm
Honestly depending on my mood I sometimes prefer Balto, storywise and whatnot to TLK. The thing is though, with TLK they have all this important lore and underdeveloped characters that is just begging to be explored, and Balto doesn't really have that. With Balto, it's a localized, character-dependent story. The best opportunity for fanfic and theories comes from say, Balto's parents, or maybe the wolf pack's (from the second movie) history.
With TLK, there's all of the semi-canon books and comics to explore the characters of, there's the whole "kings of the past" mythos to investigate, there's the reason Taka/Scar turned out to hate Mufasa to flush out, there's the time jump in the first film during Scar's reign to explore, there's the origin of the Outlanders to explore, there's the time skip of Kovu's training and/or Kiara's youth to explore, there's the after events involving the theoretically conflicted and/or deep personalities of the Outlanders that became Pridelanders with the original Pridelanders, and there's a wealth of AU possibilities to explore with the more easily forgotten characters and semi-canons.
In Balto, there aren't many gaps or plot holes. There aren't plot holes in TLK1, but there are still things left open. Balto is pretty straightforward. Balto was the typical outcast, then he did something great, and people regretted how they'd treated him. There wasn't much that people wondered about. It's not often wondered "why didn't Steele like Balto?" or "why did the dogs pick on him?" It was explained. He was different, so they picked on him. That's what people do, it's easy to understand. There's not much room left to wonder what happens between the movies, because no new villains appeared or anything like that. Balto had kids, one didn't like her life and went into the wild. That pretty much directly follows the first movie with nothing confusing or left to wonder about. And the third one is much the same. Without much to wonder about, there's little to discuss, and it doesn't matter how good the movie is, or the series is, a forum dedicated to it won't do very well.