Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) on Netflix

G20021h 23mAdventure Animation Comedy Family

Spirit, a Kiger mustang, grows up to lead his herd in the unspoiled West until wranglers capture him and sell him to a cavalry fort, where the Colonel orders him broken.

Netflix3.7/5
IMDb7.2/1095,518 votes
Rotten Tomatoes69%

Trailer

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Plot summary

Spirit is born into a herd of wild mustangs and grows up to lead it. One night he follows a strange light and finds horses tied to a log while the men with them sleep beside a campfire. The men wake, chase him and take him to a cavalry fort. Its commanding officer, the Colonel, has Spirit broken, but the horse throws off every attempt and beats up a farrier. The Colonel answers by having him tied up for three days with no food or water to weaken him. A Lakota man named Little Creek is held at the fort as a captive too, and his friends throw a knife over the wall so he can cut his ropes.

Cast

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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

James Baxter said the animation was the most difficult piece of production he had worked on for a movie: he spent the first few weeks with his door shut telling everyone to go away, because when he first started to draw horses he realized how little he knew.
Co-director Kelly Asbury opined that "the minute a horse talks, it's comedy" and that human actors would not be able to make the sounds of horses in a manner that the audience would take seriously.
The team at DreamWorks used a horse named "Donner" as the model for Spirit and brought the horse to the animation studio in Glendale, California for the animators to study.
The film was screened out of competition at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, and Rain was the first animated horse to receive an honorary registration certificate from the American Paint Horse Association.
The homeland of the mustangs and Lakotas is based on Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite National Park and the Teton mountain range, while the cavalry outpost was based on Monument Valley.
Many of the songs and arrangements were set in the American West, with themes based on love, landscapes, brotherhood, struggles and journeys; Garth Brooks was originally supposed to compose and record songs for the film, but the deal fell through.