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Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron is a 2002 film by DreamWorks Animation; one of their last traditionally animated features before they made the switch to CGI full-time.

The film is about a feral horse (voiced in his narrations by Matt Damon) who is born on the American prairie and has encounters — both positive and negative — with the humans who also live there. Spirit is captured and taken away from his herd by American soldiers, resisting their attempts to tame him. At the camp he befriends a Lakota man named Little Creek (Daniel Studi), though their relationship is far from affectionate. Together they escape from the soldiers' camp, but the spread of the white man continues to plague them throughout the story.

Besides the main story of a horse returning to his herd, the film is really about the domestication of the American wilderness. The Colonel (James Cromwell), the main antagonist of the film, represents Western civilization invading the North American landscape and changing the land to suit its needs. Although Spirit ostensibly gets a happy ending, history really makes it a foregone conclusion...

Compare Disney's Dinosaur, which was originally going to have the same format — a narrator, and lots of music, but no talking animals.

The movie got two games released around the same time it came out; Forever Free was a CD-ROM game, while Search for Homeland was for the Gameboy Advance. Both take place after the movie's events. There was also a book series detailing the adventures of Spirit's and Rain's family.

An animated series, Spirit: Riding Free, premiered on Netflix in May 2017, starring a descendant of Spirit making friends with a city girl new to the country. Spirit Untamed, a CGI film adaptation of the first few episodes of said show, was released theatrically in June 2021.

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron provides examples of the following tropes:

• 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: The film contains a blend of CGI and traditional animation. Human extras are often rendered in CGI in crowd scenes, which is particularly obvious with the cavalry and railroad workers.
• 1-Dimensional Thinking: Justified. Spirit has to escape a train falling down a hill behind him, but it's impossible for him to run to either side as they're covered with large piles of timber the entire way down.
• Accidental Kiss: An (accidental) interspecies example occurs early in the movie when a drunken wrangler is being mouth-examined by Spirit in his sleep, and mistakes him for a girl in his sleep. Spirit's about as squicked as anyone watching the scene, as are the other two in-universe guys seeing this.
• Action Girl: Rain, in as much as a horse can be. She does ride into battle with Little Creek, after all.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Esperanza has a tendency to fiddle with her son's forelock. In a Call-Back, she playfully musses it when he's born and straightens it when he returns home.
• All Animals Are Dogs: During the segment showing Spirit as a colt, he's shown lapping water up with his tongue like a dog. Unlike dogs, horses have thick tongues which are not as capable of scooping up water; while they may sometimes be seen licking at water (for instance, shallow water in the bottom of a bucket), horses most often dip their muzzles partly into the water to drink.
• All There in the Script: Spirit's mother's name is Esperanza. The Colonel's horse is called Granite.
• All There in the Manual: There was a book called Esperanza that was a prequel based around Spirit's parents. Spirit's dad is a black stallion named Strider. There are also books based on Rain's family history; her mother is named Sierra and her grandmother was a pampered riding horse named Bonita.
• Alternate Animal Affection: The horses mostly nuzzle each other and cross necks to show affection. Little Creek gets a "hug" off Spirit in this fashion near the end.
• Amplified Animal Aptitude: Well, naturally. None of the human characters are aware of this. The directors even lampshade this in the commentary for the train sequence. In terms of amplified animal athleticism, Spirit leaps about fifty feet across a canyon, and without his front legs snapping like twigs upon landing, though he did wind up crashing upon making it to the other side, adding a small amount of believability.
• American Kirby Is Hardcore: Japanese marketing heavily focuses on Spirit when he is a baby.
• Amusing Injuries: One sequence involves Murphy, the man responsible for making new horses look presentable as horses of the U.S. Army, gaining a series of injuries as he works on Spirit. Spirit becomes increasingly tied up, and keeps finding new ways to hurt him. Two of the other horses actually 'laugh' at Murphy at the end.
• Animal Motifs:
  • Spirit is strongly associated with the eagle he befriends, with him explicitly noting that there were times when he believed he too could fly. This is even more emphasized during his final leap to freedom over the canyon during the climax, where the slow motion and bird's-eye angle do indeed make it appear he is flying.^note The original plan was to have imaginary eagle wings appear on him during the jump for further Symbolism, but it was decided this was unnecessary. See the "What Could Have Been" entry on the Trivia page for more details.
  • When he first meets the Colonel, Spirit compares him to a rattler, saying that while he didn't look like one, the man still gave off the impression of "snake." Not only does the Colonel have a great deal of smugness about him, particularly after he thinks he has broken Spirit, his attempt to shoot the Mustang after he throws him (and later successful hit on Rain at the Lakota village) is comparable to the "sting" of a rattler's bite and venom.
• Animal Talk: The horses can talk to each other, but not to humans. An odd case in which the animals are the main characters but the viewers don't get to hear what they're saying.
• Animals Lack Attributes: Zig-Zagged Trope. The titular horse, as well as the Colonel's horse and the cowboys' mounts, sport a visible sheath in many shots. However, Spirit in particular lacks the necessary features to qualify as a stallion, despite the fact he is always referred to as one. And this isn't due to discretion shots either. Whilst the domestic male horses could realistically be geldings, Spirit doesn't have this possibility, making it particularly jarring for anyone familiar with equine anatomy. What's more, as a foal, he seems to even lack a sheath, and again, this is not due to the camera angle being discreet. Additionally, none of the horses have anuses despite having clearly drawn butt cracks.
• Anonymous Ringer: The Colonel is clearly supposed to be the historical figure George Armstrong Custer (as indicated by his character design and the setting), but is never named on screen.
• Anti-Villain: The Colonel is stern, somewhat obsessive, and completely unfit to train horses, but not really evil. He even has the sense of honor and respect to let Spirit and Little Creek go once they've definitively beaten him.
• Artistic License – Animal Care: The Colonel's decision to keep Spirit tied for three days without food or water — in the baking desert heat, no less — is obviously not supposed to be pleasant for him. However, it can't be stressed enough how awful a decision this really was. Spirit could have very easily suffered organ damage or colic.
• Artistic License – Biology: The animators gave the horses eyebrows to express their emotions better.
• Award-Bait Song: The movie arguably has several of these, but there are two that fit best - "Here I Am", which is both the opening song as well as playing over the credits, and "I Will Always Return", which plays as the finale of the movie. And to top it off, BOTH are sung by Bryan Adams.
• Big Damn Reunion: Spirit and Rain have a joyous reunion after both had thought the other was dead or gone. Spirit also reunites with his herd and mother at the very end which he had dreamed of the whole film.
• Bloodless Carnage: There's no blood visible when Rain is shot, though they do show a subtle bullet wound.
• Bookends:
  • The movie begins with a shot of a beautiful blue sky filled with clouds (including one shaped remarkably like a herd of galloping horses) before panning down across the landscape and eventually coming to Spirit's racing herd. It ends, after he returns home to lead the herd, with a pan back up to that same sky and cloud.
  • The song "You Can't Take Me" bookends Spirit's initial capture and his final achievement of freedom. Underscored by the first iteration of the song being cut off by the Colonel's gunshot, and the second iteration after he and Little Creek ride away from the Colonel and his men picking up almost where it left off so as to finish the song.
• A Boy and His X: The film takes the common story of "young man tries to tame and befriend wild animal" and plays with it by telling it from the perspective of the wild animal (Spirit the horse) rather than the young man (Little Creek), and ultimately subverts it in that Spirit never submits to becoming "Little Creek's" horse, even though they do become friends. Little Creek and Rain could be considered a straight example of this, though their relationship is viewed through Spirit's eyes, and ultimately ends bittersweetly as Little Creek releases Rain from his "possession" so she can live happily with Spirit in the wild.
• BSoD Song: "Sound the Bugle" plays as Spirit is trapped on the train, feeling like he'll never taste freedom or see his herd again.
  Sound the bugle now, tell them I don't care
  There's not a road I know that leads to anywhere
  Without a light, I fear that I will
  Stumble in the dark
  Lay right down, decide not to go on...
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Spirit refers to humans as "two-leggeds".
• Call-Back: When Spirit first wakes up with the Lakota, Little Creek leaves him a pile of apples. When he first wakes up after being saved by Little Creek towards the end of the movie, the first thing he sees is a pile of apples.
• Cartoony Eyes: While otherwise anatomically accurate, the horses are drawn with larger, more human-like eyes and eyebrows, allowing for clearer facial expressions than their real-life counterparts.
• Clean, Pretty Childbirth: We see Esperanza having contractions, followed by baby Spirit slipping out of her, slick and shiny but much cleaner than a real life newborn would be. The next time the camera cuts back to him, he's dry and neat.
• Colonel Badass: The nameless Colonel is a variation; the film's focus on horses denies him any opportunity to show this trope in a more conventional fight, but he is a formidable enemy.
  • The scene where the Colonel and the Cavalry attack the native village could be seen as an opportunity for this, if you take into account the Colonel was leading at the very front of the charge by himself, leaving him very exposed to retaliative fire. He does so fearlessly.
  • During the attempted breaking of Spirit, he fearlessly stands his ground when Spirit charges the railings of the corral, even as his men flee. He continues to stand, exchanging Death Glares with the angry, panting Spirit. Bear in mind, he's so close to Spirit that if the angry, wild stallion wanted, he could bite his face off. The man doesn't so much as flinch.
• Comes Great Responsibility: Spirit drops the trope word-for-word at the beginning; he's leader of the herd, and that's awesome, but it also means having to look out for everyone, which he does to the utmost of his ability.
• Contrived Coincidence: Just when it looks like Spirit and Little Creek will finally have some peace, the Colonel and his men stumble upon the two of them. The Colonel, of all people, lampshades this.
  Colonel: I don't believe it.
• Cool Horse: The story is all about one.
• Curse Cut Short: When Spirit accidentally wakes two men, there are two right after another.
  Mook 1: What the—!
  Mook 2: Son of a—!"
  • The first guy is clearly shaping his mouth as if he were about to say "F**k".
• Deadpan Snarker: Spirit is one sometimes.
• Determinator: "Spirit Who Could Not Be Broken", indeed.
• Disappeared Dad: Spirit's father is never seen.
• Disney Death: Rain is shot by the Colonel and half-drowned from going through a turbulent river and waterfall, and the only reason the cavalry soldiers don't capture her alongside Spirit is because they assume she won't make it. That's the last that's seen of her for the rest of the film until the end, where she turns up fully recovered when Little Creek returns to the Lakota camp with Spirit. She was originally going to die for real, but the filmmakers decided to go for the happy ending.
• Disneyesque: It has a very Disney-like art design. A Justified Trope, since it featured ex-Disney staff in its production, most notably James Baxter, who was the supervising animator for the titular character.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Rain does a VERY good job of this for Spirit. She literally sweeps him off his feet!
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • All the horses the Cavalry owns are dark brown. They hate their riders, long to be free, and will run away from them at any chance given.
  • On a similar note. Someone living happily with his family on the plains of the Midwest is kidnapped from his mother by the US cavalry. He is taken to a place with many others like him who’ve experienced this to be “tamed.” His hair is forcibly shorn short, and violence, starvation, thirst, and threats of death are used to attempt to break him. He is forced to wear profoundly uncomfortable things because the US army believes people like him should wear it. Are we talking about Spirit or the children at the Indian Boarding Schools?
• A Dog Named "Dog": The main character is usually called "Mustang" until he gets properly named at the end.
• Double Meaning:
  • The song "Get Off My Back" is meant both figuratively and literally in Spirit's case.
  • "Spirit Who Could Not Be Broken" has two meanings — to break a horse is to tame it, so the name expresses that Spirit literally could not be tamed, and also that his figurative spirit was never crushed by his suffering.
• Dramatic Wind: Just before the attack by the U.S. soldiers on the Lakota village, a wind rises to toss Spirit and Rain's manes when they become aware of the impending danger.
• Empathic Environment:
  • After Spirit is first captured and is being taken to the fort, in the middle of "You Can't Take Me," a thunderstorm brews up and the journey is punctuated by strokes of lightning, which are not only syncopated with the music's beat but brilliantly illuminate the scene in between moments of pure darkness. It's genuinely breathtaking.
  • Spirit's happiest times during captivity, at the Lakota village, are accompanied by bright sunlight, blue skies, and beautiful weather.
  • At Spirit's Despair Event Horizon, when he is being taken by train to where the railroad work is being done, the journey occurs during a snowstorm. Later, the chaos of his escape is accompanied by a blazing fire (set off by exploding dynamite and the locomotive engine crashing down the hillside).
• Evil Overlooker: It's pretty bizarre to see the Colonel's face being used like this on some DVD covers, especially since he looks so damn benevolent.
• Execution by Exposure: After the titular horse resists every attempt by the Union forces to break him, the Colonel orders for Spirit to be chained outside with no food or water for three days. This is done with the goal of attempting to break Spirit again once his energy is exhausted. This appears to be a favorite tactic of the colonel's, given that he also orders the captured Little Creek tied to a post without food or drink.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: The titular horse’s mane is cut after he’s taken to the army fort, then gradually grows back as he stays at the Lakota village. Spirit’s mane can be seen as a sign of his wild nature, which humans try to suppress and/or tame out of him, but he is able to resist and hold onto his fighting spirit.
• Falling-in-Love Montage: Spirit and Rain are shown falling in love while spending time together in the forest outside the Lakota village, which includes swimming in a lake and sharing an apple.
• Fan Edit: In December 2022, a Twitter/X user named @Nigels_Life released an edit of the film titled Spirit: The Damonless Cut that completely removes the divisive Matt Damon narration from the movie.
• Fooled by the Sound: Little Creek has been captured by the cavalry, and is tied to a post inside the fort. He hears wolf howls, and knows that these are a query from his tribesmen as to whether he's okay, and where in the fort he's located. Little Creek answers with the hooting of an owl that results in a sharp knife flung over the fort wall and piercing the ground near his thigh. None of the soldiers notice the calls, nor that their prisoner suddenly has a tool/weapon handy.
• Friend to All Children: Spirit, to both horse and human. The only human he's completely gentle with is a little toddler girl who he lets pet him.
• Friend Versus Lover: A bit of an inversion, as Little Creek and Spirit aren’t really fighting each other over Rain, but she feels herself torn between her loyalty to Little Creek and her growing bond with Spirit. She ultimately joins Spirit in the wild after Little Creek releases her into the stallion’s care.
• The Gadfly: Rain is notably pretty cheeky and playful, both with Little Creek and with Spirit.
• Genre Throwback: To the classic westerns of John Ford, with the main difference being it’s told from the perspective of a horse.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: The Colonel, who is the main villain, is the only character in the film who smokes tobacco.
• Good Taming, Evil Taming: Little Creek vs. the Colonel in their approaches to Spirit, though it’s worth noting that neither one is truly successful in “taming” him. Also, Spirit cannot bear the fact that, technically speaking, the Native Americans also enslaved him.
• Graceful Loser: The Colonel, after Spirit leaps over the canyon. He gives up the chase and accepts defeat with honor.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The American government has this role, as the actual villains are the Colonel and the military. Though they are never seen, the Colonel comments that there are those in the government who doubt that the West can be settled. Given that the army is a long way from Washington, there are obviously those in Washington who disagree, so it's a rare case of where a Greater Scope Evil is at odds with itself. It might be safer to say that the actual greater scope villains are the government members who endorse the Colonel's campaign and actions.
• Handy Feet: Little Creek uses his toes to grab a knife.
• Happy Dance: Little Creek and Spirit have one after they successfully escape from the Colonel and his soldiers following the jump over the canyon. Little Creek hoots and hollers while jumping up and down and throwing his fists in the air, while Spirit hops and spins around while bucking his back legs ^note perhaps an equine equivalent of Shaking the Rump?, neighing loudly and happily.
• Held Gaze: Spirit and Rain have a deep gaze into each other's eyes several times throughout the movie. Spirit also does this with Little Creek about three times.
• Heroic BSoD: Spirit, after Rain's supposed demise and his third capture. It takes him hallucinating about his herd and reminding him of what he is fighting for to knock him out of it.
• A Hero Is Born: The first scene after the opening narration is Spirit's mother in the final stages of labour.
• High-Dive Escape: Spirit and Little Creek dive off a cliff into a river to escape the forest fire caused by the train explosion. Spirit is dazed by the impact, so Little Creek has to grab him and guide him up to the surface.
• Historical Domain Character: The Colonel is (an unnamed) George Armstrong Custer.
• Historical Villain Downgrade: Downplayed. Colonel George Armstrong Custer, simply called The Colonel here, is the main villain who antagonizes Spirit and leads attacks on the Lakota, but he still possesses a sense of honor, even letting Spirit run free at the end upon realizing that he is truly impossible to tame. The real Custer was known for his horrific attacks on natives that had hundreds of casualties (which are obviously not shown, given that the film is aimed at all ages), and eventually led his men into the Battle of the Little Bighorn that got the bulk of them killed, including himself.
• Hope Bringer: Spirit is one to the other horses he meets. His rebellious antics draw the attention of the cavalry's horses, who cheer him on when he repeatedly throws off the soldiers who try to break him, and he later frees all of them when he and Little Creek escape. When the Lakota's horses, who are captured after the cavalry raid to work on the railroad, see him in their train car, they're visibly hopeful and one of them tries to encourage him by giving him extra hay, but Spirit is too broken down by despair at that point to react. Their hope pays off later when he realizes that the railroad for the train they're pulling will lead right through his home, which motivates him to break free and release all the captured horses.
• Horse Jump: The climax revolves around Spirit making an enormous flying jump with Little Creek over a canyon to escape the cavalry soldiers. He pulls it off, but he and his rider immediately crash when they land on the other side, though they are unharmed.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Defied hard with Little Creek and the Lakota, the Colonel, and some members of the Union soldiers and the U.S. Government.
• Incorrect Animal Noise: Save for one instance of a bison grunting out the sound of a Dromedary camel, this trope is largely Averted. Horses sound like horses, the cougar sounds appropriate and even the bald eagle isn't defiled by the screech of the red-tailed hawk.
• Inevitable Waterfall: When Spirit and Rain are swept down the river in their escape from the Colonel.
• Inexplicable Language Fluency: Spirit, despite not having had any human contact before his capture, understands what the human characters are saying.
• Interspecies Friendship: The title character is friends with an unnamed bald eagle and he later befriends a human.
• I Surrender, Suckers!: When the Colonel rides Spirit in his attempt to break him, he proves too difficult to buck off and hangs on until Spirit gives up. As the Colonel then gives a gloating speech about how any horse can be broken, Spirits thinks "sometimes a horse has got to do what a horse has got to do", then immediately shocks the Colonel with a surprise buck, throwing him off.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Little Creek removes the feather from Rain, symbolizing his ownership with her, wanting her to go with Spirit. At first distraught, Rain agrees to go with Spirit.
• Just Train Wrong: The Northern Pacific Railroad never built track in Nebraska, or connected with Utah; that was the Union Pacific. In fact, by the time the Northern Pacific broke ground, the Union Pacific, and the first transcontinental railroad, had been completed.
• Keet: The young Spirit. He mostly outgrows this as an adult, but he still has quite a lot of energy.
• Know When to Fold Them: Just after Spirit and Little Creek jump over the gorge, one of the Union soldiers aims to shoot them. But the Colonel makes him put down his gun, and wordlessly lets the horse and Indian go.
• Match Cut: At the beginning, after the opening narration and the first shot of the herd racing across the plains, the scenery transitions from one of the horses' manes tossing in the wind to the billowing grass blades of the field where Esperanza is giving birth to Spirit.
• Mature Animal Story: The film is a mild case, as it’s appropriate for most audiences and has little to no explicit content, but it does feature some intense moments of danger and violence, and tackles some rather heavy subjects like animal abuse and exploitation, racial prejudice and discrimination, and environmental devastation.
• Meaningful Name: Murphy is the name of the man responsible for preparing Spirit to be a cavalry horse (cutting off his mane, nailing horseshoes onto his hooves, and branding him with the U.S. cavalry mark). Naturally, the process goes poorly because Spirit won't make it easy for him.
• A Minor Kidroduction: The opening scene starts with the birth of Spirit with moments of his childhood until he is seen as an adult.
• Moody Mount: Spirit, justified as he was taken from the wild and treated harshly.
• Mooning: Spirit turns around to point his butt angrily at Little Creek after seeing him for the first time while he’s imprisoned.
  • This is partly Truth in Television, as some horses turn their hind ends toward other horses or humans to show disrespect. However, this act can be done for other reasons, such as out of fear, to present in heat, or most humorously, wanting their owners to scratch their butts.
• Musicalis Interruptus:
  • "You Can't Take Me" plays as Spirit resists being taken to the regiment, then gets interrupted by a gunshot. It gets to finish near the end of the movie.
  • Later, around the film's midpoint, Spirit thinks he can finally go back to his homeland, with a proud section of "Run Free" blaring—until he gets yanked back when Rain, who's tied to him to restrain him, stops abruptly at the edge of the Lakota village.
• Nameless Narrative: The main character isn't actually named until the end of the film.
• Nearly Normal Animal: The horses in this movie may be the most straightforward example of this trope, at least regarding equine characters. Not only do they not speak to humans, but they don't even speak to each other, instead communicating through equine vocalizations and body language; that being said, they appear to be more intuitive of human actions and customs than a real animal would be. Additionally, they are drawn and animated in a way that is very accurate to the anatomy and physiology of real horses, save for their eyebrows and somewhat Cartoony Eyes which the animators added to make their emotions more expressive and recognizable to audiences.
  • The eagle is also mostly drawn and animated realistically.
• Noble Bird of Prey: The eagle.
• No Historical Figures Were Harmed: Based on the film's time period and setting, the unnamed Colonel (voiced by James Cromwell) is clearly meant to be Union Calvary officer George Armstrong Custer.
• Object-Tracking Shot: The opening scene follows a Bald Eagle.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • When Spirit tosses the cougar to the ground and rears over it, the look of terror on its face is obvious.
  • The second Union cavalry man that tries to break Spirit, when he sees Spirit starting to smile at him, ends up looking fearful, like he has a strong feeling, that he's about to get thrown off and beaten.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: Spirit is furious that, right after successfully escaping from the fort, he has once again found himself in human captivity — this time with the Lakota. Even if they treat him better.
• The Oner: The oh-so-pretty opening tracking shot. It was one of the first sequences started during production and one of the last to be finished. At least one of the early trailers consisted of mostly this shot.
• Outrun the Fireball: Spirit has to outrun a loose train engine that tumbles down a hill after him, then has to escape an actual fireball when the forest goes up in flames from the engine crashing into another one.
• "Pan Up to the Sky" Ending: After Spirit is reunited with his herd, complete with a cloud shaped like a galloping horse. See also Bookends above.
• Pet the Dog: At the climax, when the soldiers ambush Spirit and Little Creek, the latter urges the former to run. Seeing Little Creek barely dodge several bullets, Spirit gallops back to the Lakota and scoops him up on his back, finally allowing him to ride him. Eventually, after Spirit manages to leap across the chasm, the Colonel stops one of his soldiers from shooting him and signals to Spirit that he and Little Creek are free to go, giving him a respectful nod.
• Playing Possum: Spirit plays dead when he realizes that building the railroad would go straight through his homeland.
• Pounds Are Animal Prisons: Played with—as far as the wild horse is concerned, yes, stables are pony prison, but the horses at the regiment are seen to be treated more or less reasonably; Spirit is only maltreated insofar as he misbehaves. The animals ridden by the natives are treated quite well, as are the horses used by the railroad; the man leading Spirit into and off the train is shown as reassuring and gentle with him.
• Pop-Star Composer: Bryan Adams wrote the songs.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: The Colonel proves to do a better job at trying to tame Spirit than all his men combined and would have successfully broken him if Spirit didn't get a heroic second wind.
• Rewritten Pop Version: In the film proper, "I Will Always Return" is about family and homeland, and its refrain at the end powers the triumphant conclusion. The credits version? A love song.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Spirit as a young colt. He has his moments as an adult too.
• Rule of Cool: Spirit's famous jump for freedom at the end has him clearing a huge canyon in one leap.
• Rule of Three: Spirit gets caught three times before finally running free with Rain. The first time is to the Colonial soldiers, the second time is with Little Creek and the Lakota, and the third and final time is with the railroaders.
• Scenery Porn: The shots of the wilderness.
• The Seven Western Plots: The movie takes elements of Cavalry and Indian stories and Union Pacific stories and deconstructs them through a Perspective Flip by presenting events through the eyes of a wild horse and a Native American teenager.
• Shoo the Dog: Invoked briefly with Spirit and Little Creek. Though it comes up again towards the end, this time with Little Creek and his own mare, Rain, the pair part ways too peacefully to actually count as a shoo-ing.
• Shown Their Work: Like the animators themselves point out: horses are one of the most difficult things to draw, and not only did they have to draw horses all day long for a few years, they had to animate them as well. The result is nothing short of stunning.
• Silence Is Golden: There are no talking animals in this film aside from a few narration parts from Matt Damon's character. The film had to have the animators pantomime conversations with the horses with their body language and the expression on their faces. The horses just neigh throughout the film. There also are not that many conversation scenes with the human characters.
• Silent Snarker: Since all of Spirit’s dialogue is through narration, his snarky moments are mostly shown through his facial expressions.
• Smile of Approval: The Army colonel that had Spirit and Little Creek cornered is obliged to tip his hat and smile as both horse and rider make an insane leap to freedom. The colonel even prevents his sergeant from shooting at the fugitives out of respect for a Worthy Opponent.
• Somewhere, an Equestrian Is Crying:
  • Esperanza is neighing in pain as she gives birth to Spirit. Horse births tend to be quicker and less painful than a human's would be.
  • Stallions are not the leaders of a herd; mares are. Stallions guard the back. This might be more a case of Acceptable Breaks from Reality as seeing Spirit simply run at the back of the herd wouldn't have been as awesome.
  • That Spirit survives the movie at all is a small miracle. Mustangs are hardy, but not that hardy.
  • The horse handling. When Spirit first comes to the Army fort, and they attempt to break him. The way they tied him down to brand him was inaccurate and hazardous. Even in the old West people were wise enough to not mount a completely wild horse with full tack, in a large rectangular arena. The way Spirit juggled them, most of the riders should have broken bones, if not necks and skulls. Not to mention the first thing an actual regiment would have done to a mount prospect: Geld him. It's always a possibility that he was considered such a fine stallion that they wanted to keep him for breeding as well as riding, or even that they planned to do the gelding later. (In fact this may have been implied by Murphy's shears, before it was revealed he planned to trim Spirit's mane.)
  • The Native American version of breaking him to ride was a lot more like methods of Western-style breaking in use today, although nothing like the way Plains Native Americans trained horses, so the creators clearly had some idea what was correct and probably did it the other way to make the soldiers look like jerks and morons. (If that was what they were after, it worked.)
  • A mild example, but still noticeable: when Spirit frees the other train horses he does this by kicking one chain off with three kicks of his hind legs and the other with two kicks of his forelegs. Realistically his hind leg kicks should have broken the chain off faster as horses have twice the power in their hind legs as they do in their forelegs.
    • There is a possible justification for this instance. After the first chain had been kicked off, the second chain was bearing all the weight of the train engine, which was already starting to slide back down the hill. It may not have been that Spirit's front legs hit harder than his back legs; it may have been that the second chain was under much more stress and tension, and thus required fewer kicks to force off.
  • While horses are technically indigenous to North America, they went extinct there thousands of years ago and Spirit's ancestors were re-introduced by Europeans. Then again, it's not like Spirit is likely to know that: as far as he knows, his kind have been wild for countless generations. ^note As the horse population would have been large enough by the early/mid-1600s for escaped horses to start forming herds, and foals reach adulthood at 4-5 years, 300-350 years from the 1650s to the early 1900s would be at least 60 horse generations.
  • Spirit staying in the same herd he was born in as an adult horse is quite implausible, though not unheard of. In order to prevent inbreeding, both colts and fillies usually leave the herd upon reaching one or two years of age ^note Colts are almost always kicked out by the band stallion while fillies favour eloping with a bachelor stallion, and young horses of both sexes may be naturally weaned off or pushed away by their dame if she has a new foal to care for. The ones that do stay in the herd tend to be low in the hierarchy and don't display the dominant behaviour we see from Spirit. It's possible the previous herd sire passed away while Spirit was still a foal and he assumed the role upon reaching maturity, but in that situation it's much more likely that a new stallion would have established himself and driven Spirit off, or that Spirit would have branched off with a couple of mares and left his mother behind.
• Stock Footage: The final scene with Spirit and Rain galloping uphill and then watching the herd below together is actually the same scene from the beginning when Spirit does all of it alone, only with Rain pasted in.
• Stray Animal Story: Spirit is a feral horse^note Though his ancestors have likely lived in the area for generations, American mustangs are considered feral rather than "wild animals" in the technical sense of the word. captured by human settlers. He's ultimately let back into the wild along with his captive-raised mate.
• Super Swimming Skills: Played with in the scene where Spirit jumps into the river to save Rain. Horses are widely recognized as good swimmers, due to their muscular legs and large lungs which enable buoyancy. The more questionable aspect occurs when Rain slips under the surface and Spirit dives after her to pull her back up. Horses can hold their breath (which they do while jumping or to tense up to keep from being saddled), but they don't do so for very long, and they don't typically swim underwater; a submerged horse would panic and likely drown rather than continue holding its breath.
  • Then again, diving horses have certainly existed, and some horses have been observed dunking their muzzles in water to eat aquatic plants or to play by splashing and blowing bubbles. So Spirit diving to save Rain may not be impossible, but rather just improbable.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: After going over the waterfall, Spirit stays underwater for about five to ten seconds, then resurfaces none the worse for wear. Horses don't hold their breath for very long, especially underwater, as stated above. While this wouldn't be a long time for a human, it would be for a horse.
• Taking the Bullet: Rain is critically wounded when she rears up to take a shot from the Colonel’s gun that was meant for her rider Little Creek.
• The Tease: Little Creek effectively tells Rain to be one to help him tame Spirit. It works, and in both ways.
• That Makes Me Feel Angry: Fortunately, this mostly happens in the lyrics to the songs and the narration... but there are a lot of songs and a lot of narration...
• Title Drop: In a sense. "Take care of her... Spirit Who Could Not Be Broken."
• Tongue on the Flagpole: As a colt, Spirit gets his tongue stuck to a large icicle. He then snaps it off and carries it away with him.
• Translation Convention: All of the human dialogue in the film is spoken in English, though the U.S. soldiers and the Lakota characters never directly converse with each other. Notably, Little Creek only makes non-verbal grunts while he's held captive, and doesn't speak until after he escapes with Spirit and brings him to his village, indicating that he and his tribe are actually speaking Lakota to each other.
• Trolling: Spirit at one point lets Little Creek believe he'll let him on his back, only to suddenly grin and throw him off when he's nearly on.
• True Companions: Implied of the herd.
• Tsundere
  • Rain, Spirit's Love Interest. Summed up hilariously by Spirit to anyone who knows anything about horses: "Mares."
  • Spirit too, to a degree.
  "Okay, I admit it, she was charming...in a stubborn, irritating kind of way."
• Unreliable Narrator: This story is truly told through the perspective of a wild horse, and it shows in how he views humans.
• Villainous Valour: The Colonel manages to almost break Spirit's spirit, doing a better job at taming him than all his soldiers combined. While arguably he weakened him beforehand, Spirit still showed to be a fearsome horse to tame and the Colonel didn't give up even after Spirit slammed him two times against the wooden barrier.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Spirit and Little Creek develop this kind of friendship. Best shown by the first thing Spirit does after Little Creek rescues him during his escape from the railroad workers, which is to playfully headbutt him into a river.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Little Creek. The guy is only shown wearing a shirt when the weather is too cold for shirtlessness to be practical.
• Worthy Opponent: How the Colonel views Spirit by the end of the film, as evidenced by his respectful nod to him. It can be argued that Spirit views him the same way, seeing as he returns the nod.
• Xenofiction: It’s about the relationship among horses, white settlers, and the Lakota people of the American West during the Nineteenth Century. The story is told from the point of view of the title horse, who is, aside from his frighteningly human eyebrows and sapience, a fairly natural depiction of a horse. He doesn't even talk except for the occasional narration.