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Run Free Spirit Stallion Of The Cimarron – Plot: In the grand plains of the Old West, a horse named Spirit roams free with his herd. He loves and protects his flock day and night. One day, a group of humans kidnap the spirit and bring it to a military outpost where they aim to break it into a military horse. The spirit allies with a fellow hostage, a Lakota boy named Little Creek, and they manage to escape. However, the spirit is just as disputed by the village clans. While they are extremely kind to Atma, he struggles with trusting them and wants nothing more than to be free and return home.
Breakdown: Before we get to the actual movie, let’s talk about the movies that had or used to have “silent” characters. It takes a lot of talent to draw silent characters, because we have to gauge how they are reacting, what they are thinking and what they are trying to ‘say’ through body language. (Unless the character can write their own dialogue, which is a whole different pool to swim in.) You have an incredible opportunity in animation with this because you can manipulate facial expressions, motion, and the environment as much as you want. be
Run Free Spirit Stallion Of The Cimarron
Take Disney’s dinosaurs, for example. While the film has been praised for its imagery and animation, it has been criticized for its weak and dull story with largely forgettable characters. Many other critics noted that the characters were too modern. As one critic mentioned, they sounded like “malrats”, and the way the dinosaurs spoke and interacted with each other was a really promising film and made it a “nose-dive”. I found the film a bit more tolerable, but I can certainly see why that film gets criticism in that regard.
Spirit Untamed’ Recaptures The ‘spirit’ Of The Cimarron
“The film was originally supposed to have no dialogue at all, in part to distinguish the film from Universal Pictures’ The Land Before Time (1988), with which Dinosaurs shares plot similarities. Eisner insisted that dialogue to make the film “commercially viable.” A similar change was made to the production of The Land Before Time, which was originally intended to feature only one narrator’s voice.
It seems Eisner wasn’t really wrong, as the film made back twice its budget. However, would the film be remembered more fondly as a classic if we got a darker, more serious dialogue-less film?
Was good with dialogue – would it have been better or worse without it? Does it depend on the story and if it lends itself to being dialogue-free?
“But Twix, kids are too stupid to understand the subtle nuances of most dialogue-free movies. They need constant coercion to keep them focused and to understand what is going on. “
Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron (2002)
This argument boggles my mind. Children too stupid to understand stories told without dialogue? Children, who are verbally underdeveloped and begin to learn things about life and people through body language and expression because they cannot understand language (well), are too stupid to receive movies that contain No dialogue or barely any dialogue? Just… what?
I can understand that keeping a child’s attention through a mostly dialogue-free movie would be a challenge, but… well, it’s a challenge. Isn’t it a sign of a true piece of quality when you can have something that keeps a child’s attention and tells a good story without having to drown a bunch of dialogue in their ears?
Take Wall-E, which, while not dialogue-free, is very low on dialogue, especially when compared to other animated films. There are many scenes of silence and perspective and expression allow us to convey the story.
Ironically, while this decision was largely artistic, it was noted by Roger Ebert that, due to Wall-E’s use of silence and lack of dialogue, it would actually appeal to a wider audience as it would overcome language barriers. will transcend and appeal to adults. And children alike.
First Look: Dreamworks Animation’s ‘spirit Riding Free’ Headed To Netflix
Wall-E is considered a modern masterpiece in sci-fi and animation, and has grossed nearly three times its budget at the box office.
The reason I’m talking about all this is because 1) it’s really interesting and 2) Spirit was always portrayed as a dialogue-free film, and I’ve seen it critically praised for the fact that the horses do not talk
However, while horses don’t talk, humans do, which I’m totally fine with, to be honest, because it’s more realistic for them to talk. What I’m not so good with is the fact that there is a description of the spirit running throughout the film, which basically means he’s ‘talking’ to us anyway, and kind of a cheat of the film. is Also, his narration is not very well written and the obvious says a lot.
For example, midway through the film, Spirit has grown to dislike humans as the colonel of the local US Army unit tortures him essentially to ‘break’ him so that he can be used as an army horse. He manages to escape with the help of a captive Lakota man named Little Creek, who takes the spirit inside.
Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron
Lakota has his own horse, a mare named Ren, who loves and plays with him. Spirit makes many surprised and confused expressions as he watches them play, which tells the audience that Spirit does not understand why a horse is so welcoming, playful, and loving to a human—humans to this point. has been absolutely terrifying considering his experiences with
However, the story from Spirit conveys verbally what we can easily see in animation. It ruins the scene because it doesn’t tell us what the spirit is thinking at that moment, which is weird, because I can guarantee that if this was a talking horse movie, the scene would probably be kept silent. Will go so that the soul will later question this situation directly on the rain, which can be done without conversation.
Narrative can be pretentious and intrusive at the same time. On the first night after being captured by the spirit, he looks up at the stars and stares in silence. We then fade to where his flock is and see his mother looking up at the same sky. We can interpret this as the soul losing its flock, its freedom and its mother. Similarly, his mother also misses him and worries about his safety, when they are connected and separated by the wide night sky. However, before the fade transition, we get the statement “My heart went through the sky that night. Back to my flock, where I belonged. And I wondered if they missed me as much as I missed them.
I almost had to stop when I heard the line “My heart went through the sky that night.” I really can’t decide if it’s pretentious in a juvenile way or just shitty.
Spirit Untamed, Or How To Totally Miss The Point
An almost fantastical scene occurs when the spirit is captured. Her mother begins to scale a cliff face to help her, but the spirit stares in despair, clearly telling her mother to take the herd and leave. The camera is close to Atma’s face as he pleads with his mother, who is clearly devastated, but feels that she is right. His sacrifice would be for naught if they were all caught.
It works perfectly, until the narrator, again, has to say it dumb and direct “I was scared, and I didn’t know what was going to happen to me, but at least the herd was safe.” I only give props to this scene because the narration comes right after her mother is already gone, so the scene is almost pointless.
Needless to say, the narration is by Matt Damon, and you can’t hear Matt Damon. I’m perfectly fine with Matt Damon as an actor, in fact I love his work, but I find him to be a terrible voice actor. He has a great voice – the fact that Matt Damon doesn’t seem to be good at acting through his voice alone is a lot more common than you might think.
This is why many big-time animated films with celebrity-studded cast lists tend to be weak in the voice acting department. I cannot stress enough how different voice acting is from stage acting. It’s the same concept, but a completely different world.
Identify Your Breyer
Damon just feels bored throughout his narrative. He is losing his herd – bored. He is captivated by the love interest – Bor. He is scared after being caught – bored. He can put so much charm and emotion into his voice, he’s just choosing not to.
I am very tempted to edit this film from start to finish and mute any moments where there is narration other than the beginning and end. I can tell from the way the film is directed and animated that it could have done a lot better if the narrative was finished.
Movies with minimal dialogue don’t just rely on body language, facial expressions and tone and environment to convey messages, however – they also rely on music. Who do we have for the soul: Stallion of the Cimarron? Hans Zimmer for orchestra
