You know that joke from *Team America: World Police where Matt Damon can only say his name any time he speaks? Well there you go. I really have nothing else for it, I just think it would be hilarious to make Spirit actually talk like that. The narration in the movie itself always comes out of nowhere, and it’s such an odd choice to have Matt Damon doing it that anytime he appears I just go *“Oh shit, that’s right, Matt Damon is the horse”_. It gets me out of the movie really hard, so here it is. Spirit can only say that, now. Which is already far more than what he says in the movie itself.

My opinion on Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron was, originally, really biased. This movie came out in 2002, back when I only followed the Spanish press whenever I wanted to get reviews on movies, and when this one came out it was panned. And I mean grab-a-frying-pan-full-of-scolding-oil-and-slap-the-horse-in-the-face levels of panned. Critics hated it, so therefor I didn’t give it a chance (_because when I was 17 I was a dumbass with no free-thinking whatsoever). Years later, after I shook off those old days, I found a copy of it at my local video store, so I rented it and gave it a watch, and to my surprise I enjoyed it more than those critics said I would. I really liked the environments, and the minimalism of some scenes, and how it had a good level of harshness and softness that kept the movie on a quite consistent tone and atmosphere. I wouldn’t call it perfect though, or even great. I can totally see why the critics panned it. The animation is really distracting. This is when Dreamworks was trying to combine CGI with hand-drawn animation, and it shows it was rushed. You can even see the seams between both styles, something that instantly yanks me out of the movie (if the aforementioned narration hasn’t already). Which is a shame because had they done a better job this could’ve been a fantastic film. As it is, it’s just okay and that’s lowering my expectations to below sea level.

Drawing a (somewhat) realistic horse in the MLP style was fun. It was a nightmare to pin down his color palette, however. I couldn’t get two screenshots where he had the same coat and mane colors, so in the end I went with generic shade of orange and generic shade of brown. He’s a generic horse anyways, the only thing special about him is that he has a camera following him everywhere. He’s like Jason Bourne…maybe I should draw him for future Jason Bourne movie reviews. There’s an idea.