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Spirit Untamed is a 2021 American animated Western film musical film comedy film adventure film directed by Elaine Bogan and written by Aury Wallington and Kristin Hahn. The second theatrical film of the Spirit franchise, it is a soft reboot of (2002) and is based on characters from Netflix spin-off series, Spirit Riding Free.
With the voices of Isabela Merced, Jake Gyllenhaal, Marsai Martin, Mckenna Grace, Julianne Moore, Walton Goggins, and Andre Braugher, the film is about a young girl named Fortuna "Lucky" Prescott who moves to the small rural community of Miradero, where she meets the titular wild kiger mustang. As the son of Spirit and Rain from , she names the horse "Spirit" after his father, and Lucky immediately begins to bond with him. The film was announced to be in development in October 2019, and production was done remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. The film was dedicated to the memory of Kelly Asbury, the co-director of the original Spirit film, who died on June 26, 2020.
Spirit Untamed was theatrically released in the United States on June 4, 2021, by Universal Pictures. The film received mixed reviews from critics who deemed the film inferior to the original and unnecessary, though its animation and humor was praised. The film Box-office bomb, grossing over $42 million worldwide against a budget of $30 million, making it both DreamWorks Animation's cheapest and lowest-grossing film to date.
The next day, Lucky goes to a corral where she sees the same horse from before. A man named Hendricks is trying to break the horse and treating it abusively. Lucky tells Jim and Cora about the horse, thinking he can be her new friend, but Jim does not want Lucky to go near the horses after what happened to Milagro. Nonetheless, Pru and Abigail help Lucky win over the trust of the horse, whom she names Spirit (naming him after his father from the ). After a while, Spirit trusts Lucky enough to eat an apple she offers him and allows her to pet him, sealing their bond.
Lucky attempts to ride Spirit, but he escapes from the corral and runs away. Lucky is saved by Pru and Abigail after almost falling off a cliff at the canyon, but she falls into the water and dies and is still alive, but wounded. Jim finds and reprimands Lucky for disobeying him and warns her for being killed and hurt as well by Spirit just like Milagro. They go home arguing, making Lucky think he has gave up on her as she heard he was sending her back to her grandfather's campaign house in the city with Cora and never return to Miradreo and never see Pru and Abigail again, but Lucky refuses. She sneaks out at night through the forest where she finds Spirit and his herd together, but is interrupted by Hendricks and his men, who capture all the horses but Spirit and take them in with a stolen train. Knowing Hendricks and his men are wranglers, who are taking the horses to a boat to be auctioned and worked to death, Lucky agrees to help Spirit rescue his herd. She enlists Pru and Abigail with their horses to embark on a journey to try and cut the wranglers off on their path by beating them to a Water stop located beyond a summit called Heck Mountain. During the trip, Lucky builds up her relationship with Spirit and becomes good friends with Pru and Abigail as they travel.
The girls reach the water depot the night before the wranglers are set to arrive, but Lucky wakes up the next day, realizing the wranglers made it earlier than expected. Spirit desperately attempts to save his herd on his own, but gets taken in by the wranglers. Determined to save Spirit, Lucky and her friends follow the train to the docks, where the wranglers are boarding the horses onto the boat. The girls arrive too late to stop the boat from leaving, but they manage to save Spirit. Lucky and Spirit get on board by leaping off the docks just like Milagro leaping off with her horse, freeing the other horses, and subduing the wranglers, with Spirit knocking Hendricks off the boat. Jim, Cora, and Al show up on a fast steam train and arrest Hendricks and the other wranglers.
On their way back to Miradero, the girls travel to a field in the middle of the wilderness, and Lucky lets Spirit go, saying that he needs to stay with his herd. When she returns home, Lucky and Cora initially plan to return to the city, but after Lucky bonds with Jim at a rodeo, she decides instead to stay in Miradero with him and her friends, as Spirit is seen running through the fields with his herd.
Production of the film started in August 2019 and shifted to work remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It was then released on DVD and Blu-Ray as a " Special Sleepover Edition" on October 25, 2021, by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment in the United Kingdom which features an hour of special features including " How to" sessions on how to create your own indoor " campfire", how to Ukulele, and how to make smores, meet the cast, drawing Spirit, finding your Spirit, deleted scenes and sing-along videos. It was later released on Hulu on November 3, 2021. The film grossed $2.9 million in home video sales.
In the United States, Spirit Untamed was released alongside , and was projected to gross around $5 million from 3,200 theaters in its opening weekend. The film made $2.4 million on its first day, and went on to debut to $6.3 million, finishing fourth at the box office. In its sophomore weekend the film dropped 57% to $3.8 million, finishing sixth.
Lovia Gyarke of The Hollywood Reporter praised the film for its animation, writing " Spirit Untamed is beautiful to look at and occasionally genuinely funny. The stunning and detailed animations saturate Lucky's world with an impressive array of colors, from the crimson apples she feeds Spirit to the pistachio and emerald-green leaves on the swaying trees". However, in criticizing the character of Spirit, she noted that Spirit "is more one-dimensional here; he lacks the simultaneous mix of curiosity and complete disdain for humans that made his perspective charming in the first place."
Pete Hammond of Deadline praised the film for its female cast, stating that "After all the decades of boy-driven stories set in the wild West, it is refreshing to see the girls get their turn...And that is exactly what Spirit: Riding Free writer Aury Wallington and Kristin Hahn have in mind, along with their director Elaine Bogan and producer Karen Foster." Additionally, Hammond praised the soundtrack and vocal performances, which he wrote were "perfectly pitched here, a step above the TV show if not quite up to the artistry of the original film."
Peter Debruge of Variety was critical of the film's animation, stating the film "substitutes unappealingly designed, obviously digital characters, who've been badly rigged and stuck in under-detailed environments." He also added that "Spirit still looks like Spirit, but neither the horse nor the girl (who's voiced by live-action Dora actor Isabela Merced) has much of a personality, while the plot is less sophisticated than what audiences might expect from an early-20th-century single-reel silent movie." Beatrice Loayza of The New York Times gave the film a negative review, stating that "This spinoff of Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron is a bland, bubbly romp through the Wild West, with a heavy dose of girl power."
Jesse Hassenger of The A.V. Club gave the film a C+, stating that "As a Dreamworks production, Spirit Untamed carries inarguable novelty: It's a sweet, simple Western, relaxed about its identity as a girl-centric adventure story, in contrast to bigger DreamWorks cartoons sweaty about their desire to draw eyeballs from Pixar and Despicable me". He also praised the film for its expansion of the original series, noting that " Spirit Untamed essentially retells, modifies, and expands the events of the show's pilot."
| Heartland Film Festival | 2021 | Truly Moving Picture Award | ||
| Hollywood Music in Media Awards | November 17, 2021 | Best Original Score - Animated Film | Amie Doherty | |
| Best Original Song - Animated Film | Fearless (Valiente) – Amie Doherty (Isabela Merced and Eiza González) | |||
| Annie Awards | March 12, 2022 | Best Storyboarding | Gary Graham | |
| Imagen Awards | October 2, 2022 | Best Feature Film |
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