The Revenant is a 2015 American epic survival drama film which describes frontiersman Hugh Glass’s experiences in 1823; that novel is, in turn, based on the 1915 poem The Song of Hugh Glass. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy.
In August 2001, Akiva Goldsman purchased Punke’s manuscript. Iñárritu signed on to direct The Revenant in August 2011; in April 2014, after several delays due to other projects, Iñárritu confirmed that he was beginning work on The Revenant and that DiCaprio would play the lead role. Principal photography began in October 2014. Location and crew concerns delayed the production of the film from May to August 2015. The Revenant premiered at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, California on December 16, 2015. It had a limited release on December 25 and a wide release on January 8, 2016. The film was a blockbuster, grossing $533 million worldwide. It received mostly positive reviews,
with praise for the performances, particularly for DiCaprio and Hardy, Iñárritu’s direction, and Lubezki’s cinematography; however, there was some criticism for its screenplay and runtime.
It won three Golden Globe Awards and five BAFTA Awards, including Best Film at both shows. For the 88th Academy Awards, the film received 12 nominations, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor (Hardy). The Revenant won the Academy Awards for Best Director (Iñárritu, his second consecutive in that category), Best Actor (DiCaprio, his first after 5 previous nominations), and Best Cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezki, his third consecutive in that category). DiCaprio also won the Golden Globe Award, the Screen Actors Guild Award, the BAFTA Award, and the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Actor for his work in the film.
Plot.
During late 1823, Hugh Glass guides Captain Andrew Henry’s trappers through the territory of the present-day Dakotas. While he and his half-Pawnee son, Hawk, are hunting, the company’s camp is attacked by an Arikara war party seeking to recover its Chief’s abducted daughter, Powaqa. Many of the trappers are killed during the fight, while the rest of them escape onto a boat. Guided by Glass, the survivors travel on foot to Fort Kiowa, because he believes that traveling downriver will make them vulnerable. After docking, the crew stashes the pelts near the shore. While scouting game, Glass is mauled by a grizzly bear and left near death. Trapper John Fitzgerald, who is fearful of another Arikara attack, argues that the group must mercy-kill Glass and keep moving. Henry agrees, but he is unable to pull the trigger; instead, he offers money for someone to stay with Glass and bury him after he dies. When the only volunteers are Hawk and the young Jim Bridger, Fitzgerald agrees to stay for money, to recoup his losses from the abandoned pelts.
After the others leave, Fitzgerald attempts to smother Glass but is discovered by Hawk. Fitzgerald, afraid that Hawk’s loud reaction to his attempt to kill Glass could alert Bridger, who is away gathering water, stabs Hawk to death as Glass watches helplessly. The next morning, Fitzgerald convinces Bridger, who is unaware of Hawk’s murder, that the Arikara are approaching and they must abandon Glass. Bridger protests at first, but he ultimately follows Fitzgerald after the latter leaves Glass half-buried alive in a makeshift grave. Bridger leaves his canteen, in which he engraved a spiral symbol, with Glass. After they depart, Fitzgerald admits that he lied about the approaching Arikara. When Fitzgerald and Bridger later meet Henry at the fort, Fitzgerald tells Henry that Glass died and Hawk vanished. Bridger is complicit in the lie about Glass’s death, even though he did not know anything about Hawk’s disappearance.
Glass begins his arduous journey through the wilderness. He performs crude cauterization of his wounds and eludes the pursuing Arikara by jumping into white water rapids. He later encounters Pawnee refugee Hikuc, who says that “revenge is in the Creator’s hands.” The men share bison meat and travel together. As a storm approaches, Hikuc constructs a makeshift sweat lodge for a feverish Glass to shelter in. After a hallucinogenic experience in the lodge, Glass emerges to discover that his wounds are healing but Hikuc has been hanged by French hunters. He infiltrates their camp and sees the leader raping Powaqa. He frees her, kills several hunters and recovers Hikuc’s horse. The next morning, Glass is ambushed by the Arikara and driven over a cliff on his horse. He survives the stormy night by eviscerating the horse and sheltering inside its carcass.
A frightened French survivor staggers into Fort Kiowa, and Bridger recognizes his spiral engraved canteen as Glass’s. Believing that it was stolen, Henry organizes a search party. Fitzgerald, realizing that Glass is alive, empties the outpost’s safe and flees. The search party finds the exhausted Glass. Furious, Henry orders the arrest of Bridger, but Glass vouches for Bridger by stating that he was not present when Fitzgerald murdered Hawk and was later deceived and threatened by the higher-ranking Fitzgerald. Glass and Henry set out in pursuit of Fitzgerald.
After the two split up, Fitzgerald ambushes, kills, and scalps Henry. Glass finds Henry’s corpse, places it on his horse to act as a decoy, and shoots Fitzgerald in the arm. He pursues Fitzgerald to a riverbank, where they engage in a brutal fight. Glass is about to kill Fitzgerald, but he spots a band of Arikara downstream. He remembers Hikuc’s words and pushes Fitzgerald downstream into the hands of the Arikara. Elk Dog kills and scalps Fitzgerald, and the Arikara (who have found Powaqa) spare Glass. Glass retreats into the mountains where he is visited by the spirit of his wife and is heard breathing throughout the credits.
Filming.
Principal photography for The Revenant began in October 2014. A planned two-week break from filming in December was extended to six weeks which forced Tom Hardy to drop out of Suicide Squad. In February 2015, Iñárritu, who shot the film using natural lighting, stated that production would last “until the end of April or May”, as the crew is “shooting in such remote far-away locations that, by the time we arrive and have to return, we have already spent 40% of the day”. Ultimately, principal photography wrapped in August 2015.[citation needed] The scenes in the waterfall were filmed at the Kootenai Falls near Libby, Montana. While the initial plan was to film the last scenes in Canada, the weather was ultimately too warm, leading the filmmakers to locations near the Rio Olivia at the tip of Argentina with snow on the ground, to shoot the film’s ending. Crew members often complained about difficult filming, with many quitting or being fired. Mary Parent was then brought in as a
producer. Iñárritu stated that some of the crew members had left the film, explaining that “as a director, if I identify a violin that is out of tune, I have to take that from the orchestra.” On his experience filming, DiCaprio stated: “I can name 30 or 40 sequences that were some of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. Whether it’s going in and out of frozen rivers, or sleeping in animal carcasses, or what I ate on set. [I was] enduring freezing cold and possible hypothermia constantly.”
Iñárritu had stated that he originally wanted to film the movie chronologically, a process that would have added $7 million to the movie’s production budget. Iñárritu later confirmed that the movie was shot in sequence, despite Hardy’s statement that the film could not be shot chronologically, due to weather conditions.
In July 2015, it was reported that the film’s budget had ballooned from the original $60 million to $95 million, and by the time production wrapped it had reached $135 million.
Box office.
The Revenant grossed $183.6 million in the United States and Canada and $349.3 million in other countries for a worldwide total of $533 million, against a production budget of $135 million. Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit of the film to be $61.6 million when factoring together all expenses and revenues. In North America, The Revenant opened in limited release on December 25, 2015, and over the weekend grossed $474,560 from four theaters in New York City and Los Angeles ($118,640 per screen), finishing twenty-third at the box office. It was the second-biggest theater average of 2015 behind the $130,000 four-screen debut of Steve Jobs. The film earned a total of $1.6 million from its two-week limited run before expanding wide on January 8, 2016, across 3,371 theaters.Cast:
- Leonardo DiCaprio as Hugh Glass
- Tom Hardy as John Fitzgerald
- Domhnall Gleeson as Andrew Henry
- Will Poulter as Jim Bridger
- Forrest Goodluck as Hawk
- Paul Anderson as Anderson
- Kristoffer Joner as Murphy
- Duane Howard as Elk Dog
- Melaw Nakehk’o as Powaqa
- Arthur Redcloud as Hikuc
- Lukas Haas as Jones
- Brendan Fletcher as Fryman
- Tom Guiry as Billy Brother Trapper
- Grace Dove as Hugh Glass’s wife