For a while, it's easy to be carried away by all of this -- until we realize that Oscar-winning director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu doesn't quite have enough to say and that the movie, at 2 hours and 36 minutes, is an long attempt to add weight and profundity to a pulp Western. Some of the story turns are overly familiar, and the supporting characters are thin. Add to that a high level of sheer brutality, and The Revenant, while well made, certainly isn't for everyone.
Development of The Revenant began in August 2001, with producer Akiva Goldsman acquiring the rights to Michael Punke's then-unpublished manuscript.[11] David Rabe had written the film's script.[12] The production was picked up by Park Chan-wook, with Samuel L. Jackson in mind to star. Park later left the project.[13][14] The development stalled until 2010 when Mark L. Smith wrote a new adaptation of the novel for Steve Golin's Anonymous Content. In May 2010, Smith revealed that John Hillcoat was attached to direct the film and that Christian Bale was in negotiation to star the movie.[15] Hillcoat left the project in October 2010.[14] Jean-François Richet was considered to replace him, but Alejandro G. Iñárritu signed on to direct in August 2011.[14][16] Goldsman was also confirmed to be producing with Weed Road Pictures.[16] In November, New Regency Productions joined to produce with Anonymous Content, and 20th Century Fox was confirmed to be distributing the film.[17][18] Days later, Iñárritu stated that he was seeking Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn for the two lead roles.[19]
The Revenant Movie Review
The movie was put on hold in March 2012, as New Regency hired Iñárritu to direct an adaptation of Flim-Flam Man, Jennifer Vogel's non-fiction book about her criminal father.[21] Penn was also under consideration for the lead role in that film.[22] In December 2012, Iñárritu announced that his next film would be Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), a comedy-drama about an actor who once played a famous superhero. He ended up winning the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, with the film winning Best Picture. Filming took place in March 2013.[23] The Revenant was scheduled to begin production right after Birdman wrapped.[24]
The movie was granted a production budget of $60 million, with $30 million funded by New Regency. Brett Ratner's RatPac-Dune Entertainment, a joint venture between Ratner's RatPac Entertainment and 20th Century Fox's former financing partner, Dune Entertainment, also funded the film.[17] Worldview Entertainment, who also co-financed Birdman, was originally set to fund the film but backed out in July 2014 due to the departure of its CEO, Christopher Woodrow.[17][24][25] New Regency approached 20th Century Fox for additional funding, but the company declined, citing the pay-or-play contracts made for both DiCaprio and Tom Hardy, which would require that the actors be paid regardless of whether the film is completed.[25] Annapurna Pictures' Megan Ellison entered negotiations to finance the film shortly after.[17][25] The Chinese company Guangdong Alpha Animation and Culture Company partially financed the film.[26]
The director 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.[34] Later he confirmed that the movie was shot in sequence, despite Hardy's statement that the film could not be shot chronologically, due to weather conditions.[35][36]
The visual effects for The Revenant were produced primarily by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). Other companies, such as Moving Picture Company (MPC) and Cinesite, also created visual effects for the movie.[37]
The movie was accompanied by a 44-minute documentary, named A World Unseen, highlighting the process of making the production. A World Unseen was released on January 21, 2016, on YouTube.[43][44] Eliot Rausch served as its director.[45][46]
In the documentary of the movie titled A World Unseen, the director stated that for the main themes of the movie he revisits the issues and concerns of intense parental and filial relations, which audiences of his previous movies readily recognize as a recurrent theme in his previous work. Regarding the theme of revenge seen throughout The Revenant, he also mentioned that the approach of vengeance seen in the film needs to be significantly tempered by anyone who would want to see vengeance as either an effective or useful moral to be applied in life. In the end, he said, there can only be a disappointment and lack of fulfillment for anyone who looks to revenge as providing a higher purpose for living or a life-defining purpose.[43][44]
Canadian actor Roy Dupuis was strongly critical of the movie for portraying French-Canadian voyageurs as murderous rapists. Dupuis was originally offered a role as a voyageur, but he rejected it due to perceptions of anti-French bias and historical inaccuracies.[49][50][51][52] According to Allan Greer, the Canada Research Chair of Colonial North America, "generally the American traders had a worse reputation than the Canadians."[49]
The filmmakers made a special point of emphasizing the importance of historical issues of ethnicity approached in the movie and represented in the mixed ethnic background of Hugh Glass's son portrayed in the film (portrayed as half Pawnee by Glass's wife) as relating to his own life and his identification with ethnic concerns. The director has referred to having encountered constant xenophobia and stated that: "These constant and relentless xenophobic (comments) have been widely spread by the media without shame, embraced and cheered by leaders and communities around the US. The foundation of all this is so outrageous that it can easily be minimized as an SNL sketch, a mere entertainment, a joke ... I debated with myself, if I should bring up this uncomfortable subject tonight but in light of the constant and relentless xenophobic comments that have been expressed recently against my Mexican fellows, it is inevitable."[53]
It made $2.3 million from its early Thursday preview showings from 2,510 theaters.[77] On its opening day, the film earned $14.4 million, ranking first at the box office.[79] The film grossed $39.8 million in its opening weekend from 3,375 theaters, exceeding initial projections by 70%, and finishing second at the box office behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($42.4 million), which was on its fourth weekend of play. It was the director's biggest opening of all time, and the fourth-biggest for DiCaprio and supporting actor Tom Hardy.[80] Critics noted that The Force Awakens had an advantage, considering that it was playing at 781 more theaters, that Sunday matinees are family-friendly, and since it had the benefit of playing in all North American IMAX theaters.[80] Nevertheless, The Revenant played very balanced across the US and overperformed in all states except the Northeast region.[80] Its wide release weekend is among the top openings in the month of January.[81] It topped the box office in its fifth weekend overall and third weekend in wide release after competing with Ride Along 2 in its second weekend. It added a $16 million in its third weekend, which was down 49.7% but topped the box office, despite a blizzard blanketing most of the East Coast which reportedly hurt many films' box office performance.[82][83][84][85] The following weekend it was overtaken by Fox's own animated movie Kung Fu Panda 3 thereby topping the box office for one weekend.[86] Following the announcement of the Oscar nominees on January 14, The Revenant witnessed the biggest boost among the Best Picture category, jumping from $54.1 million to $170.5 million, an increase of +215% up to the Oscar ceremony in the weekend ending February 28.[87]
Equally bravura is the bear attack. In 1971's Man In The Wilderness, an equally loose take on the Hugh Glass legend that renames him Zachary Bass, Richard Harris is mauled by an off-camera beast. 2015 technology makes possible a far more intense sequence, with the enraged CG "grizz" coming off like a cross between Uncle Pastuzo and the demon Pazuzu. Though the visual effects are a little jarring in a movie that's otherwise entirely practical, nature red in tooth and claw has rarely been captured like this on screen. It's a devastating bout of savagery that leaves Glass with bones broken and skin rent open in awful ways.
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The bloody, chaotic incidents that follow add most of the fat to the flabby two-hour running time, and they hijack the movie tonally, too, obliterating the deft, fish-out-of-water comedy of the early scenes in favor of carnage and mayhem.
These problems generally stem from the fact that the source material was a very short story by King which was published in the 1978 collection Night Shift. Things were necessarily added to extend the story but we get logical inconsistencies along the way. The movie starts fairly strong but meanders as it continues, unable to maintain the atmosphere of dread and mystery that pervades the beginning. The script also veers from the short story in both tone and substance, making for very different endings, and what the film offers as a resolution is ultimately unsatisfactory.
Based loosely on the astonishing real-life exploits of pioneer ironman Hugh Glass, it has spawned movies (1971's "Man in the Wilderness," starring Richard Harris), songs ("Six Weeks," by Of Monsters and Men) and books (Frederick Manfred's 1954 novel "Lord Grizzly," as well as Michael Punke's 2002 novel on which Inarritu based his film and after which he titled it). 2ff7e9595c
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