Summary
- The real Hugh Glass faced a journey even more unbelievable than the film, with historical records being scarce and unreliable.
- Glass actually spared John Fitzgerald's life for reasons different from the movie's narrative of vengeance for a slain son.
- After a remarkable survival story, Glass continued his frontier life, but ultimately met a tragic end at the hands of the Arikara tribe.
Leonardo DiCaprio earned his first Best Actor Academy Award for his performance as Hugh Glass in The Revenant is a true story due to the lack of reliable historical records. Michael Punke's 2002 novel of the same name served as the loose source material for the movie.
However, Punke only based his book on the earliest s, which were likely embellished and largely inaccurate. Glass himself left no written s of his experiences, so it's impossible to determine what really happened on his journey back to civilization through the wilderness of the American frontier. It can be confirmed that Glass was a real person, that he was in fact attacked by a bear, and he died many years after the attack. The Revenant's ending represents one of the biggest departures from the existing historical s, but everything that happened after the bear attack is up for debate.
Where Was The Revenant Filmed?
Alejandro Iñarritu's The Revenant incorporates a range of spectacular landscapes into its story, making the movie's locations a crucial element.
It Took Hugh Glass 6 Weeks To Get To Fort Kiowa After The Bear Attack
The movie doesn't provide as specific a timeline, but it showed that Glass spent many days in the wilderness.
The Hollywood Reporter broke down which elements of The Revenant were considered historically accurate, and which ones were wholly unique to Iñárritu's Academy Award-winning version of the story. The bear attack itself was depicted in the manner that the historical record acknowledges, with DiCaprio's Glass sustaining many of the same injuries that the real Glass reportedly suffered from. After he was left behind by John Fitzgerald and a teenager known as "Bridges" (it is unclear if this was actually the famous mountain man Jim Bridger, as is depicted in the movie), Glass did spend weeks journeying back to Fort Kiowa.
The Revenant doesn't specify how long it took Glass to make the journey, but it does make it clear that this was a lengthy process.
It reportedly took Glass six weeks to travel the roughly 200 miles between where he was attacked and Fort Kiowa, which is awe-inspiring considering that he was moving on a broken leg and with deep lacerations covering his body. The Revenant doesn't specify how long it took Glass to make the journey, but it does make it clear that this was a lengthy process. There is no record available for most of the encounters that Glass has in the movie with the Arikara and French hunters, so the journey itself was largely a creation of Punke and, subsequently, Iñárritu.
Hugh Glass Spared John Fitzgerald's Life
He allowed Fitzgerald to live, but not out of comion or forgiveness.
In The Revenant, Hugh Glass is motivated to continue on by his burning desire for vengeance against the man who killed his half-Pawnee son, Hawk, and left Glass for dead after taking his belongings. In reality, Glass never had a son out on the frontier with him, and his quest to find Fitzgerald was to retrieve his beloved rifle, which Fitzgerald took when he left him for dead. The real Hugh Glass did in fact track the man down at a camp on the Bighorn River, but he allowed him to live. s differ as to the reason why.
Tom Hardy received an Oscar nomination for Best ing Actor for his performance as the villainous John Fitzgerald in The Revenant.
The most widely accepted reason is that the real Fitzgerald ed the U.S. Army after his time as a fur trapper with Glass, which is what forced Glass to spare his life. Glass would have been tried for murder for killing a soldier, so he was unable to take his vengeance. However, Fitzgerald's captain did force him to return Glass' beloved rifle, so there was some measure of resolution for Hugh Glass in that regard.
The Revenant, on the other hand, sees the two men engage in a bloody and desperate life-or-death struggle. Their fight ends with Glass maiming Fitzgerald and setting him adrift in a stream, where he floats to a group of Arikara to be killed while they spare Glass for rescuing the daughter of their leader from the French hunters. While that ending is more dramatic and satisfying for the purposes of Alejandro Iñárritu's narrative, it isn't accurate.
Hugh Glass' Return To Fur Trading & Role With The Army Explained
After surviving the bear attack, Glass' career as a frontier man was far from over.
After finding Fitzgerald and reclaiming his rifle, the real Hugh Glass continued to explore the frontier as a fur trapper and trader. Not much is known about his life during that time of course, but the historical s detail other encounters with the Arikara, one of which reportedly resulted in another extended stint in the wilderness alone. The Encylopedia Brittanica indicates that Glass was even shot in the back with an arrow during a particularly violent encounter with a Native American tribe several years after his journey through the wilderness.
Years after the bear attack, Glass was actually hired himself by the U.S. Army garrison at Fort Union in North Dakota. He worked as a hunter, bringing meat back for the men stationed there. He wound up establishing himself at Fort Cass in Montana in the winter of 1832, which became a well-known trading post in the American West. That would be where Hugh Glass set out from on his last excursion into the wilderness.
Hugh Glass Was Killed By Arikara In 1833
The movie ends with Glass retreating into the woods, and doesn't cover his death.
Glass had many run-ins with Native American tribes, as was typical for the famous mountain men of the American West, and they treated him with varying degrees of friendliness based on the tribe or his level of recognition with them. The Revenant showcases one particularly dangerous tribe in the area Glass explored, the Arikara--commonly known as the Rees by frontiersmen. While out hunting with two other trappers in the spring of 1833, Glass was surrounded by a party of 30 Arikara on the Yellowstone River, despite him being in an area that was known to be typically safe.
The Revenant is currently available to stream on Max.
Glass and his two companions were killed, scalped, and had their belongings taken by the Arikara. His incredible and famous story of perseverance made him a legend of the American West, but ultimately Glass met the same fate as many other individuals who blazed the frontier. The Revenant is only loosely based on the real s of Hugh Glass' adventures, and while it hits the major notes of Glass being attacked by a bear and miraculously making his way back to civilization, what happens during and after his journey is largely fictionalized.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
The Revenant
- Release Date
- December 25, 2015
- Runtime
- 156 minutes
- Director
- Alejandro González Iñárritu
WHERE TO WATCH
Inspired by the true events in the life of Hugh Glass, The Revenant is an action-drama movie that sees Leonardo DiCaprio in the starring role. Betrayed and left for dead by one of the of his hunting group, Glass finds himself contending with some of the harshest elements imaginable while tending to his deadly wounds, as his will to carry on and need for revenge push him to carry on in this gripping tale of survival.
- Writers
- Alejandro González Iñárritu, Mark L. Smith
- Studio(s)
- 20th Century
- Distributor(s)
- 20th Century
- Budget
- $135 million
Your comment has not been saved