The Revenant - over-hyped, overrated, and ridiculously overspent

So I finally watched The Revenant. I really wasn't going to, but pretty much all of my friends were recommending it for one reason or another. And let's be honest, it did win three Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director and Best Actor. So it can't be that bad, can it? Especially if we add the IMDB rating of 8.3 and Rotten Tomatoes rating of 81% to the mix. So it definitely can't be bad based on all the critics, and awards, and well, come on, there was Leonardo DiCaprio.

And the fact is that no, it wasn't bad at all. However, there is a BUT, or consequently, a few of them.


I'm fully aware what many of you might be saying here - it's Hollywood, and that's what it costs to make a movie. But it cost $135 million to make the movie. Initially the budget was set at $90 million, but due to the producer, Alejandro González Iñárritu's wish to shoot the movie chronologically, use natural light, and work on remote locations, it went up to $135 million.

Now, for Hollywood, it's nothing! And I don't mind them spending the money, it's their money. And to me, 90 or 135, well, there's no big difference. Even $90 million - keeping in mind that it's a budget for a movie which shows a guy crawling in a swamp. Did they spend millions for heating up the forest to room temperature? Pay the star hazard-pay for crawling in the snow? Well, in addition to the $20 million he got anyway.


Now, understandably, DiCaprio did sell the movie, and earned his $20 million. Which, well, is nonsense, but that's already another story, it's Hollywood! and all that crap. But imagine now - if there hadn't been Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie. Imagine there hadn't been known producers and anything else like that. How much would it have raked during the debut weekend instead of the $38 million it did? Well, if it would have been accepted on the big screen at all. After all, it was a movie about a guy crawling in the snow. The fact is that even if the acting, and producing, would have been good enough, nobody would know the movie, because neh, it's nothing really worth talking about. But it was DiCaprio and Iñárritu, and the money behind it that made it kind of a sensation. Isn't that kind of sad?

DiCaprio made the movie, but not with his acting - he did it with his name. And I feel that's sad. Kind of. It doesn't say anything bad about DiCaprio, but neither does it say anything good about the movie.

If it would have been made by random (but great) Joe's, it wouldn't probably have made it to the picture at all. If it was a movie in a foreign film category, it could have made it to the nominations, but then again, maybe not. And they would have been able to make it for a easy million bucks.