Hacker Cinema
The Revenant
2015 · Film · 157 min
Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu
In the 1820s, a frontiersman, Hugh Glass, sets out on a path of vengeance against those who left him for dead after a bear mauling.
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18 comments on Hacker News
Last movie I saw in theaters was The Revenant in 2015, and before that ... maybe the first Hobbit? Agreed that current movies suck, mostly Marvel crap and rehashes ... Local to me we have: Taylor swift movie, a new Saw movie, a new Exorcist movie, a new Paw Patrol movie. Lame.
Or it could be a movie like The Revenant where the one scene took so long to shoot that they could only shoot during golden hour to keep the look the same throughout the multiple weeks of shooting that scene. Lots of stories about crew members getting frostbite and other tales of woe on shooting that flick.
What’s funny is that considering the waste and negligence described in the article, I bet it’s cheaper to wreck 104 real cars than to pay a VFX team to do it.
The Revenant is one of the last movies in recent memory that seemed to do something novel.
If we’re going to primarily be inundated with highly computer-influenced content, I prefer it to not try to look perfectly real which is why I’ve really enjoyed some of the animated series that have popped up recently. I’ll also admit that I’ve seen Into the Spider-Verse because my friends wouldn’t let me avoid it. I’ll give Marvel a pass on that one—the animation is amazing.
Just rattling off the action movies I can immediately think of, I don’t believe any of which include a conspiracy in their plot/synopsis. The only action movie I can think of about a conspiracy is the movie Conspiracy with Mel Gibson, got any others?
- The Last Action Hero
- Robocop
- Karate Kid
- Baby Driver
- Rocky
- The Revenant
- Mad Max
- ConAir
- Terminator
It took me a bit to figure out what I was watching. It's a comparison between scenes from "The Revenant" and scenes from various films directed by Andrei Tarkovsky.
Andrei Tarkovsky was one of the greatest film directors, ever.
Here is a shot vs shot comparison with Iñárritu's 2016 The Revenant film which won an Oscar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpcdhNq_VPM
When switching from film to digital, we took a lot of steps back and are slowly catching up to quality. I guess around the 2010s, theaters started switching to digital projection, which I believe started with 1K (similar to 1080), then 2K, with a small amount of theaters showing 4K projection. Most high-quality 35mm film is equivalent to 4K resolution. Unfortunately, a lot of movies were shot and mastered at 2K or less, like Mad Max fury road, so there's no point of having them at 4K because the information was never there. With old 35mm, it was probably scanned for dvd or vhs at some point, but studios are going back and scanning movies to 4K with great results. Megapixels aside (an irrelevant number btw), dynamic range was pretty bad compared to film in the early days of digital, but it's starting to get there. The revenant was shot on digital and looks amazing.
Once you start watching on streaming though, you're losing so much to compression. Even with 4K HDR blu-ray, you're only getting 10 bits of color compared to 12 bits with DCP (digital projection).
I really disagree! The shift from film to digital allowed photographers to remove the price per photo aspect of photography from the equation, but only recently has the dynamic range, resolution, etc of digital matched properly developed film. Now, digital actually surpasses it. People are generally able to practice photography without going broke, which is an amazing development.
The Revenant would have been impossible to shoot even 10 years ago, the demands on the sensor or film would have been too great. This means the story couldn't be told at all! So the technology actually enables people to take photos that would have been otherwise impossible.
I'm also suspicious that the second shift is "done". I suspect the technology will always be pushed further at the high end of the camera technology market which will trickle down. Similarly, I suspect the software innovations used by Google / Apple will trickle down into the software of dedicated cameras, which will further widen the quality gap between the formats.
Quality isn't all about reproduction, it is also about creative possibilities. Right now, none of the smartphones can take a photo of a moving subject in low light. They depend on averaging frames which leads to subject blur. This isn't a minor detail, it's the difference between a photo and no photo.
If you're interested in seeing what happens when you do leak movie details (or in this case, the full movie) -- take a look at William Morarity, who leaked The Revenant, 6 days ahead of it's theatrical release.
https://torrentfreak.com/man-leaked-revenant-online-fined-1-1m-160930/
> I see this in the art scene. It's like the art-piece isn't enough for people. They want an artist's statement. A philosophy. Who made it, why did they make it, where did they make it. Tell me the 20-chapter story of your heroic struggle from ugliness to beauty...
This is also becoming more common in the film scene. The Revenant is a recent and big example of the phenomenon. People liked to talk about the grueling filming process, how all the artists involved broke their backs to make this movie, and I think it seriously altered how the movie was perceived, changing a perfectly fine movie to something somehow transcendent.
Another, smaller, example is Ryan Gosling in La La Land. Some people made it a point that he learned to play the piano for the bits on screen.
It's as if the off-screen authenticity alters the on-screen authenticity. (Whether this is true or not is up for debate, and has been since method acting's inception, if not before.)
It's as natural and balanced as you want it to be. I recently watched "The Revenant" in 4k HDR on an LG Oled Panel, the movie was apparently filmed only with natural light (not in the way you meant, just that there was no artificial lighting for scenes). It's absolutely stunning to see as everything feels spot on.
I'd be careful about using a movie as a how-to guide for anything other than making a movie. They routinely make up any sort of nonsense needed to make the plot move forward. This is quite obvious when the topic is something I know more about than a lay person.
For example, in the Revenant, the hero goes swimming for extended periods in an ice-filled river.
TDotJ was a good movie, though :-)
You have to take 15-20% off for issue movies. Wonder Woman ended up being a stealth one.
John Wick is respected as a "craft" movie because of its stuntwork and fight choreography. Same as Dunkirk and The Revenant, but those were appreciated on cinematography, etc.
So, yes, movies loved for their craftsmanship do tend to outperform the quality of their storytelling.
Consider 8 had a $306,000,000 budget, 9 had a $200,000,000 budget. I have no problem saying it was profitable, but so was The Land Before Time 9. When a movie pulls in ~1/2 has much as the previous film it's a sign.
http://www.the-numbers.com/market/2016/top-grossing-movies
Just looking domestically we have Finding Dory (squeal), Rogue One (franchise), Captain America: Civil War (squeal), The Secret Life of Pets (kids movie), The Jungle Book (kids movie), Deadpool (franchise), Zootopia (kids movie), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (franchise), Suicide Squad (franchise), Doctor Strange (franchise), Moana (kids movie) etc. Down at #14 The Revenant was at least nominally an original movie, though very similar to several other films.
I don't think any of these where bad for what they where, but there was nothing new for the 14-40 group. 2015 had #6 American Sniper, #9 The Martian, but was again mostly rehashed movies until #17.
The reasons you consider it to be such a good film probably have more to do with cinematography than writing, acting or directing. The beautiful shots are a direct result of Emmanuel Lubezki being the DP - the same style can be seen in Birdman, Gravity, The Revenant, and some of Terrence Malick’s films.
Boom & bust is the business model for TV/Film/Music unfortunately, but it is what it is. That's what creates opportunities for "new" things - shows, up and coming musicians, film stars, writers, directors, producers...on and on. Tastes change and the business and money go where they can get a return on investment - or a chance to do so. Risk vs. Reward.
For context though, I saw a really well respected Executive Producer discussing how he invested in films (recently "The Revenant") and was getting critical acclaim and doing well. He was grateful for his partnership with Fox for distribution...then noted that revenue wise, Fox Studios for film was approximately $700 Million of revenue in a given year, whereas Fox News was $1.X Billion and Fox Sports was also $1.X Billion.
In the big picture competition is extremely fierce and spread out even beyond the Sitcom-with-Kevin-James / NCIS-Your-Mom's-Backyard / Zombies-who-break-into-song-and-dance-numbers pieces that get cranked out year after year and don't stick.
There are different reading modes. The New York Times Magazine in particular caters to people who are sitting down on a quiet day for long reads. It was created specifically to hold pieces longer than appropriate for the normal newspaper.
So here, it definitely doesn't make sense for writers to be as straight-to-the-point as possible. It's like asking for some long, cinematic movie (e.g., Lawrence of Arabia or The Revenant) to be edited down to a 60-second YouTube video. Sure, you could squeeze in the highlights, but it would miss the point.
Sometimes you want a grab-and-go sandwich from a drive-through. Sometimes you want a relaxed 2-hour meal with old friends.
Hi,
'The Revenant' seriously a fantastic book also the movie and this book honoured by leo's performance. hats off leo on winning oscar. Truely you deserve this award.