The same story was remade as Revenant in 2015, as what is a very inferior version -- I'm told -- but because of all the CGI and the superstar's superhero hijinks it's been rated an average score of 8.3 on this site (compared with an unaccountably lowly 6.9 for this original version).
shareI'd forgotten all about this movie until I saw ads for The Revenant, which jogged my memory. I'm surprised by the number of Revenant reviews that don't even mention that it's a remake of this film.
shareIt's not a remake of this movie. It's a film of a novel that is based on the same story this movie was based on.
shareI haven't seen The Revenant, but when I read the synopsis, I immediately recognized the storyline of Man in the Wilderness from 1971!
So Revenant is surely a remake of the same story! And isn'the that what is meant by "movie remake"?
>>So Revenant is surely a remake of the same story! And isn'the that what is meant by "movie remake"? <
No.
It is essentially a remake. I never read the story. I only needed to read the synopsis of Revenant to recognize it as a retelling of the same story. That's a remake. And since it's a movie, that makes it a movie remake.
shareExactly correct. 2 different movies.
sharewhat do you think a remake is, dumb-ass?
shareA movie remake is when the original source material is the furst movie, i.e. it was an original piece where no earlier source material. If both movies stem from an earlier source, e.g. a book, then each movie is an interpretation of the book.... dumbass.
shareJakeZen it is not nice to call people "dumbass'' It makes you look like a dumbass
shareI'm surprised by the number of Revenant reviews that don't even mention that it's a remake of this film.
You said it, brother (or sister.) I know a few professional film critics, and none of them can comprehend any piece of cinema pre-"Star Wars."
shareYes, it seems the "Star Wars Era" is the cut-off point -- as if CGI, visuals and fast cross-editing (a split second per shot) are all that count in the last forty years. The original "Star Wars" (1977) dialogue reads like it could have been written by an unimaginative, dumbed-down 12-year-old and the latest "Star Wars" the same, with mindless 3-D and 100-decibel soundtrack added. They're just $200 million Z-flicks, and not even as literate as, say, a 1949 "Batman" serial that took a few thousand to produce.
shareThis is exactly the way that I have felt about "Star Wars", the whole "Star Wars" series, and just about every new release by today's "exciting new filmmakers".
shareAre you serious? I watch Star Wars (with children) quite often, and the original trilogy has really good, witty dialogue. Good for its genre, certainly not to be compared to films of Godard or Woody Allen, but if you compare it to the dialogues of the sequels, there is a striking difference.
share"Star Wars" is an amalgam of the most cliched dialogue, characters, and action scenes imaginable--all stolen from--and executed, in all ways, with far less imagination than was used in many great classics, such as the "Flash Gordon" serials, "The Searchers", "The Hidden Fortress", etc., and--but for the performances of Sir Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing, and David Prowse/James Earl Jones as Darth Vader--one of the worst-acted, utterly-predictable messes ever put on film, launching the careers of total non-talents like Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and, worst of all, the dull and lifeless Harrison Ford. If the dialogue of the three original films sounds "good" and "witty" today, especially in comparison to the dialogue of the "Star Wars" sequels, it is only because the process of dumbing down movies--and, even worse, moviegoers--that began with the original 1977 aesthetic disaster has been in progress for so long, that of course it has born fruit--and miserably bad fruit at that--by now!
shareShut the *beep* off, u ignorant silly *beep* bastard. Remember, other people can offend u too. Then you'll crying like a baby.
shareYou are entirely correct.
shareThank you for saying what I've been feeling--and have known--for years. One such clown was James V. Ruocco, who wrote for the "Waterbury Republican-American" and made no attempt to hide the fact that his reviews were copied lock, stock, and barrel from press releases and movie pressbooks, and even from other critics.
shareOf course not. The film critics of today are mere gossip columnists, and not the historians that they need to be. They're stupid clowns--that is to say, Rex Reed-wannabes--who don't know a damn thing about a movie unless they read it in a press release, just like another poster states below.
shareOf course not. The film critics of today are mere gossip columnists, and not the historians that they need to be. They're stupid clowns--that is to say, Rex Reed-wannabes--who don't know a damn thing about a movie unless they read it in a press release, just like another poster states below.
And of course they work for the Companies that make the Films, film critics like journalists are merely in promotion and advertising in this era.
Thank you for agreeing with me. We are entirely correct. Most journalists--and, certainly, most film critics--are nothing but whores.
shareThey don't want people to know the revenant to be a "remake" of this film, that will hurt the revenant that's why the PR keep this film out of the promotion of the revenant and stress that revenant is "original" "true vision" of the director etc... except it's based on a book.
shareThey don't want the film-going public to know that "The Revenant" is a remake of this film, because they don't want the public to know that Hollywood's in particular--and the world's in general--filmmakers--and, to a lesser degree, all novelists as well--are so strapped for ideas--and so money-hungry--that they must resort to remaking--and out-and-out stealing--old--and, sometimes, merely even older--movies that are--and will always be--far better than their highly-derivative versions, and wish to deny the public any true frame of comparison. Quite frankly, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Michael Punke, the author of the novel, "The Revenant", stole his story in toto--or, at the very least, was highly-influenced by--the magnificently literate, supremely sensitive, multi-leveled screenplay written by the late Jack DeWitt for "Man In The Wilderness", obviously a long-planned, highly-cherished project for the veteran, deceased screenwright. Those who made and who are, currently, promoting "The Revenant", are probably also not mentioning "Man In The Wilderness" in the new film's press materials and advertising because they know--or, at the very least, possibly feel--that the movie-loving public will compare the performances of Leonardo Di Caprio in "The Revenant" and of the late Richard Harris in "Man In The Wilderness"(1971), and that--obviously, the dramatic interpretation of Leonardo Di Caprio will be found quite wanting. Given that "Man In The Wilderness" is my favorite film of all time, and that I have never been impressed with Leonardo Di Caprio and most of the stars and top character actors of the post-1976 era, I, for one, will be expecting much from all associated with "The Revenant"--especially Mr. DiCaprio.
shareAmen, Brother.
shareTo tell you the truth, I must tell you all of a most pleasant surprise that I received the other day when I called "Movies Unlimited", my favorite home-entertainment mail-order house, which may help to dispel all--or, no doubt far more accurately, some--of the gloom-and-doom that we have been reading and writing on this site in comparing "Man In The Wilderness" with "The Revenant" in particular, and in describing--most unfavorably--and quite rightly so--the post-"Star Wars" state of Hollywood in particular, and of world cinema in general. After placing my order, I asked the customer service representative to whom I was speaking if sales of "Man In The Wilderness" had increased at all due to the success of "The Revenant", and he replied that they had indeed, he telling me that each customer-service representative, ever since the release of "The Revenant", was now receiving at least 50 more requests than he/she had previously gotten for the 1971 Sandy Howard-Jack DeWitt-Richard Harris classic! THAT's certainly wonderful news, isn't it?
shareTo tell you the truth, I must tell you all of a most pleasant surprise that I received the other day when I called "Movies Unlimited", my favorite home-entertainment mail-order house, which may help to dispel all--or, no doubt far more accurately, some--of the gloom-and-doom that we have been reading and writing on this site in comparing "Man In The Wilderness" with "The Revenant" in particular, and in describing--most unfavorably--and quite rightly so--the post-"Star Wars" state of Hollywood in particular, and of world cinema in general. After placing my order, I asked the customer service representative to whom I was speaking if sales of "Man In The Wilderness" had increased at all due to the success of "The Revenant", and he replied that they had indeed, he telling me that each customer-service representative, ever since the release of "The Revenant", was now receiving at least 50 more requests than he/she had previously gotten for the 1971 Sandy Howard-Jack DeWitt-Richard Harris classic! THAT's certainly wonderful news, isn't it?
shareI first saw this film on Saturday, November 27, 1971, just three days after its initial national release, and it quickly became my favorite film of all time, a status it has largely maintained in my eyes since that long-ago day. Naturally, I've kept a close eye on any re-releases, television showings, and home-entertainment debuts of this indisputable gem, so it should not be surprising that, when this this film made its broadcast-television debut on ABC-TV in April (late March?) 1975, I read "TV Guide" critic Judith Crist's review of the movie with great interest. In her critique, Ms. Crist stated ( as best as I can remember) that Jack DeWitt's script was drawn from the Arikara Incident of 1823 (actually, DeWitt largely drew his tale--as just about everyone following this thread knows--from the life of fabled frontiersman Hugh Glass, and sewed the Arikara Incident--also involving Glass--on the end of his screenplay as the basis for a most thrilling--and emotionally-satisfying--climax), and also claimed that "something unfortunate happened to this film on the way going to or coming from the editing room--the backbone of the film was cut out, and so was the point of the plot--but that enough remained to provide the bones of a good survival epic, along with the vehicle for a remarkably variegated performance from Richard Harris". Can anyone elaborate upon Ms. Crist's comments?
Quite frankly, I was so impressed with Mr. DeWitt's expansion of a little-known (at least in the present day) incident as Hugh Glass's attack by a female grizzly which mistakenly thought that the fur trapper was menacing her cubs into a such a brilliant film that I made "The Screenwright And His Craft" the subject of my senior English term paper at Sacred Heart High School in Waterbury, Ct., I writing at length about the general nature of the labor of the screenwright before concentrating specifically upon the works of three notable film authors, Mel Brooks, Jack DeWitt, and John Milius, two of these gentlemen, of course, also being renowned directors. I even interviewed Mr. DeWitt, who, after initial contact by phone, insisted that I send him any questions that I had by letter. I did, and within nine days after mailing my letter to this brilliant author, I received his wonderfully detailed replies about screenwriting in general, "Man In The Wilderness", "A Man Called Horse" (his first collaboration with Richard Harris and producer Sandy Howard) and its first sequel (the third film in the "Horse" trilogy would not be released until 1983, two years after Mr. DeWitt's death when he was less than a month away from his 81st birthday), along with those concerning his life and future plans. In a later telephone conversation, Mr. DeWitt confirmed Ms. Crist's claims about "Man In The Wilderness"'s supposedly unfortunate editing, but did not elaborate upon them, and also agreed with a statement I quoted to him from the U.S. Catholic Conference's Film And Television Office that the film was a religious allegory not-too-successfully disguised as a survival epic. Also, I got an "A" on my paper, and have kept both it, my correspondence with and from Mr. DeWitt, and all related items in my personal library, regarding them as being among my most treasured possessions!
In a Bob Thomas interview (June 16, 1954) with Jack DeWitt and producer Wallace MacDonald, DeWitt said that as a former reporter who turned to writing crome articles, he had written 2,500 stories, "including an expose of Devil's Island. Not many screenplay writers these days have that sort of experience. The interview was about the making of a movie, "Cell 2455, Death Row," based on criminal Carryl Chessman's autobiography, which Columbia had bought the screen rights for $15,000. In 1954, low budget movie meant just that. Another reviewer of that movie on IMDb wrote that in 1960, when Chessman was finally executed after many stays of execution, the cyanide pills had just dropped in the death chamber as another stay of execution arrived a few minutes late. Wikipedia confirms that, a court secretary claimed to have misdialed the prison switchboard number so a habeas corpus motion came too late for Chessman. Too bad there wasn't a remake of the Chessman movie, with DeWitt given the writing assignment with a new grim real life ending.
shareYou're right, gerrythree! Given the brilliance that DeWitt brought to all of his scripts, such as "Gun Belt", "Man In The Wilderness", "A Man Called Horse", "The Return Of A Man Called Horse", "The Neptune Factor", and so many others, he would have done an outstanding job on a remake of "Cell 2455", Death Row"!
shareI just stumbled across this movie title when searching for "mountain men" movies, having just watched Jeremiah Johnson recently. I was surprised when reading the plot, how similar it was to The Revenant. I had no idea The Revenant was a remake. I really did enjoy The Revenant though! I do believe it deserved the IMDB score it received...but now knowing that the plot was a remake, it feels kinda wrong that the original was never ever mentioned. They didn't even use the same name. That's sad. I do want to try and get this to watch so I can compare the two.
shareLeonardo Di Caprio wins for "The Revenant" by finally allowing his hair to get mussed, while the late Richard Harris, one of the greatest actors who ever lived, was not even nominated for the far more complex performance he gave playing the same character in "Man In The Wilderness"? Tell me again about how the Oscar race is not won on the basis of knowing the right people and on being steeped in political correctness!
sharePeople have known that for decades now -- the Oscar winners are picked by the big bosses in the business, and it's all about who's been sucking who's -- well you know.
How do you think a total newcomer and noob like Jennifer Lawrence suddenly won an Oscar for a mediocre movie like Silver linings playbook, and have been giving a helluva lot of nominations ever since? She's good but not that good, she's really not.
She's definitely not unfamiliar with the 'casting couch' and she's probably been 'cast' on one several times.
I just recently saw this film for the first time in many years and forgot how good it is. However, I still prefer "The Revenant" to this because of DiCaprio's amazing performance and the incredible cinematography (very little CGI was used, with the film being shot on location in Canada and Argentina in incredibly trying conditions). If you haven't seen The Revenant how do you know how good or bad it is? I rated "Man in the Wilderness" an 8, while I gave "The Revenant" a 9. Many people automatically assume that because of film is older, it is better-and vice versa. We all bring baggage. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
shareWithout making any specific references to The Revenant, I'll just say that values have changed over the generations. Tragedy and destruction on the screen used to be accompanied by suitably sombre tones in the cinematography, set design, music, etc. These days "beautiful" cinematography, effects and technology, the physical looks of people on the screen, seem to be admired for their own sake -- no matter how incongruous with the implied mood of the events on screen.
shareWithout making any specific references to The Revenant, I'll just say that values have changed over the generations. Tragedy and destruction on the screen used to be accompanied by suitably sombre tones in the cinematography, set design, music, etc. These days "beautiful" cinematography, effects and technology, the physical looks of people on the screen, seem to be admired for their own sake -- no matter how incongruous with the implied mood of the events on screen.
share