Where do you rank this with other Mountain Man movies?

There really aren't a lot of true Mountain Man movies out there. I define this Western subgenre as movies taking place in the Rocky Mountains during the 1820s-1840s, and dealing with the interactions of fur trappers with Indian tribes.

The only major ones in the last 50 years are this film, Charlton Heston's "The Mountain Men", the first film version of the Hugh Glass story, called "Man in the Wilderness", and Robert Redford's "Jeremiah Johnson". A recent low budget Mountain Man movie called "Iron Brothers" is not bad for a cheap movie. Back in the 1950s and earlier, there were "The Big Sky" with Kirk Douglas and "Across the Wide Missouri" with Clark Gable.

For me, The Revenant ranks below Jeremiah Johnson and Man in the Wilderness (My 1 and 2 spots) and about equal to or slightly better than Heston's The Mountain Men. For a movie that really feels like it takes place in the Mountain Man era, you really cannot beat Jeremiah Johnson no matter how arty and stylized you make your film.

The Revenant is more polished and slick than these older films, but there's something about the feel of it that's inauthentic. It is just too far removed from the mood of the actual Mountain Man histories and fictional novels I have read.

I have this problem with almost all Western movies made after the early 1990s. "Tombstone" and "Geronimo, an American Legend" and "Open Range" were probably the very last of what I consider authentic Westerns to be made. The later ones have too many historical inaccuracies or video game inspired scenes.

I think the current generation of moviemakers is not nearly as steeped in Wild West lore as older generations, so they just can't really get the 'feel' of a Western right.