There are those who think that Academy Award-winning director Alejandro G. Iñárritu can do no wrong. We are not those people. Although Birdman won many accolades last year, include Best Picture and Best Director (and we liked it just fine), the majority of his films have been bloated painfests so artificially arch and intentionally pathetic that our heartstrings came alive and then strangled themselves to death. (Yeah, we’re looking at you, 21 Grams and Babel and Biutiful.)
But the newly released trailer for The Revenant sure as hell makes it look like Iñárritu is on a role. The upcoming frontier thriller stars Leonardo DiCaprio as explorer Hugh Glass, whose team leaves him for dead after he’s attacked by a bear, and who must navigate the perilous icy wilderness to survive and take his revenge on John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy). Iñárritu shot the film in remote Canadian locations using natural light, and judging from what we see here, that wasn’t a problem for cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (Birdman, Gravity), who seems to have once again produced the sort of breathtaking imagery that’s made him a household name… among film buffs, at least.
Related: This Is Why The Oscars Loved ‘Birdman’
Whether or not The Revenant is any good, of course, remains to be seen. (All the pretty photography in the world couldn’t save Heaven’s Gate, for example.) But there’s little denying that this trailer does its job, and gets us pumped to find out for ourselves if The Revenant continues Iñárritu’s streak of impressive filmmaking, and sends him rocketing right back to his sadness slump.
Check out the trailer below, and mark your calendars. The Revenant hits select theaters on Christmas Day, just in time for a last-minute Oscar qualifying run, before its wide release in January 2016.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
