There was no real bear used in the filming of the grizzly bear attack scene.
One of the most memorable scenes in the movie is the incredible bear attack on Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Hugh Glass. The scene is intense, violent, and, according to Fisk, completely done though stunt men and CGI. And, no, of course there is no rape.
So there wasn’t even a trained bear for some of it?
“None. We had no real bears on set,” Fisk said. “We looked at bears, but they were all so fat. These trained bears in captivity that you see on TV shows, they don’t look like a wild grizzly bear from the 1800s.”
According to Fisk, the scene was rehearsed with the stunt department for months before they even got on set in Squamish, British Columbia. Then on the day, he dressed the area where the attack took place with 25-foot rubber trees so when DiCaprio smashed into them, he wouldn’t get injured. The actor was then strapped to harnesses attached to cables the stunt team used to yank him around. The grizzly was then added digitally in post production.
Fake horses were created for the scene in which DiCaprio cuts one open to stay warm.
The bear scene was certainly not the only jaw-dropping sequence in “The Revenant.” Later in the movie, as Glass sets out to enact his revenge on the people who left him after the grizzly attack, he must run from a group of angry Native Americans. To escape them, he and his horse jump a cliff and land on a giant pine tree. As it begins to snow, Glass cuts open the horse, takes out its guts, and crawls inside until the storm passes.
“The horse was built and the guts inside were created out of latex and hair,” Fisk said. The props department built one horse for DiCaprio to crawl inside and another horse for the chase scene in which they go off the cliff.
“We brought in 15 big pine trees, some of them 50 feet tall. And we snowed in the area,” Fisk said. “Like the bear scene, the snow around the horse was always being trampled on so between takes we were constantly using the snow machine.”
The location where DiCaprio finds the bison heard was discovered completely by accident.
Fisk says the biggest challenge he had on the film was finding the remote locations for shooting. That's largely because, as the movie was shot with only natural light, Fisk had to find locations with a south or southwest vista.
In one striking scene, Glass comes across a heard of bison, leading to a scene with a Native American offering Glass the liver of one of the bison he’s eating. Fisk said that location was found completely by accident.
“We were checking out a river one day, stopped the boats at a point, and walking up this hill we found this large vista,” Fisk said. “The sun was setting, it was the perfect time of day to see it. Everyone thought, ‘My God, this is what we’ve been looking for.’”
Fisk and his team lined the top of the hill with bushes. Computer graphics were used to create the heard of buffalo. Fisk said only one prop bison was created for the liver scene.
“The AD said, ‘Where’s the second one?’ and I told him a man can eat maybe 10 pounds of meat. Between the two of them they wouldn’t even put a dent in it.”
Fisk recalls seeing DiCaprio eat the real bison liver: “I thought Leo was vegetarian, but he went for it.”