Alejandro González Iñárritu Reveals He Has Yet To Shoot 'The Revenant' Finale, Plus Explains Movie Plot

After Iñárritu’s big Oscar win this year, it’s no surprise that folks have super high expectations for his upcoming thriller “The Revenant” starring a fully bearded Leonardo DiCaprio. Just last week, the trailer for the movie was released, showing the story that follows a hunter who was mauled by a Grizzly bear (DiCaprio) struggling to survive in a hostile environment, a brutal winter and warring American Indians to finally take his revenge against the traitorous partner (Tom Hardy) who left him for dead. “I saw this film as an opportunity to explore the possibilities and reasons for what keeps us striving to live when you have lost everything,” he said. “When I talk about losing everything I also mean health, hope or emotional relationships. So what do we have? Why do we continue?” Iñárritu explained to Grantland.

The Mexican director says it was “very positive” for the film to have shot under those brutal conditions because people these days no longer go on adventures. “Now people say, ‘I went to India … it’s an adventure.’ No: We have GPS, a phone, nobody gets lost. Those guys really were in a huge physical, emotional adventure in the unknown territory,” he insisted. “Actors were not in sets with green screens and laughing,” Iñárritu says. “They were miserable! And they really feel the fucking cold in their ass! They were not acting at all!” However, the downside to the realness of the conditions meant the cast and crew had to cut the shoot short. “The snow melted down, literally, in front of our eyes,” Iñárritu explained.

Now, the cast and crew are headed way down south to Ushuaia, in the Tierra del Fuego region of Argentina looking for snow and cold weather conditions that will allow them to shoot the final scenes of the movie. DiCaprio revealed he was not worried about the cold: “Been doing it for nine months, so—I’m very well equipped.”

As for his character saying almost nothing at all throughout the film, DiCaprio explained it was a different type of challenge for him, which he definitely wanted to experience. “It was a different type of challenge for me,” he said, “because I’ve played a lot of very vocal characters. It’s something that I really wanted to investigate — playing a character that says almost nothing.”