If you have not seen ‘The Revenant’ be careful as this post contains spoilers.
If you’ve seen Leonardo DiCaprio‘s latest film The Revenant then you know the filmmakers spared no expense to make the movie every bit intense and every bit gross. From disemboweling a horse and using its body for shelter to ingesting raw buffalo organs — DiCaprio’s portrayal legendary frontiersman Hugh Glass was very frequently nauseating. However, a more disgusting part of Glass’ tale was omitted from the film.
According to his legend, following a nearly fatal encounter with a mother bear (which does occur in the film), in which Glass was viciously mauled, the flesh on his back began to rot. Knowing that an infection would surely result in his agonizing demise, and with a wealth of knowledge about nature — Glass proceeded to locate a rotting tree stump and allowed maggots therein to eat his decaying dermis. Talk about will to live.
CinemaBlend asked DiCaprio in a recent interview, why this very vile tidbit never made it into his onscreen portrayal, and he had a very understandable answer.
Well, in the search to be authentic as possible, which is what we tried to do in this movie, there were no maggots in winter! So this whole film was in a winter landscape, and there were no… well, there were flies, but there were no maggots.
Though we can wonder how impactful this piece would’ve been, it doesn’t take away from the film at all; The Revenant had more than enough gut-wrenching scenes to satisfy even the biggest fan of Fear Factor.
Watch DiCaprio’s interview in full above.
