6. It's Difficult To Understand Much Of The Dialogue
Narrative and artistic criticisms are one thing, but technical issues are something else entirely. There seems to be a bit of an adage developing in the world of cinema: wherever Tom Hardy looms, dialogue incoherency will surely not be far away. Nevertheless the truth still stands: many audience members have reported extreme difficulty when it comes to understanding everything that The Revenant's characters are saying. This is fairly understandable in some scenes, like the opening battle, which is so frantic and loud that inaudibility is realistic and potentially intentionally disorientating. But it continues throughout the film: Tom Hardy's monologue about his father finding god in a squirrel, for example, is a struggle to make out at best. That the movie has a relatively uncomplicated narrative helps prevent this from becoming a ruinous issue, but in a project so character-driven, clarity of dialogue is essential.
