The Revenant: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Dohmnall Gleeson are a brotherhood of trappers

Before Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Hugh Glass gets betrayed by a fellow frontiersman and left for dead in the wilderness, the band of fur trappers in The Revenant were actually a brotherhood. The cast and crew, including Domhnall Gleeson and Will Poulter, discuss the character relationships in a new featurette for the film.

DiCaprio and Oscar-winning director Alejandro González Iñárritu begin by setting the stage for the film. In the 1800s, the Northwest American wilderness became a source of massive income for the fur trapping trade. “A pre-Gold Rush,” DiCaprio described.

“We have a group of us, the fur trappers, this crazy hodgepodge of people from all over the place,” Gleeson continued. He explained how Iñárritu saw the film as about survival, saying how the “group has to go from being in control to being at the mercy of everything.”

According to DiCaprio, “These were incredibly tough, resilient men out in the middle of the elements like any other animal in the wilderness.” As such, a great deal was required of the actors, in terms of scaling mountains and performing in similar cruel conditions.

The Revenant is playing now in limited release and will expand on Jan. 8.