Fitzgerald gets a lot of this. Some viewers found him sympathetic and his actions to be just a product of the time while others found him to be a loathsome bastard with few redeeming qualities.
Likewise the Ree chieftain. While his motivation is universally considered sympathetic, some viewers thought the indiscriminate nature of his actions pushed him deep into villain territory.
And You Thought It Would Fail: Due to the reports of the film going over budget and the R rating, not to mention the running time, some felt it wouldn't be much of a financial success. However, the film managed to score not only good reviews and awards attention, but also strong box office, with a worldwide total exceeding $530 million.
Averted. Leonardo DiCapriofinally got his Best Actor Academy Award with this film (He infamously has been nominated several times and lost every time before). But played straight with it not winning Best Picture, especially since most critics considered it a lock (though losing to arguably the most critically acclaimed film of 2015, Spotlight, makes this less so). Same thing goes for the score, which wasn't even nominated due to the film using more than one composer.
Base-Breaking Character: Fitzgerald is either a charismatic villain who adds some colour to the film, or a completely unnecessary Designated Villain who brings it down. Or there's a third camp who feels he's a Flat Character, but Tom Hardy's performance saves him.
Complete Monster: Toussaint is the leader of the French trappers. At first appearing to be a reasonable man doing business with the Arikara, he's revealed to be a sadistic racist who exploits them to get rich, belittling them in French in the belief that they can't understand him. Toussaint kidnaps and rapes the Arikara chieftain Elk Dog's daughter Powaqa and blames Hugh Glass's team for it, inciting the Arikara to massacre many of them in order to take out his competition. When his team encounters Hikuc, the friendly Pawnee man who helped Glass earlier, Toussaint has him lynched, displaying his corpse along with a message condemning him as a "savage".
Consolation Award: While everyone's happy that Leonardo DiCaprio finally got the Oscar, some felt that this wasn't the film he should have won it for, feeling that his performance wasn't as strong as his previous nominations.
Fountain of Memes: The bear inspired many, many jokes that awards season, whether it was being presented as a real life performer, a Sitcom Arch-Nemesis to Leo, or most infamously, a rapist.
Hype Backlash: Considering how it swept the awards and got Leo his long awaited Oscar, the backlash was inevitable. Criticisms are focused mainly on the plot and characters, citing that the technical elements (particularly its cinematography) are the main appeal.
Love to Hate: Regardless of whether you view him sympathetically or not, Fitzgerald makes for a great villain regardless. Some have even argued that Tom Hardy's performance overshadows Leo's.
The French trappers kidnapping the Ree chief's daughter, for use as their personal Sex Slave and letting an innocent hunting party get slaughtered for said crime.
Fitzgerald murdering Hawk and leaving Hugh Glass for dead. It must be mentioned that this was the result of him attempting to murder Glass to get through with it all and since he chose to stay back for the money, it seems likely that at least in a small part of his mind he has already decided it from before. As if that wasn't enough he not only drags the innocent Bridger along but he also kills Henry.
The scene where Glass hides himself inside a horse carcass.
Another scene shows Glass attempting to drink water from a stream, only for some of it to come out of a recently-sewn hole in his neck. Which he then cauterizes with gunpowder.
Related to the above, the scene where he gets the wound on his neck (the bear attack) is also unsettlingly bloody and violent.
One-Scene Wonder: The bear is only on-screen for about five minutes as an Unwitting Instigator of Doom—causing the injuries that lead to Glass being left for dead. But most people remember the violent fight with Glass, and the bear is probably one of the most memorable things about the movie.
Squick: After losing his horse, Hugh removes all the intestines from the still warm body, undresses and hides inside as if it was just some kind of tent or shack.
Visual Effects of Awesome: The bear that mauls Glass at the start of the film is obviously CGI, but it's well-animated and tactful.
Values Dissonance: In the original story, the worst Fitzgerald did was taking Glass's weapons after leaving him to die (which was considered worse than murder in the Frontier), and Glass's main motivation to find Fitzgerald was to recover his cherished gun. The filmmakers didn't think this would strike a modern audience as much, so they made Fitzgerald into a vocal racist and murderer.
Glass had already lost his wife to American soldiers, then he gets mauled by a bear and helplessly watches his own son get murdered by Fitzgerald who then leaves him for dead. He spends the rest of the film going through an utterly agonizing ordeal, enduring both the harsh elements and attacks by hostile Ree, in order to get his revenge on Fitzgerald. All the while being haunted by visions of his dead wife and son.
Bridger is manipulated by Fitzgerald into leaving Glass for dead. When he finds out that he was lied to, Fitzgerald convinces him to go along with the deception since if he told the truth, he would likely be charged as an accessory to murder. When Captain Henry offers them the promised reward money for staying to bury Glass, a shaken Bridger refuses his share. Later, when Glass is found by the expedition and Fitzgerald flees the fort, Henry angrily takes it out on Bridger who sobs that he had been lied and coerced into silence by Fitzgerald. Only Glass' word that he was telling the truth prevents him from likely getting hanged.
The Pawnee hunter that Glass encounters and later befriends, was there because he had lost his family to a raid by the Sioux and was trying to find more of his people to the South. Despite this, he goes out of his way to help Glass stay alive and get to the fort. He's later lynched by the French fur trappers in cold blood.
Hawk. He experiences a shit-ton of prejudice, goes to great lengths to keep his father alive, and dies horribly.
The Ree girl who has been abucted by the french trappers and raped by their leader (possibly more than once).
, composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto.