As we all know by now, Leonardo DiCaprio is going all out to win an Oscar this year. No expense has been spared, no Oscar consultant left unhired, no Oscar voter left behind. And we’re not even the heat of the Oscar season yet, and Leo will probably get a dozen magazine covers and twenty-million shorter industry-heavy profiles and interviews. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Does Leo have what it takes? Probably. As of this moment, all of the Oscar prognosticators say Leo is in the best position to take home the Best Actor Oscar. And that’s before The Revenant has even been released! But this week, the industry screenings have started. So now people are getting their first look at the completed film, and the buzz is still happening. Something else is happening too – there’s an online debate about whether Leo’s frontiersman character gets raped by a bear. Seriously. The Revenant may include a “rapist bear.”

We knew Leonardo DiCaprio did some dark stuff for his new film The Revenant (namely sleeping inside an animal carcass and eating raw bison), but according to a (perhaps slightly hysterical) early viewer, it gets a whole lot weirder, at least on screen.

‘DICAPRIO RAPED BY BEAR IN FOX MOVIE’ Drudge Report’s homepage screams.

‘The explicit moment from Oscar-winning director Alejandro Inarritu has caused maximum controversy in early screenings,’ the mammoth US news site goes on to claim. ‘Some in the audience escaped to the exits when the Wolf of Wall Street met the Grizzly of Yellowstone. The story of rural survivalism and revenge reaches new violent levels for a mainstream film. The bear flips Leo over and thrusts and thrusts during the explicit mauling. He is raped — twice!’

The bear attack in question featured briefly in the trailer for the movie, though there was nothing to suggest the level of sexual aggressiveness recounted above.

The level of bear-to-Leo contact (I can’t believe I’m writing this sentence) seems to vary from person to person, with another viewer saying that “the bear flips Glass [DiCaprio’s character] over on his belly and molests him – dry humps him actually.”

[From The Independent]

Roger Friedman at Showbiz411 is one of the critics saying that the bear “dry-humps” Leo’s character, that it’s not really rape. Perhaps we should say Leo’s character gets sexually assaulted by a bear? Which is the kind of thing that has probably led to many “bear rape” Google searches, I’m sure. For what it’s worth, “bears raping humans” is not a thing. It’s not something that happens with any kind of historical frequency. It’s also worth noting that in the book, Leo’s character is mauled…by a female bear protecting her cubs. And in the trailer, this is the same (CGI) bear that Leo shoots in the face. Anyway, mauling does not equal rape. Rape is rape. Bear rape is rape. Bear mauling is not bear rape. I can’t believe I’m actually writing these words.

It’s also worth noting… in the book, the mauling is described in fastidious detail and there is no real “sexual” element to the description, from what I understand. Alejandro Innaritu and Leo decided to add MOAR bear sexual assault in the film, for some reason. Perhaps to ensure that Leo would get that Oscar. I mean, getting sexually assaulted by a bear? #OscarGold.

PS… Some poor Fox spokesperson was sent out to make this clarification: “As anyone who has seen the movie can attest, the bear in the film is a female who attacks Hugh Glass because she feels he might be threatening her cubs. There is clearly no rape scene with a bear.”

Photos courtesy of ‘The Revenant’.