WHEN MR. AND MRS. BROWN FIRST MET a bear, he was enormously polite. The couple spotted the docile creature, at a busy London train station, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and carrying a suitcase stuffed with marmalade. Following this introduction in Michael Bond’s 1958 children’s book A Bear Called Paddington, the character became a beloved pop culture star, returning in dozens of books over the decades, and in 2014, he made it to the big screen.
Paddington was a box office winner, but it was not the only cinematic success story for the species at that time. The following year, The Revenant was released, featuring an adventurous fur trapper named Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio, in an Oscar-winning performance), who also meets a bear. But this was definitely not a children’s story.…
