John Wayne’s classic 1956 western The Searchers is one of the most influential movies ever made, and it’s inspired everything from Star Wars to Taxi Driver. Directed by western genre pioneer John Ford, The Searchers revolves around Civil War veteran Ethan Edwards, who’s been struggling to find a new purpose in life since the end of the war. When his niece is kidnapped in the night, he embarks on an incredible years-long journey to find her. Ethan ultimately realizes he can’t have a nice, quiet, peaceful life, and that he belongs out on the frontier, seeking justice and retribution.

From Martin Scorsese to Steven Spielberg, a lot of young cinephiles were inspired by The Searchers when they watched it as a kid, and many of those young cinephiles took that inspiration in their later filmmaking career. The themes of The Searchers are so strong and cinematic that their influence has extended far beyond the western genre. Its influence can be seen in the epic war drama Lawrence of Arabia, the post-apocalyptic actioner Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, and the moralistic vigilante thriller Hardcore, among many others.

10

The Missing

When Ron Howard finally put his stamp on the western genre in 2003’s The Missing, he took plenty of inspiration from The Searchers. The Missing is essentially a remake of The Searchers, with an even bleaker take on its themes of revenge, justice, and fractured family dynamics. Set in New Mexico in 1885, The Missing centers on a medicine woman on the frontier who reluctantly teams up with her estranged father to find her kidnapped daughter.

Tommy Lee Jones plays the Wayne role as the grizzled, aging gunslinger who embarks on the search, opposite Evan Rachel Wood as the missing girl and Cate Blanchett as her mother. The Missing is very much on the same track as The Searchers, but it also rectifies one of The Searchers’ biggest problems with a more respectful portrayal of Native Americans. The Missing’s authentic Apache dialect has been widely praised.

9

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

When Disney decided to start making spin-off movies set in the Star Wars universe, its first order of business was a prequel explaining how the Rebels got a hold of the Death Star blueprints before the events of the original movie. Rogue One director Gareth Edwards drew inspiration from a wide range of sources in making the film. The climactic battle scenes are inspired by Vietnam War movies like Apocalypse Now and Chirrut Îmwe is based on the title character in The Tale of Zatoichi.

The opening scene of Rogue One mirrors that of The Searchers. Young, pig-tailed Jyn Erso is hidden by her parents when their homestead is attacked by Director Orson Krennic and his Imperial cronies. Similarly, at the beginning of The Searchers, young Debbie is protected by her parents when their homestead is attacked by the Comanches.

8

Who’s That Knocking At My Door

Scorsese is one of the world’s most noted fans of The Searchers, and the influence of Ford’s western masterpiece can be seen all over Scorsese’s work. It’s referenced heavily in Scorsese’s first ever feature film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door. The story revolves around a Catholic Italian-American man wrestling with the rage and insecurity he feels after learning about something horrible that happened in his girlfriend’s past. That has nothing to do with The Searchers, but the lead character is obsessed with Ford’s movie.

When Harvey Keitel’s J.R. meets Zina Bethune’s “The Girl” on the Staten Island Ferry, he regales her with his comprehensive analysis of The Searchers. J.R.’s obsession with The Searchers ties into his obsession with masculinity and the insecurity he feels when that masculinity is challenged. It’s a lot deeper than just a movie reference.

7

Hardcore

In Quentin Tarantino’s book Cinema Speculation, he discusses the parallels between The Searchers and Paul Schrader’s gritty neo-noir thriller Hardcore. He even speaks to Schrader himself about the film’s inspiration. Hardcore stars George C. Scott as a conservative Midwestern businessman whose daughter goes on a church retreat to California and doesn’t come back. While searching for her in Los Angeles, the father is horrified to learn that his daughter has started working in the adult film industry.

Much like The Searchers, Hardcore sees a stoic antihero trying to save a young female relative who ultimately doesn’t want to be saved. And much like The Searchers, Hardcore contrasts traditional conservative values with radical new liberal beliefs. According to Cinema Speculation, Hardcore would’ve been more like The Searchers if the studio hadn’t forced Schrader to include a happy ending.

6

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, director George Miller named all the biggest influences on the Mad Max movies in terms of their themes and aesthetic. He listed a wide variety of movies, ranging from Ben-Hur to Safety Last! to Howl’s Moving Castle to Once Upon a Time in the West. One of Miller’s biggest influences on the look of the post-apocalyptic wasteland and on Max’s characterization as a vengeful lone-wolf warrior was The Searchers.

In Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, when Max is up on a hill in the dead of night, keeping an eye on the biker gang camped out in the distance, Miller recreates a shot from The Searchers. The composition is practically identical to The Searchers’ shot of Ethan sitting atop a mountain and looking out at the Comanche camp. Just like Ethan, Max is a man out of his time, trying to do the right thing.

5

Paris, Texas

Wim Wenders’ Palme d’Or-winning 1984 neo-western drama Paris, Texas has been noted for its similarities to The Searchers. It revolves around a lonely recluse who teams up with his son and embarks on a road trip to track down his missing wife – the boy’s mother – who’s been out of their lives for years. This adventure isn’t quite as high-stakes as The Searchers, but it explores the same themes.

At the time of its release, Paris, Texas was lauded for harking back to the gritty, intimate character portraits of the New Hollywood movement in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. In the ‘80s, mainstream cinema had fallen into the commercial trappings of trite clichés and Hollywood endings. Paris, Texas has more in common with Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, and Midnight Cowboy than the average ‘80s film.

4

Star Wars: Episode II – Attack Of The Clones

George Lucas has incorporated The Searchers’ influence into the Star Wars saga from the very beginning. Luke Skywalker returning to his homestead to find it up in flames following a brutal attack is borrowed from Ethan Edwards returning to his brother’s burning homestead. But Lucas laid on the influence of The Searchers even thicker when he returned to make the prequel trilogy. A key second-act sequence of Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones is practically a mini remake of The Searchers.

When Anakin returns to Tatooine, he learns that his mother has been abducted by Tusken Raiders. So, he rides off into the desert to track her down and bring her captors to justice. But by the time he reaches her, he’s too late to save her. In broad strokes, that’s exactly what happens in The Searchers.

3

Lawrence Of Arabia

While he was preparing to shoot his epic biopic Lawrence of Arabia, David Lean repeatedly watched The Searchers (via MTV). Lean referred to Ford’s movie to figure out how to shoot desert landscapes in the most breathtaking, cinematic way possible. All of Ford’s westerns are renowned for their shots of desert landscapes – he was famous for taking his cameras to Monument Valley – but The Searchers, in particular, is full of iconic landscape cinematography along Ethan’s journey.

Freddie A. Young’s stunning landscape photography ended up being one of the main reasons why Lawrence of Arabia became such a beloved movie masterpiece and such a recognizable staple of pop culture. Clearly, those repeat viewings of The Searchers paid off. Now, Lawrence of Arabia is similarly studied by cinematographers and cinematography aficionados to figure out how Lean pulled it off.

2

Saving Private Ryan

When Spielberg took on Saving Private Ryan, The Searchers was one of the key touchstones in his approach to the material. There’s an obvious parallel between the story of a Civil War veteran searching for his missing niece and the story of a World War II platoon searching for one of their fellow soldiers. Spielberg approached the film as a big, bleak, cinematic John Ford western set on the barren battlefields of the Second World War.

Spielberg makes this parallel clear when he copies Ford’s iconic doorway shot from The Searchers. When the Army arrives at Private Ryan’s mom’s house to deliver the news that another one of her sons has been killed in action, she’s framed in the doorway like Ethan Edwards. Saving Private Ryan could be described as a remake of The Searchers set during World War II.

1

Taxi Driver

Before directing his own gritty, modern-day retelling of The Searchers, Schrader wrote one for Scorsese. Taxi Driver takes the basic premise of The Searchers – a traumatized war veteran embarks on a dark quest to save a young woman from her captors – and translates it to contemporary New York City. Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle returns from Vietnam with PTSD and insomnia. He takes a job as a cabbie to occupy his time and ends up setting his sights on liberating 12-year-old sex worker Iris, played by Jodie Foster.

It’s easy to see the parallels: Travis is Ethan, Iris is Debbie, and her despicable pimp Sport is the Comanche leader. The Searchers was already one of the darkest and most violent westerns ever made. But Scorsese managed to make it even darker and more violent in Taxi Driver.

Source: Cinema Speculation, Vanity Fair, MTV