"Star Wars" goes rogue.

• Author: Gehring, Wes D.
• Position: REEL WORLD

WITH DISNEY'S "Star Wars" spinoff "Rogue One" (though not an official episode) set for a Christmas release, it seems appropriate to examine a major inspiration for the original "Star Wars" (later retitled "Star Wars: Episode IV--A New Hope.") This stimulus came from the classic John Ford Western, "The Searchers" (1956). This monumental horse opera, which the 2008 American Film Institute designated as the greatest Western ever made, also was a pivotal influence on another pop culture classic, Martin Scorsese's 'Taxi Driver" (1976).

For George ("Star Wars") Lucas and Scorsese, who often double as film historians, Ford's picture was instrumental to their signature movies. Indeed, both men annually rewatch "The Searchers." Ford's film is about John Wayne's most-provocative character, cowboy Ethan Edwards, and his obsessive search for a niece (Natalie Wood) abducted by the Comanches. The pursuit assumes Odyssey-like proportions, consuming eight years. As a former Confederate, it has taken Edwards three years after the Civil War before coming home to his brother's ranch. The missing time and Edwards' demeanor, as if he is clutching a ghost, suggest post traumatic stress disorder.

Almost immediately, a neighboring rancher has some cattle stolen, resulting in this hollowed-out Wayne and another Ford stock company regular (Ward Bond) leading Texas Rangers in an attempt to recover the livestock. However, it actually was a Comanche ploy to draw most of the men away in order to execute a killing raid. Consequently, one of the movie's most memorable scenes finds Wayne returning to his brother's burning homestead and a massacred family, save for two kidnapped nieces, with the oldest soon found to be dead, too. (The seized eight-year-old younger girl is played by teenager Wood's real-life sister Lana.)

The corresponding "Star War" sequence occurs when Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) is drawn away from his aunt and uncle's interstellar homestead. Similar to Edwards, when Skywalker returns to a burned-out dwelling and a murdered family. Though Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) already had been taken prisoner at this point, Skywalker eventually will be involved in her rescue. However, for a replication of Edwards' bloody revenge rescue, one must go to "Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones" (2002). Shmi Skywalker (Pernilla August, Luke's paternal grandmother) has been taken by an indigenous Sand People tribe. Her son Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christenson...