Ethan Edwards

This movie is a giant, 119 minutes of pure cinematic power directed by John Ford and loosely based on Alan Le May's novel.

It stars John Wayne in what is arguably his greatest, darkest performance as Ethan Edwards, alongside Jeffrey Hunter.

And the premise here is brutal.

Ethan Edwards returns home after fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War, only to have his brother's family slaughtered and his young niece, Debbie, kidnapped by a Comanche raiding party.

Ethan and his adopted nephew spend years on a relentless, obsessive quest to find her.

The film takes the solid narrative framework of Le May's novel and vastly deepens it by focusing heavily on Ethan's complex toxic psychology.

And my sense of John Wayne as a kid, he's John Wayne, he's the hero, he's the good guy, he's this big guy and he wanders around and he does cool stuff.

John Wayne in The Searchers as Ethan Edwards is a monster.

He's a monster.

Racist, he's misogynist, brutal, and...

Do

you know what Ethan will

do if he has a chance? He'll put a bullet in her brain.

I tell you, Martha would want him to.

So try those out if you get a chance and if those products and service appeal to you.

So, John, I seem to remember that where we left off, we were in a pretty desperate situation.

What's going on with Ethan and Martin?

Yeah, Ethan and Martin just having fought off Scar and his people there, and we pick up here with Martin refilling his canteen as we hear this ominous music, and then he walks through this sliver in the canyon, and we see Ethan with his arm wrapped up from the injury he suffered at the hands of the Native American.

[laughs] Yeah.

I think one of the, maybe one of the fundamental problems with this movie, and it, it was coming up in our, um, conversation before the podcast, and it'll surely be in the discourse of this film, that is, like, quote-unquote, "a remake" or a version of Searchers down to the main character's name being Ethan, uh, Ethan Edwards being the, uh-

And you have the Searchers, uh, frame a number of times closely.

Yeah, there's certainly Searchers references to this mo-

I, I [laughs]

Hugh Jackman's little brother maybe.

I was about to say, the, the, the Ethan character feels like cut-rate Hugh Jackman, and the other character feels like cut-rate, uh, Kit Harington.

Yeah.

Well, it is.

I think this is months after Marty and Ethan left.

Well, it has to be because they got ambushed by Futterman.

And so, you know, a bunch of stuff has happened.

That's what's in her brain when I think she starts reading that letter.

Absolutely.

And Lars doesn't give a shit, just like he didn't give a shit with Ethan when Ethan was reading that letter.

But Lars wants information.