Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

In this short piece, Alasdair Stuart reflects on the work of the late Bill Paxton…

Bill Paxton felt like part of the scenery. Not in the sense that he was bad, Paxton had no idea how to turn in a bad performance, but in that he was always there. From questionable mid 90s turkeys like Navy SEALS to genre tentpoles like Aliens, Predator 2 and Apollo 13, Paxton was always on the screen somewhere at some point. And he was always great fun to watch too.

Paxton died yesterday, February 26. He was 61 and passed away due to complications following surgery. There’s an almost tangible sense of a life and career unfairly foreshortened. This was a man who was universally beloved, worked brilliantly in front and behind of the camera and radiated a deep abiding love for his work. Bill Paxton didn’t just make movies better, he made everything around him better. He was part of the scenery. A part that told you it was okay, you were home.

My first encounter with Paxton’s work was as a wonderfully blue haired and hilariously doomed punk in The Terminator. My last was as Master Sergeant Farrell, wolf-eyed grin in place as he tortured Tom Cruise and the rest of his squad in Edge of Tomorrow. Along the way, I saw him in Slipstream, Big Love. Aliens, Titanic, Haywire, Apollo 13 and countless others. In each one he disappeared into the role in a way that many actors aren’t brave enough to do. Bill Paxton wasn’t in Aliens, that was Private William Hudson. Bill Paxton didn’t play the father of betrayed Special Forces Operator Mallory Kane in Haywire, that was Mal’s dad. He had a unique everyman quality that was simultaneously recognisable and chameleonic. You always saw him. You always saw through him to the character.

His last genre foray is a perfect example of that. Agent John Garrett could so easily have been a disaster. He was part of Agents of SHIELD’s turbulent, conflicted first season where the show had to run in place with the MCU and suffered, badly, for it for a full half season. But when Garrett was introduced, things began to change. Paxton was rarely happier than playing a good old boy who loved his work and Garrett was all of those things. His relaxed demeanour and jovial informality were the perfect counterpoint to Clark Gregg’s precise, almost proper Phil Coulson. John Garrett loved his work. And you could tell Paxton loved played him.

Especially when what Garrett’s work really was became apparent…

That first season of Agents of SHIELD was a make or break and for a lot of people, it was the latter. But if you stuck with the show to the end of the first season you got to see a rare treat; Bill Paxton with the brakes off for pretty much the first time since Aliens. He still had it too; the wide eyed, mildly psychotic grin, the love for his own voice, the sense of barely contained physical threat. Paxton didn’t play many villains in his career but when he did, it was red blooded and teeth bared. He was very good at being bad. He was very good at being anything.

So, we’d like you to do something for us. Go to his imdb page, open up your streaming service of choice or your DVD collection, whichever and crosscheck them. The first thing you find with him in? Watch. Aliens is a given but we’d recommend his skeevy turn in True Lies, his terrifying work in The Last Supper and his anchoring performance in Apollo 13 for starters. None of those roles have anything in common besides Paxton and the genius he brought to each. We’ll miss him terribly. Thanks, Bill.