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Twister star Bill Paxton has been honored by his son, James Paxton, in a special way in the new standalone sequel, Twisters.
Paxton, who died in 2017 from a stroke after complications from heart surgery, led Jan de Bont’s 1996 action adventure alongside Helen Hunt and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Nearly three decades after Paxton starred as the retired tornado wrangler and estranged husband of Hunt’s university professor Dr Jo Harding, his eldest child James, 30, made a brief appearance in Lee Isaac Chung’s movie as a way to pay tribute to his father and his fans.
*Warning – Minor spoilers ahead for ‘Twisters’*
In Twisters, James cameos as an angry motel guest who threatens to leave a negative review, all while a tornado is bearing down on them. As meteorologist Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and tornado chaser (Glen Powell) try to warn the guests about the imminent danger, James’s character gets swept away in the storm with his partner.
“It’s an Easter egg for the fans of Dad and the original,” James recently told Entertainment Weekly of his cameo. “I did this one for Dad.”
He added: “I wanted to be a conduit for his spirit there and cheer everyone in this production on to success, because I know he would be.
“I wanted to do something that really honors his presence in this new chapter and really do something for him,” he continued. “And I realized there’s a lot of amazing people involved in this that I would love to get to know. So it ended up feeling like the right thing to do, to be representative of Dad there.”
Paxton’s death at age 61 came 11 days after he underwent heart surgery. Following his death, his family – wife, Louise, and their two children, James and Lydia – filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Los Angeles hospital and the surgeon. More than four years later, in 2022, they agreed to settle the lawsuit.
Earlier this month, it was announced that James would be taking his father’s place to play outlaw Jedidiah Dooley in Adam Rifkin’s Western, Last Train to Fortune, which stars Malcolm McDowell as a schoolteacher Cecil Peachtree.
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McDowell previously revealed he had been trying to get Last Train to Fortune made for decades and even had Paxton and the director Lindsay Anderson on board with the project in 1944. Sadly, Anderson died later that year and the script was abandoned.
“I said, ‘I’ve always loved that script. It’s such a beautiful script, really,’” McDowell explained of his decision to take another look at the project. “‘Why don’t we get James Paxton to do it?’ He’d be the same age as his dad was, almost. A little bit younger, but even better.’”
Twisters is out now in theaters.
