Walton Gogginsis easily one of the most interesting and beloved actors working in show business today, and while it may seem like he simply appeared fully formed inJustified,The Shield,or wherever else you first noticed him (maybe evenFallout,The Righteous Gemstones, orThe White Lotus), he’s actually been a working actor for over 30 years. That means there are decades of surprising and strange Walton Goggins appearances to catch up on if you only know him from his more recent work. You might know he was inPredators, you might even know he was inThe Bourne Identity, but did you know one of his first movie roles was opposite a frozen-in-timeMel GibsoninForever Young?
The movie isn’t held up as the greatest (or most memorable) entry in the Gibson canon, with54% onRotten Tomatoesand a slightly worse audience rating, but there are a couple of interesting things about it. For starters, it was written by an up-and-coming screenwriter namedJ.J. Abrams, who was in his mid-20s at the time and only had a couple of produced screenplays under his belt. Also, it was directed bySteve Miner, who had a real “grown-up drama” phase in the ‘90s but is better known for directingFriday the 13th Part 2,Friday The 13th Part III, andHalloween H20(starringForever Young’s ownJamie Lee Curtis).Forever Youngis more straight-faced than those masked killer movies, but it’s weird in its own right.
Who Does Walton Goggins Play in Forever Young?
Walton Goggins has a small role inForever Young, but he does get a face full of pure, unfiltered Mel Gibson rage. In the movie, Gibson plays a military pilot in the 1930s whose girlfriend is seemingly killed in a car accident. Not wanting to face the grief, he volunteers for an experiment that will leave him frozen in suspended animation for one year. Unfortunately,things go wrong, and he doesn’t wake up until the ‘90s, looking exactly like he did, but reeling from the shock of a 50-year nap and dealing with a world that just thinks he’s unstable. And this is all before a side effect of the freezing process causes him to start rapidly aging.
Goggins plays a guard at the military base where Gibson goes to try and find out what happened to him, and he has a real cute baby face and high-pitched voice. He was maybe 20 when he filmed his scene, and it’s easy to see why he backs down when Gibson starts bellowing threats in his direction, butit’s wild to think ofmodern Goggins playing someone so meek. These days, he would single-handedly knock Gibson back into the freezer for another 50 years and then run off with his girlfriend. That’s not what happens here, though, and things end up much happier for Gibson’s character. Even the failures of 1930s cryogenic technology are addressed, teasing a future where other characters can more safely freeze themselves, so everyone wins (except for Goggins' guard).
Forever Young
