How Austin Powers Made James Bond Take Itself Seriously Again
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The post How Austin Powers Made James Bond Take Itself Seriously Again appeared first on Consequence.
Upon its release in early May 1997, Mike Myers and Jay Roach’s Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery became a pop culture phenomenon.
Born from Myers’ faux rock band, Ming Tea, it saw the Wayne’s World star employing his typical knack for quirky personas and clever parody to poke fun at 1960s British psychedelia and campy spy cinema. Consequently (and ironically), its irresistibly fun quips, characters, and look became a defining part of the late 1990s zeitgeist in America, England, and elsewhere.
Primarily, International Man of Mystery — as well as its more successful, elaborate, and ridiculous sequels: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) and Goldmember (2002) — was an affectionately astute and meticulously constructed send-up of the James Bond movies. In fact, Myers and company did such a good job taunting Ian Fleming’s franchise that they permanently pushed the series (and the genre) into a more realistic and mature direction.
As Daniel Craig famously confessed to fan site MI6 Confidential in 2014, his grittier reboot saga — which began with 2006’s Casino Royale — “had to happen the way it did.” He continued: “I can’t see it happening any other way. We had to destroy the myth because Mike Myers fucked us — I am a huge Mike Myers fan, so don’t get me wrong — but he kind of fucked us; made it impossible to do the gags.”
Granted, he’s speaking about the cumulative impact of the Austin Powers trilogy, but International Man of Mystery itself certainly did enough to demonstrate why James Bond (and espionage films in general) needed a reinvention.
Obviously, that outcome wasn’t the creators’ main intention. Rather, as Myers told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017, he derived the character and movie as a “tribute” to his late father, who “influence[d]” his comedic tastes by introducing him to “James Bond, Peter Sellers, The Beatles, The Goodies, Peter Cook, and Dudley Moore.”
Naturally, Powers’ appearance and way of speaking were also inspired by Radio Caroline DJ Simon Dee, fictional detective Jason King, and the BBC series Adam Adamant Lives!. Even so, and as Myers clarified in the Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007 documentary, “Austin Powers [was made] out of pure love for James Bond” above all else.
Like its two successors, International Man of Mystery is packed with so many overt and subtle allusions to the James Bond movies that it would take an entire essay to explore them all. (As such, we suggest you check out the thorough breakdowns provided by Film School Rejects and Universal Exports).
That said, we’d be remiss not to mention some of the bigger ones. For instance, beyond the title International Man of Mystery and the Powers persona working as overt references to 007 himself, nearly every other major character in the movie provides a tongue-in-cheek nod to someone from the Bond films.
Chiefly, Dr. Evil (who was almost played by Jim Carrey) is a caricature of Donald Pleasence’s take on criminal Ernst Stavro Blofeld in You Only Live Twice.
Then, you have Basil Exposition illuminating M’s penchant for in-depth explanations; Number Two lampooning Largo from Thunderball; Random Task spoofing Oddjob from Goldfinger; and Frau Farbissina imitating both Rosa Klebb from From Russia with Love and Irma Bunt from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Each of them taps into the Bond series’ propensity for eccentric characters.
Perhaps most importantly — due to its commentary on Bond’s perpetual chauvinism — Alotta Fagina (Fabiana Udenio) mocks the series’ proclivity for sexualized female antagonists and “Bond girls” such as Goldfinger‘s Pussy Galore, Thunderball‘s Fiona Volpe, Goldeneye‘s Xenia Onatopp, and Moonraker‘s Holly Goodhead.
The movie’s sharp satirization continues when Myers and Roach point out that like Dr. Evil, most Bond bad guys operate out of lavishly impractical and fantastical secret lairs. (In fact, Dr. Evil’s volcanic domain is a direct dig at Blofeld’s hideaway in You Only Live Twice.)
Similarly, and as Film School Rejects noted, “most, if not all, Bond villains are vessels of corporate greed. They are industrialists and entrepreneurs whose primary, and often only, motivation is money.” Case in point: Dr. Evil’s scheme to hold the world hostage unless the U.N. pays his absurd ransom of “one hundred billion dollars.” Of course, those world leaders don’t give him what he wants, so Dr. Evil drills a nuclear warhead into Earth to set off the volcano.
Unsurprisingly, many of Bond’s adversaries possessed comparably outrageous weaponry, just as a few of them — Blofeld, Largo, The Spy Who Loved Me’s Karl Stromberg, and Live and Let Die’s Franz Sanchez — kept deadly sharks as well. (That said, only Dr. Evil fused a fondness for dangerous fish with Auric Goldfinger’s love of lasers.)
These parallels, Collider’s Mike Shutt aptly concluded, “took the menace out of any elaborate trap the villain would put Bond in.”
His point is further solidified when International Man of Mystery highlights how Bond’s rivals consistently avoid killing him immediately after they capture him. Instead, they put him in extravagant traps, explain their plan, walk away, and — as Dr. Evil puts it — “assume that it all went to plan.” When his son, Scott, asks why they don’t just shoot Powers (and his accomplice, Elizabeth Hurley’s Vanessa Kensington), Dr. Evil replies: “Scott, you just don’t get it, do you?”
Apparently, Bond’s past writers didn’t, either.
Speaking of Ms. Kensington (and going back to the aforementioned commentary on sexism), arguably the biggest indictment International Man of Mystery makes against the Bond franchise is its clichéd portrayal of 007 as a relentless and irresistible womanizer. True, Powers — like the first Bond, Sean Connery — exploits his very hairy chest, and he does try to coerce Ms. Kensington into having sex at multiple points.
Yet, his charming self-deprecation and genuine curiosity about Ms. Kensington’s life show that he truly values her as an equal partner in multiple ways. (Plus, he’s far from conventionally handsome, unlike Connery and his protégés.)
Likewise, Roger Ebert observed in his review, Ms. Kensington is presented as a “liberated feminist British secret agent who reacts to Austin’s seduction techniques as if he were a bug that should be squished.” In contrast to so many “Bond girls,” she can resist his initially superficial and requisite advances, and she only sees him as a romantic and sexual option when they’ve built sufficient trust and familiarity.
Undoubtedly, Myers and Roach’s scrutiny allowed International Man of Mystery to point a considerate yet critical mirror back at Bond. Additionally, this first film got so big over the subsequent years that both The Spy Who Shagged Me and Goldmember earned more at the box office than the Bond entries released around the same time (The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Die, respectively).
Clearly, as Shutt surmised, audiences’ “interest had clearly shifted away to the films that knew they were silly [Austin Powers] from the ones where you were not quite sure if they knew [James Bond].” (Die Another Die’s tsunami surfing scene is a fine example of that tonal confusion.) Therefore, Shutt added, the Bond series needed to “escape [the] specter” of the Austin Powers trilogy.
With 2006’s Casino Royale, it absolutely did. For one thing, it served as a symbolic do-over in two major ways: it adapted Fleming’s first Bond novel and it overtook 1967’s parody (starring Peter Sellers) to become the definitive cinematic version of Casino Royale.
Among its greatest revisions to the formula was terrorist Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), a legitimately sadistic and dangerous antagonist whose torture of Bond is horrifying and edgy. Correspondingly, Craig’s vulnerable and inexperienced — yet also suave and daring — portrayal of Bond was refreshingly three-dimensional and bold. There’s also Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), a “Bond girl” who’s as smart, independent, and capable as she is beautiful.
Her relationship with Bond is adequately grown-up and moving, too (just look at their touching shower scene). Furthermore, her death at the end of Casino Royale is so impactful that it turns Bond into an understandably traumatized and vengeful person in the follow-up, 2008’s Quantum of Solace.
Admittedly, the last three Bond movies (Skyfall, Spectre, and No Time to Die) somewhat reverted back to outrageous tropes and twists of yesteryear. (Namely, Spectre aping Goldmember’s surprise that Bond and Blofeld — like Powers and Dr. Evil — are actually brothers.) Nonetheless, the Craig era has largely retained the grittiness, sophistication, and realness with which it began.
Of course, spy cinema as a whole has changed a lot over the last twenty years, with the Bourne and Mission: Impossible franchises also leaning toward high-octane action/drama with practical explanations and developed personalities. You could even argue that Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman trio offers a similarly sensible and modernized version of the classic spy comedy.
Even so, it’s surely Bond that’s rebounded most. From its elegant cinematography and grander musical scores to its relatively grounded side characters, cutting-edge gadgets, and baddies, Fleming’s favorite field agent has unmistakably gotten more serious, intelligent, and believable thanks to Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.
How Austin Powers Made James Bond Take Itself Seriously Again
Jordan Blum
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