Why The World’s Greatest Parody Franchise Needs To Die

By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated 48 seconds ago

A few days ago, we got a deeply unexpected blast from the past. Mike Myers reprised his role as Dr. Evil, the Austin Powers villain, for a Verizon commercial. The commercial was relatively entertaining as far as corporate slop goes, with fun appearances by fellow Austin alumni like Seth Green. While the ad did a great job for advertising a phone company, it also made many people yearn for the cinematic return of Austin Powers. After all, we’re living in a golden age of reboots and revivals, so it does feel downright strange that Myers’ superspy hasn’t been on the big screen in nearly a quarter of a century.

Myers himself stoked that speculation when he made an appearance on Trevor Noah’s World Cup Watch Party. There, a fan who had recently seen the Verizon commercial asked the obvious question: “Are we ever going to see an Austin Powers 4?” To this, Myers surprisingly said “yes,” but gave no other details. This has caused a tizzy among fans and even franchise actors like Clint Howard, all of whom would love to see the franchise continue. However, as someone who absolutely mainlined this series back in the day, I can confidently say that Myers needs to do what Dr. Evil never could: kill Austin Powers off and let this beloved franchise die.

Somehow, Dr. Evil Returned

Looking at this Verizon commercial, it’s not hard to see why many people want an Austin Powers 4. For one thing, Mike Myers hasn’t lost a step with his Dr. Evil character. In fact, he’s easily the most energetic actor onscreen, which is more apparent when he acts alongside a nearly sedated Seth Green. And, of course, the over-the-top evil lair thing is particularly amusing to those of us who grew up watching Superfriends. Of course, that’s a big part of the problem: to be perfectly blunt, the main people who would enjoy another Austin Powers movie were the ones enjoying these films decades ago and all have one foot firmly in the grave.

For an Austin Powers 4 to be very successful (like The Spy Who Shagged Me, which earned $312 million against a $33 million budget), it would need to appeal to a younger demographic. This worked in the ‘90s, when teens were happy to watch movies making fun of James Bond, their dad’s favorite Boomer action franchise. Now, studios are lucky if younger audiences show up to a movie at all, and if they do, it’s because it came from someone with a pre-established YouTube presence like Curry Barker and Kane Parsons. Does anyone think they’ll turn out for a movie making fun of Bond, who hasn’t had a new movie in half a decade?

The Jokes Got Stale

Another reason the Austin Powers franchise needs to die is that, even back in the day, the jokes were getting stale. It didn’t take the movies long to run out of gags that took the piss out of 007, so they just started throwing weird stuff at the wall to see what stuck. This included giving Dr. Evil a weird midget twin (played by the late, great Verne Troyer) and coming up with increasingly bizarre stuff for Mike Myers to do. Like, the whole joke with Fat Bastard is that he’s fat and nasty. A real laugh riot, right? If this was Austin Powers at its prime, I shudder to think what a decades-too-late fourth movie would look like.

Plus, the whole strength of Austin Powers’ humor comes from the fact that it’s a parody. But good parodies are hard to make, and good parody revivals are nearly impossible (just look at the latest Scary Movie). On top of that, the parody doesn’t work anymore because Austin Powers was designed to make fun of the lighter-hearted 007 movies, like the ones starring Roger Moore. Starting with Casino Royale, the Bond franchise pivoted to being deadly serious specifically because Austin Powers had made all the super spy stuff so silly. Arguably, it’s now that much harder to make a parody of a Bond franchise that only sneers and never smiles.

Even Nostalgia Goes Bad Over Time

Again, I’m not writing this as a hater. Back in the day, I quoted the Austin Powers movies religiously and enjoyed them for the spot-on Bond parodies and over-the-top performances. But a revival would be completely doomed: it will turn off younger audiences who don’t care about its geriatric cast or its 007 jokes, and it will turn off older audiences who expect something other than recycled humor that hasn’t been funny since Bill Clinton was in office. Sure, the diehard superfans will show up, but here’s a bleak truth: like Disney found out with The Mandalorian and Grogu, a handful of diehards aren’t enough to make your movie a success.

Right now, the Austin Powers movies can stay safely ensconced in the warm embrace of our collective nostalgia. Were many of the jokes dated, problematic, and even outright unfunny? Sure, but that’s not what we remember. We remember the funny lines, the hilarious reveals, and the spot-on parodies of James Bond, and we should keep it that way. The movies are a record of what was funny back in the late ‘90s, but a fourth film would be a disaster for one final reason: they’d remind us of exactly how stupid our sense of humor was back when the World Wide Web was young!