By Erin Free
THE AUSTIN POWERS SERIES (1997-2002)
“I can’t even tell you how huge it was in our house…that’s why I wanted to do Austin Powers,” writer, actor, and comedian, Mike Myers, said in the documentary, Everything Or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007. “Austin Powers is out of pure love for James Bond.” Mike Myers (Saturday Night Live, Wayne’s World) – who was raised in Canada by Liverpool, England-born parents, which inspired a love of British pop culture – was at the peak of his comic powers when he penned 1997’s Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery, which swirled inventively and hilariously around the eponymous super swingin’, shagadelic, sixties-era British super spy, who is awakened from a cryogenic sleep and thawed out in the not-so-groovy nineties. Peppered with manifest nods and winks to The Swinging Sixties, and lots of references to James Bond (villain, Dr. Evil, bears more than a slight resemblance to 007’s nemesis, Blofeld, while the female characters’ names make Pussy Galore sound tame) and other spy movies, Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery saw Myers’ comical super spy become a cultural icon, leading to two more equally hilarious and highly successful films featuring the dentally challenged secret agent – 1999’s Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and 2002’s Austin Powers In Goldmember, which featured sixties icon, Michael Caine, as Austin’s father. The Austin Powers movies even influenced the more serious, Daniel Craig-era James Bond. “We had to destroy the myth because Austin Powers fucked us,” Craig famously said. “I’m a huge Mike Myers fan, don’t get me wrong, but he kind of fucked us, and made it impossible to do the gags anymore.”
OUR MAN FLINT (1965) & IN LIKE FLINT (1967)
In a scene from Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Mike Myers’ eponymous spy switches on his TV to a scene from In Like Flint, which he mentions to his lady love, Vanessa Kensington (Elizabeth Hurley), is his favorite movie. A truly wild and over the top creation, it’s fitting that James Coburn’s super spy, Derek Flint, would be more to Austin Powers’ taste than the more restrained James Bond. Flint was, however, very much influenced by 007, with 20th Century Fox opportunistically creating their own American secret agent after watching Bond triumph at the box office. An agent for ZOWIE (Zonal Organization World Intelligence Espionage), the ultra-cool Flint was a multilingual genius inventor, judo expert, and inveterate ladies’ man charged with saving the world in the loopily entertaining comedy actioners, Our Man Flint (1965) and In Like Flint (1967). The films were big hits, and former supporting player, James Coburn (The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape), became a huge international star. “In Marrakech, little kids were coming up to me in the casbah, asking me where my harem was,” the actor laughed to Roger Ebert in 1980. America’s Columbia Pictures also devised their own response to James Bond with the Matt Helm films – The Silencers (1966), Murderers’ Row (1966), The Ambushers (1967), and The Wrecking Crew (1969) – which starred Dean Martin as the eponymous operative. Notably, the Matt Helm series was produced by Irving Allen, who had once been the partner of James Bond producer, Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli. Ironically, the duo fell out over Bond, with Allen never seeing the potential of Ian Fleming’s British agent!
THE HARRY PALMER SERIES (1965-1967)
The film series (1965’s The Ipcress File, 1966’s Funeral In Berlin, 1967’s Billion Dollar Brain) featuring British spy, Harry Palmer – played with brilliant wit and nuance by the great Michael Caine, and created for the page by espionage novelist, Len Deighton – were not only influenced by James Bond, but grew out of it. When Deighton’s 1962 novel, The Ipcress File (which came out just after the first Bond film, Dr. No) sold well, James Bond producers, Harry Saltzman and Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli, approached the author to write the script for the next 007 film, From Russia With Love. Little of Deighton’s screenplay was utilised, however, so Saltzman instead decided to use The Ipcress File and its sequels as the beginning of a new spy franchise. But this secret agent would be much different to 007. “We wanted him to be the antithesis of Bond,” Michael Caine told Uncut in 2006. “Obviously, there wasn’t any competition with Bond because Harry wasn’t another great, suave spy. He was more like a real spy, an ordinary guy who you wouldn’t look at twice in the street. So we gave him glasses…and the studio didn’t like it! They said, ‘There’s never been a leading man since Harold Lloyd who wore glasses, and he was a comedian!’ And then they saw the rushes where Harry cooks a meal. They said, ‘Everybody’s gonna say he’s a fag! John Wayne wouldn’t cook anything! It looks like a faggot cooking!’ These were the words that they actually used!” Typically, the studio was wrong, and Harry Palmer still stands as Britain’s second best recurring movie spy.
DEADLIER THAN THE MALE (1967) & SOME GIRLS DO (1969)
“The Bond producers, Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, asked me to do Dr. No, and I turned the job down,” British actor, Richard Johnson, told Cinema Retro. “I was under contract to MGM anyway, so that gave me a reasonable excuse. Eventually they offered it to Sean Connery, who was completely wrong for the part. But in getting the wrong man, they got the right man, because it turned the thing on its head and he made it funny. And that’s what propelled it to success.” Though he passed on 007, Richard Johnson (The Haunting, Khartoum) got another stab at the spy genre when 20th Century Fox reimagined the classic literary character of Bulldog Drummond (created by H. C. McNeile under his pen name of “Sapper” way back in 1920) as a direct rival to the James Bond franchise, with 1967’s Deadlier Than The Male and 1969’s Some Girls Do. In the first of these two action comedies, Drummond – a suave Korean War veteran turned insurance investigator – trails a pair of sexy female assassins, while the second involves a world threatening plot and a mini-army of female robots, which were an obvious influence on Austin Powers’ fembots. “Deadlier Than The Male was fun, but Some Girls Do was frightful,” Johnson told The Consulting Detective. “These were silly fantasies. We had a sense of humour about it, and we understood that it needed that.” Incidentally, another man who nearly played Bond – Aussie, Rod Taylor – also found his way into 007 territory again with 1965’s The Liquidator, in which he plays a man who haphazardly tumbles into the spy game.
OPERATION KID BROTHER (AKA OK CONNERY) (1967)
The Europeans have long been masters at ripping off, reappropriating, and exploiting popular American and British film genres, most notably with westerns and sword-and-sandal fantasy adventures. Not surprisingly, when James Bond went cinematically supernova in the sixties, the European film industry’s exploitative wheels started to spin, with the creation of movie characters like Italy’s James Tont (Lando Buzzanca), Germany’s Jerry Cotton (George Nader), and the French OSS 117 movies. The most bizarre, however, was unquestionably 1967’s spoof comedy, Operation Kid Brother (aka OK Connery), which starred Neil Connery, the real life younger brother of James Bond himself, Sean Connery. After reading in a tabloid that Neil was unable to continue his job as a plasterer in Edinburgh after accidentally misplacing his tools, the hilariously opportunistic Italian producer, Dario Sabatello (One Dollar Too Many), offered him the lead role in what would become Operation Kid Brother aka OK Connery. The first time actor (whose voice was dubbed by another performer) stars as a plastic surgeon and expert archer (!) drafted into action by a spy agency in a wild and wooly take on the Bond ethos. Cheekily, Sabatello also brought in a number of 007 alumni – Bernard Lee (who played M), Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny), Adolfo Celi (the villain in Thunderball), Anthony Dawson (a baddie in Dr. No), and Bond girl, Daniela Bianchi (From Russia With Love) – for supporting roles. For lurid opportunism, Operation Kid Brother is only outdone by For Your Height Only (a 1981 Filipino curio starring the diminutive Weng Weng as Agent 00) and Double Agent 73 (Doris Wishman’s softcore parody toplined by the circus-breasted Chesty Morgan).
FATHOM (1967)
With Bond such a success in the sixties, producers hit on an obvious way to cash in: female spies. Along with the likes of 1967’s Caprice (starring Doris Day and directed by Frank Tashlin) and Come Spy With Me (starring Andrea Dromm and Troy Donahue), 1966’s Modesty Blaise (in which Joseph Losey refigured Peter O’Donnell’s famous comic strip to mesh with the Bond era), and TV’s Get Smart and The Avengers (which featured iconic lady operatives in Agent 99 and Emma Peel, respectively), sixties sex bomb, Raquel Welch, was also gifted secret agent status in the cartoonish comic actioner, Fathom. The impossibly beautiful and volcanically sexy actress plays Fathom Harvill, a skydiver touring Europe with a US parachute team who is drafted by a Scottish secret agent to recover an atomic triggering mechanism. The film’s famous opening credit sequence – in which Welch alluringly puts together a parachute – even has a direct connection to 007. “The guy who did that, Maurice Binder, also did the title sequence for Barbarella, where Jane Fonda’s floating and taking off her spacesuit,” Welch told Men’s Health. “And he did a few of the James Bond title sequences too, with the gun barrel and the women in silhouettes. He understood what was sexy and what wasn’t. He knew how to be sexy without being profane about it, and without being too graphic. I’ll be honest, I didn’t really understand that sequence at the time. When we were shooting that opening moment in Fathom, it seemed silly to me. They had to explain it to me, and even then, I was like, ‘Okay, whatever you think.’”
JOHNNY ENGLISH (2003) & JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN (2011)
“I didn’t like the first film…it was shit,” actress, Rosamund Pike, proclaimed boldly to FilmInk when asked what her thoughts were on the first Johnny English. “I speak my truth. It’s fucking annoying that everyone in this fucking business never says what they think.” Though penned by the obviously in-the-know Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (who worked on the scripts for the Bond flicks, The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day, Casino Royale, Quantum Of Solace, Skyfall, and Spectre), 2003’s amusing 007 send-up – starring rubber-faced Rowan Atkinson (best known for his much loved comic creations, Mr. Bean and Blackadder) as the titular British not-so-superspy, whose personal assessments of his abilities are far, far different from what he’s actually capable of – didn’t sit well with Rosamund Pike, who instantly baulked when she was offered a role in the 2011 sequel, Johnny English Reborn. Her feelings about the original aside, Pike had also played a Bond girl in 2002’s Die Another Day. “Yes, I didn’t like the first Johnny English at all, and I didn’t like the female character in it, who I thought was a mockery of a Bond girl,” she told FilmInk. “Having been a Bond girl and belonging to that family, I didn’t want to do a film that was undermining it in any way. That changed when I read the Johnny English Reborn script; they’d gone much closer in a good way to the Bond franchise, especially in terms of making a very convincing story that is very much like a modern Bond film. It was very clever, and funny – more of a homage than a piss-take.”
THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
When James Bond – along with his gadgets, guns, and globetrotting adventures – became an instant hit with 1962’s Dr. No and 1963’s From Russia With Love, his influence wasn’t just felt on the big screen. Always quick to latch onto a trend, American television also started creating spy series with a comic edge, with the likes of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (1964-1968); The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1967-1968); the period actioner, The Wild, Wild West (1965-1969); and the more broadly comic Get Smart (1965-1968), created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. When director, Guy Ritchie (Snatch, Sherlock Holmes), revamped The Man From U.N.C.L.E. for the big screen this year, it was refracted through a prism of reverence and reference. “This was inspired by our love of Sean Connery-era James Bond, Michael Caine as Harry Palmer, The Odessa File, John Le Carré movies…all those classic sixties and seventies movies,” producer, Lionel Wigram, told Collider. “It was our homage, if you like, to those films.” Though this sixties-era, Cold War-set comic thriller about the uneasy working relationship of CIA agent, Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill), and KGB operative, Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer), failed to make a killing at the box office, it still stands as a stylish and entertaining nod to the classic 007 films. “It’s Bond-esque,” Wigram told Cinema Blend. “Guy Ritchie has a very unique tone though, and that’s very much there too. It’s a Guy Ritchie version of a sixties spy movie, but it does have some Bond in it. As with Sherlock Holmes, which we made as fans of the books, we made this as fans of spy movies.”
THE XXX SERIES (2002 – )
Marketed as James Bond for a new generation, 2002’s xXx was – as director Rob Cohen (The Fast And The Furious) says during the film’s DVD audio commentary – the result of a script that meshes extreme sports with a classic secret agent story. To most critics, xXx was just another big studio action flick designed to separate as many middle-American teenage boys from their pocket money as possible. But its story – extreme sports guerrilla internet terrorist, Xander Cage (played with typically amusing posturing gusto by Vin Diesel) is tapped by a government agency to foil a plot to destroy the world – was dosed with so much pop culture enthusiasm, and the action was played out with such creative, full force flair that xXx (which spawned the inferior Ice Cube-starring 2005 sequel, xXx: State Of The Union, and the 2017 Vin Diesel comeback xXx: The Return Of Xander Cage) somehow rose above its less than blue ribbon premise. This was a James Bond-style flick aimed at a decidedly contemporary audience. “I remember when I used to see James Bond movies, the one thing that I didn’t relate to was that this guy seemed like he probably went to school for twelve years to be a secret agent,” Vin Diesel told DVD File in 2002. “I was like, ‘No, that’s not going to be me.’ With xXx, I didn’t want to create a new Bond, but rather create an original approach to the spy genre. The biggest difference between xXx and all of its predecessors and contemporaries is that Xander Cage doesn’t want to be a secret agent. That’s the first characteristic that makes him fascinating: this guy is the quintessential reluctant hero.”
THE KINGSMAN SERIES (2014 -)
Based upon the comic book by Mark Millar (who has worked on characters such as Superman, The Avengers, and The X-Men) and directed by Matthew Vaughn (who helmed the ball-tearing adaptation of Millar’s Kick Ass, along with X-Men First Class), Kingsman: The Secret Service is an unashamed throwback to the days when James Bond was more about style, swagger, and gadgets than angst and personal demons. Slick, funny, and inventive, the hit film tells of a super-secret spy organisation that recruits unrefined but promising street kid, Gary “Eggsy” Unwin (Taron Egerton), into its ultra-competitive training programme – where he is taken under the wing of Colin Firth’s debonair agent – just as a global threat emerges from Samuel L. Jackson’s twisted tech genius. “It’s a post-modern love letter to spy films,” Matthew Vaughn told Superhero Hype. “It incorporates all the stuff that I used to love about the Bond films, like the gadgets, for example. In Skyfall, when Q says, ‘We don’t do gadgets anymore, Mr. Bond’, and Mr. Bond doesn’t even raise an eyebrow, I’m like, ‘Why not? Fuck, if you’re James Bond, if you’re any spy right now, and if you’ve got a shoe with a blade with a high poisonous toxin at the end of it, or a watch that can fire a dart, or an umbrella that if you’re in real trouble means that you can’t get shot and you can still shoot people back, what self-respecting modern spy would say no to that? Sure, gadgets in theory are quite old-fashioned, but hey, a blade in your shoe could be bloody handy if you’re a spy!” Matthew Vaughn continued the gadget filled fun with the sequel Kingsman: The Golden Circle in 2017, while a prequel, The King’s Man, is set for release in 2021.
INCEPTION (2010)
“The Bond influence on Inception was intentional because, for me, growing up with the Bond films, they’ve always stood for grand scale action,” writer/director, Christopher Nolan, told BBC News. “Bond films have stood for the promise of being taken to some place bigger than you could have imagined. In dealing with the human mind and dreams, my mind naturally gravitates towards the Bond films as that sort of expression of cinematic potential. By the end of the film, you feel that Inception could go anywhere and do anything.” Though far more cerebral and mind-bending than any Bond movie, Nolan’s hit 2010 thriller resounds with a stylish mood redolent of 007. In the film’s recognisable but futuristic setting, a paradigm-shifting new technology allows skilled thief, Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), to steal valuable secrets from his targets by burrowing deep into their subconscious during the dream state, when the mind is at its most vulnerable. Cobb’s rare ability has made him a coveted player in the cutthroat world of corporate espionage, a new frontier for white collar, piercingly intelligent criminals. A stellar scene in which Dom attacks a remote, snow covered fortress is nothing short of an audition reel for Nolan to helm a future 007 flick. “I love James Bond, and I’ve talked with the producers over the years, but nothing’s ever worked out,” the director told The Daily Beast. “They do a great job, and they don’t need me right now. I will absolutely be first in line to see the next Bond film as I have been for all of them.”
THE JASON BOURNE SERIES (2002-)
“They could never make a James Bond movie like any of the Bourne films because Bond is an imperialist, misogynist sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people,” actor, Matt Damon, told The Miami Herald in 2009. “He’s repulsive.” Though speaking perhaps more of the vintage Bond films than the rebooted Daniel Craig-starring series, Matt Damon’s bullish statements about 007 make one thing clear: his films featuring amnesiac assassin, Jason Bourne, have always been a bristling response to the James Bond series, rather than a love letter to it. “The key thing about this series, unlike a lot of other very successful and enjoyable franchises, is that there is no cynicism at all,” Tony Gilroy – the screenwriter of The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum, and the writer/director of The Bourne Legacy – told FilmInk in 2012. “There was never anything cynical about Bourne. It doesn’t have the wink of James Bond.” The Jason Bourne films are, indeed, far from the more ironic 007 flicks. “Bourne is this paranoid guy,” Damon told Today. “The government is after him. He’s a serial monogamist who’s in love with his dead girlfriend, and he can’t stop thinking about her. He’s the opposite of James Bond.” Ironically, the gritty, hard-edged Bourne films are often credited with influencing the darker, more intense tone of the Daniel Craig films, as well as their frenetic action sequences. “I’m a huge fan of the Jason Bourne films,” Daniel Craig told WELT Online. “I don’t have a problem with being compared to the Bourne films. They’re great, but we’re so not those movies.”
If you liked this story, check out our features on the making of Casino Royale; the top ten Australian James Bond homages; the best films from each Bond; and the actors who could become the next Bond.
