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When Austin Powers was released in 1997, it was seen as instantly recognized as a brilliant parody of everyone's favorite secret agent... 007, James Bond. Lampooning and deconstructing all the nuances and plot points of the iconic spy, the film became an instant classic. However, no one saw the immense popularity of the film's villain Dr. Evil coming. A perfect parody of villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Dr Evil took the world by storm.
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No, Mr. Powers. I expect them to die
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This is Dr. Evil. I shall look forward personally to exterminating you, Mr. Bond
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And this is Ernst Stavro Blofeld. One of these characters is a globally recognized icon, and the other used to be
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Throw me a frickin' bone here. I'm the boss. Need the info
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Ernst Stavro Blofeld made his first on-screen appearance in the James Bond film
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from Russia with love. His face was never shown, and he is only ever seen stroking his trademark
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white cat. Over the course of the first five Bond films, he's built up as an evil mastermind
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brilliant tactician, and supreme manipulator, always off-screen, lurking in the shadows. The
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very definition of a big bad, until in 1967's You Only Live Twice, he's finally revealed
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Allow me to introduce myself. I am Ernst Stavro Blofeld. The iconic visage established by veteran actor Donald Pleasence would go on to become a global phenomenon
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Blofeld was as synonymous with the spy genre as the titular special agent 007
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going on to appear as the primary antagonist in 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service and 1971's Diamonds Are Forever
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Blofeld quickly became a vital part of the highly successful ongoing Bond franchise
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Audiences all over the world loved to hate him. However, where there's success, there inevitably comes failure
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After the release of Diamonds Are Forever, a long-running lawsuit over the rights to Bond
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Blofeld, and Spectre came to a close. Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman lost a suit to Kevin
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McClory, a writer and producer who at one point had co-authored an original screenplay titled
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Thunderball. Ian Fleming subsequently took the story, when no film financiers would step up to
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make it, and turned it into a novel titled Thunderball. Blofeld, Spectre, and possibly
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many of the big screen quirks of Bond himself all flowed directly from his original unproduced draft of Thunderball And you know what The courts agreed McClory won the suit And so the Bond franchise killed off Blofeld And yet Blofeld popularity and influence pervaded for decades to come
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from the obvious homage of Inspector Gadget's nemesis in Dr. Claw to the head of the Team Rocket faction in Pokemon, Giovanni
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Blofeld had imitator after imitator. Allow myself to introduce myself. In 1997, when Mike Myers decided to put together a Bond parody film, it was only natural that a Blofeld-like character would be featured somewhere within the piece
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Titled Austin Powers' International Man of Mystery, Myers would create a villain that was so dastardly and so Machiavellian that it bordered on farce
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Someone who was pure evil. Now, Mr. Evil. Dr. Evil. I didn't spend six years in evil medical school to be called Mr. Thank You Very Much
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And here's where something truly strange happened. Dr. Evil became so wildly popular that he superseded Blofeld in the popular consciousness
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You didn't have to know who Blofeld was to think Dr. Evil was funny
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Sure, it helped if you were in on the bit, but the volcanic labs, quirky henchmen, and outlandish schemes didn't feel like a hyper-specific pastiche, even though it was
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It felt like a universal critique on the archetypal villain in the 1960s spy films
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From his instantly imitable, highly affected vocal pattern, I'm going to place him in an easily escapable situation involving an overly elaborate and exotic death
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to his iconic catchphrase of One million dollars. Dr. Evil was winning hearts and minds left and right
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His iconic bald head and scar, something that's more than a little referential in the Donald Pleasence version of the character
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his all-gray ensemble, and his penchant for lap cats, the parody isn't exactly subtle
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But no one thought twice about it. Dr. Evil quickly cemented himself in the cultural memory
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as the spy villain to end all spy villains. And this was only furthered with the two sequels
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Austin Powers The Spy Who Shagged Me and Austin Powers in Goldmember At the time Eon the production company that makes all the Bond films wasn that concerned with it However in 2006 when Eon regained the rights to Casino Royale the only novel they didn have the rights to for decades
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a new question began to be asked. How do you update Bond for the 2000s
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They chose to go back to the start, create an origin story for Bond
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and bring him back to basics. And it worked. Daniel Craig's take on Bond proved to be a massive success for the franchise
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But after the faltering misstep of Quantum of Solace and the prestige returned to form in Skyfall
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Eon was looking for a way to pay respects to the franchise's lengthy history by reintroducing
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Blofeld. And here's the rub. How do you make him different enough from Dr. Evil to take seriously
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as a filmic antagonist without losing all the elements that make him Blofeld? How does the new
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Daniel Craig grounded Bond incarnation incorporate a villain as operatic as Blofeld? And then on top
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of that already sizable challenge, how do you reckon with the fact that the parody of Blofeld
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is more well-known than the original creation? You just don't get it, do you? It's no hassle
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but all I'm saying, they're gonna get a... I'm just... Because despite not having a feature film
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appearance since 2002, Dr. Evil was as popular as ever, as evidenced by Mike Myers' return in
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full Dr. Evil costume for both the SNL 40th anniversary cold open and a General Motors
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commercial. I will help save the world first, then take over the world. So longtime Bond
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screenwriters Neil Purvis and Robert Wade came up with a new spin on the character. They decided
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to make Blofeld Bond's brother. Right. Yes, that was their big idea. In 2015's Spectre
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Christoph Waltz plays a shadowy villain who is named Oberhauser. He's pulling the strings of a new insidious organization codenamed Spectre
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However, about halfway through the film, after Bond has been ensnared at Oberhauser's lair
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the antagonist confesses that his father adopted Bond as a child. After his parents were killed and after being consumed with jealousy
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he reimagined himself as a righteous weapon named Ernst Stavro Blofeld Got your name The film feels out of step with the rest of the Bond films that Craig starred in Everything from the logic of how Bond ends up at Blofeld compound
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to how the villain gets his iconic scar feels self-conscious, and like it's second-guessing itself at every turn
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It knows it has to give you Blofeld in a narrow-collar jacket petting a cat
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but it doesn't really want to. So it distracts from the immediate introduction of the concept
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that Bond and Blofeld are literal adoptive brothers. Well, that's brothers for you
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They always know which buttons to press. Which is increasingly bizarre when you think about the fact
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that Dr. Evil and Austin Powers are twin brothers too. Dr. Evil's not your son
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I am. You both are. What? It's almost like they were so worried about being perceived
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as nothing more than a big budget version of Austin Powers, that they went round and round
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in circles until someone suggested making the two characters' thematic connection literal. And boom
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now there really is no difference between Blofeld and Dr. Evil. Well, except Dr. Evil being more
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interesting. In some ways, it's almost like the Bond franchise turned Blofeld into a parody of
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Dr. Evil. And when the film was released and underperformed critically and commercially
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the Broccolis knew they had messed up. So for Craig's final outing as Bond
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they tried to set things right. In the aftermath of Blofeld's death, Q says
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It's a good thing you're not actually related, or you'd be dead too. A winking quip to the audience saying
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Yes, yes, we know we overthought the Dr. Evil thing, but he's dead now
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Let's move on. Dr. Evil's cultural ubiquity sank the modern reinvention of Blofeld
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He could have been a criminal mastermind for the ages, rebirthed anew
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Instead, he's just a punchline and one of the biggest missed opportunities in modern cinema
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I had a brother. His name was Felix Leiter. The seemingly precise critique of Meyer's beloved villain
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completely derailed any chance that the longest and oldest movie franchise had at reinvention
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And that's how Dr. Evil killed Blofeld
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