Austin Powers/Headscratchers

Austin Powers

 * Why did they have to
 * Well, you have to admit, there is a certain amount of resemblance....
 * I'm not seeing it. I mean, the plot twist would have been a little more believable if the actors they cast for the two looked a little more alike, but...
 * Is Fat Bastard originally from the present day of the 1990s or the past era of the 1960s?
 * Yes.
 * Where the hell did Felicity go between The Spy Who Shagged Me and Goldmember?
 * It's a joke on how Bond always gets a new Girl of the Week even when they end the movie still together.
 * No, there's two Austins, remember, after the time travel? One got hooked up with Felicity, the other beat Goldmember.
 * What? One of the Austins became the other after traveling ten minutes into the past.
 * Why would he? The first Austin traveling back in time prevented the motivation for the second one to travel back in time. Both defeated Doctor Evil, the Idol of Friend decision was thwarted, no reason to use the time machine for the second Austin. That time line now has two Austins. That also means that there's another time line where Dr. Evil wins and Felicity dies. Shockingly perfectly reasonable and in line with some theories on time travel that basically say that continuity and history are more amorphous than we perceive them to be(according to my physics prof).
 * During the credits you see Future Austin coexisting with Past Austin, they have a threesome with Felicity, and one of them stared in Goldmember, the other just settled down I guess.
 * Oh dear I've gone cross-eyed...
 * I suggest you just don't worry about it and enjoy yourself.
 * How did Austin and Vanessa's wedding night last two years?
 * I think the two years passed between her turning out to be a robot and the streaking, or whatever.
 * Maybe he's just that damn good in bed
 * That would add whole new dimension to his "Well, I'm spent" line.
 * Well if his pee built up for all those years he spent frozen, maybe other things did too.
 * How did Number Two come back for The Spy Who Shagged Me and Goldmember when Dr Evil barbecued him at the end of International Man of Mystery? For that matter, why wasn't there so much as a scratch on him?
 * If that same death chair thingie failed to kill Mustafa, why would it have a different effect on Number Two?
 * He didn't die. and if you look, he does in fact have a large burn scar on his cheek.
 * One of the video releases of Austin Powers had "alternate endings", one of which clearly shows that Number Two survived. For The Spy Who Shagged Me, they wound up using most (if not all) the alternate endings as canon!
 * "I'm not dead, but I'm very badly burned!"
 * If Austin could go back to the sixties, he could theoretically look at himself in the past... but if he could go back to the past and see himself, how could he unthaw in the nineties and... oh dear... I've gone cross eyed...
 * The thing that bugged me about that quote in the movie is that it's not even close to a paradox. If Austin went back in time, and saw himself in the sixties, it wouldn't change the fact that he'd be thawed out thirty years later.
 * I like to think that Austin was speaking his train of thoughts aloud and when he got to the actual paradox, he just said "oh dear, I've gone cross eyed." Presumably, the thought was that he could unthaw himself right then and there.
 * Isn't Scott about a decade too young to have been conceived in 1969?
 * He may have had his growth accelerated.
 * I mean he's physically too young, not chronologically too young. If he was conceived in '69, he would be 30 in the second film, but he looks and acts about 20. I suppose he could have had his growth de-celerated instead, but that seems like a bizarre thing even for Dr. Evil's outfit to do.
 * Perhaps he was put into stasis for a couple years after being born, as a safety measure.
 * Well Seth Green was only born 5 years after Scott Evil, so it's not that big of a difference.
 * To be fair, in the first movie, it was implied that he was conceived artificially. The whole part about him being conceived naturally back in 1969 was, (like most of the events of the second movie,) just a messy Retcon played for laughs.
 * It should be noted that in the third film Scott slowly looses his hair and becomes completely bald by the end.
 * Going with the time travel/alternate time line explanation above: The original time line (before either Dr. Evil or Austin traveled back in time) which we'll denote as Time/Space A, had a Scott who was a test tube baby made from preserved semen and presumably one of Frau's ovum. Scott A was born in 1979 after Dr. Evil's minions got tired of waiting for their overlords return. After the time travel Dr. Evil A created a branching time line from 1969 which will be known as Time/Space B. Dr. Evil A had sex with Frau B, conceiving Scott B who is 10 years older than Scott A and thus is seen going bald in Time/Space D (the one created when Dr. Evil C and Austin (B or C) travel back in time to the 70s). For clarity Time/Space C was created when Austin B did his 5 minute jump to help Austin C defeat Dr. Evil C. See it's really quite simple and makes perfect sense!
 * Yes, I'm sure it makes sense. Give us a flowchart of it and we'll agree with you.
 * Weren't you listening to the exposition from Basil Exposition? Don't think about it. Just sit back and enjoy. Or you'll go cross-eyed.
 * I thought Scott was doing that to himself, intentionally, so he could get Dr. Evil's love...
 * Much simpler explanation: Scott really is about thirty, he's just really immature and a slacker, since Frau and Dr. Evil's organization basically spoiled him.
 * What was the deal with Vanessa turning out to be a fembot?
 * What confused me was that she calls her mother in the first film. Fembots don't have mothers!
 * It is possible that the real Vanessa died in the explosion of Dr. Evil's lab at the end of the first movie. The fembot Vanessa was the one that was held at gunpoint by Alotta Fagina. Makes sense, doesn't it?
 * Another possibility was that Vanessa was (like Boomer in Battlestar Galactica) an unwitting sleeper agent, who was programmed to believe she was the real Vanessa (who was presumably replaced sometime previously). If we are to believe that Vanessa was a fembot the entire time this makes it slightly more palatable - she really did fall in love with Austin before her assassain programing kicked in, and wasn't (consciously) just acting that way to get close to him.
 * Even if that is the case, Basil states that they knew Vanessa was a Fembot from the beginning. Meaning they apparently partnered Austin with something that could turn on him any moment. For no reason.
 * If we take Austin's reaction at its most literal, then there probably never was a real Vanessa: her "mother" didn't have any children, and Doctor Evil (or, more likely, Number 2 and Frau, while the Doc was in orbit) planted her as a sleeper agent, as said above. What always strikes me as both a hilarious gag is Austin's immediate reaction that she was "a fembot... all along!" All along?!? I think my first reaction would be to assume Vanessa just recently got captured and replaced by Doctor Evil! Hopefully she's not still tied up somewhere waiting for Austin to come charging to the rescue...
 * If he assumes her to have been one all along, that means he can be single again.
 * What's the deal with people not getting that the implausibility and plotholes her being a fembot all along creates are supposed to be part of the joke? The fact that it doesn't make sense is why it's supposed to be funny.
 * In Goldmember, there's the scene where Nigel Powers wants to see Mini-Me's doodle. Okay, he's just comparing sizes, but isn't Mini-Me about four years old? Eeeewwww...
 * Where did you get that idea? MM was cloned some time between 1967 and 1997.
 * Yeah, he's a little person, not a kid. That was actually why Powers was comparing sizes as, stereotypically speaking, little people, like black men, are packing.
 * Why were Dr. Evil and Mini-Me the only ones arrested at the beginning of Goldmember? Why not the rest of his organization?
 * They probably were, just that they didn't bother to show us a few odd hundred trials for whatever the legal term is for "aiding and abetting a supervillain".
 * But that doesn't explain how they got out.
 * Frau was busy.
 * The rest of his organization dressed up as trailer trash, and Austin ignored them. Besides working for Dr. Evil, what have they done to deserve jail?
 * It's much like the issue of why the builders and workers on the Death Star had to die. These people must have known, in some capacity, who they were aiding and abetting (and even if they didn't it wouldn't matter in the eyes of the law, wherein Ignorance Is No Excuse). (P.S. As for the Death Star thing, I always thought that the machine was completed and just looked incomplete as part of the trap, as it was designed to. But take that to the Star Wars IJBM page if you want to talk about that.)
 * "Ignorance is no excuse" is shorthand for "ignorance of the law is no excuse." Ignorance of the facts is often an accuse; for example, a cab driver who unwittingly picks up a fleeing criminal is not considered an accessory after the fact.
 * The actual legal term for all this is mens rea, the non-literal definition of which is essentially "Did the person take these actions either knowing they were illegal or while having malicious intent?" While building a superweapon would not be illegal, since they were doing so on the orders of the head of state, it does display malicious intent... you don't work on something capable of blowing up a planet (and the predecessor of which had already done so) without being considered to have malicious intent. Dr. Evil's goons are doing both... they're working for a criminal madman and taking actions they know are illegal, but they also have malicious intent, being that they work for someone who's repeatedly tried to conquer and/or destroy the world. They're essentially terrorists (and that's likely what they'd be accused of in court, as well... terrorism).
 * How can Austin see the English subitles that are part of his movie, but NOT the Spanish subtitles me and every other Argentinian gets?
 * He does, he just ignores them.
 * He can't speak Spanish.
 * For that matter, what happens with Vanessa when she starts speaking in Spanish in the dubbed version? Does she start speaking in English?
 * I doubt it.
 * She starts speaking Spanish with an exaggerated South American accent. In the Spanish (from Spain) dub at least.
 * I was about to post about how the mojo thing works - That is to say, if the mojo was taken out in 1969, then how did he use it in the past? Without his mojo he'd not be able to do the first movie's mission, since he would be missing his mojo when it first happened! But THAT means Dr. Evil would have no incentive to send a henchman back in oh no I've gone crosseyed.
 * For one reason or another, Austin's mojo disappeared at that instant, that is, at the exact same "time" FB went back in time and stole it. Off the top of my head, no, it doesn't make much sense.
 * I don't know of any other Time Travel story that's used this logic, but in a weird way, it might make sense if Austin's mojo vanished at the same moment that Fat Bastard vanished from the present to go change the past. In a way, it was the use of the time machine in the present that's the causal trigger for the event (everything after "switch time machine on" is just the means to that end), and the effects follow from that point, not from the past. Changing the past becomes impossible; only the present and future can be changed by manipulating the past. In that same theory, if you went back in time and saved JFK, our view of the past wouldn't change: JFK would just suddenly appear in the present (at the moment the time mission began), probably 30 years older and with a full memory of an alternate lifetime that, from our point of view, didn't happen. It's weird, and I don't know of any other story that works that way, but it does kinda, sorta make sense. But really, I suggest you don't worry too much about these sort of things, and just have fun!
 * The "Wild West Rangers" episode of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers uses this logic (explicitly; one character even expresses surprise that it works that way). And see Meanwhile in the Future.
 * Fabiana Udenio (Alotta Fagina) was wayyyy too hot for a cheesy movie like this. It just bugged me.
 * There is no such thing as "too hot". For any purpose.
 * One of the Bond films was named "Octopussy" and that didn't stop them from casting a really hot girl in it.
 * A really hot girl who'd already worked on an earlier, much better Bond film.
 * "Hot" is subjective.
 * I have a pretty good awnswer for mosts of these questions... Rule of Funny
 * At the start of International Man of Mystery when Austin has hold of Dr Evil's agent in the disco and Dr Evil shoots his agent with a crossbow to stop him from talking, why doesn't he just shoot Austin instead and avoid all the trouble and failure over the next three films?
 * For the same reason he won't just let Scott get the gun from his room - he wants to construct an elaborate, unnecessarily slow-moving method of death, then leave him alone and not actually witness him dying. Just gonna assume it all went to plan. What?
 * How did the time machine get back to the past? The car time machines don't need anything to travel but themselves, but Dr Evil's time machine looks like it needs to be in the past as well as the future.
 * It was probably a plan Dr. Evil concocted and began about the same time as he began plans to cryogenically freeze himself... time machine requiring a portal at both ends, way to keep yourself in stasis, natural compliment. The only reason he didn't do it in the first movie is that it probably hadn't been taken out of storage and repaired, or he just wanted to try a new plan before falling back on an old one.
 * Right when Dr. Evil has arrived in 1969, Number Two has walked up to him and said (i paraphrase): "we have recieved your message from the future". Case closed, i think.
 * Ironically that would've been a perfect answer to Scott's own IJBM question of why, if Dr. Evil has a working time machine, he didn't go back and kill Austin when he was totally helpless. Answer: Dr. Evil can only travel to times and places where his time machine already exists. He can't go back and strangle an infant Austin in his crib because the time machine didn't exist before the 1960s. And he can't go back and kill Austin "while he's on the crapper" (as Scott suggests) because the time machine only exists in Dr. Evil's secret fortress. Even if he does travel back in time he still has to find Austin, wherever he is in that time period, and ambush him in a moment of weakness. And he could do that just as well in the present, so there's no point in traveling back in time. So basically, while trying to write a scene that satirizes one of the biggest gaping plotholes in the standard time travel plot, the writers inadvertently created a scenario that fills in one of the biggest gaping holes in the standard time travel plot. Whoa. Did I blow your mind?
 * In The Spy Who Shagged Me, there's a scene on the island where Felicity keeps grabbing Austin's binoculars off him, despite the fact that they're still around his neck. But when she tows him into the tent, he bangs his head and she walks in without him, there's no sign of the binoculars, the string they hang on, or that anyone dropped them. WTF?
 * If I had to guess, I'd say they probably couldn't figure out a safe way to have Mike Myers hit his head and fall down with the strap still around his neck. But they didn't want to jettison the joke so they fudged the scene continuity a bit. Or maybe the strap broke when Austin smacked his head. I dunno.
 * How can Nigel Powers still be alive in the 2000s? If I had to take a guess at what his age is in the 60s, he had to be at least in his fifties.
 * He stays young forever by being awesome.
 * Mind you, that flashback scene was of Michael Caine in the 60s. As for Caine himself, see above entry.
 * He could've possibly frozen himself at one point in the past. He's a secret agent, Austin looks like him, and it could be an example of Generation Xerox. He could've also been frozen for part of the time Austin was.
 * Where the hell did Mr. Bigglesworth go?
 * Whenever you don't see him in the movie he's off doing his own evil plots and being foiled by the Rescue Rangers.