Furthermore, a novelisation could include footnotes—a device impossible in cinema. Imagine a footnote every time Austin makes a 1960s reference that lands flat in the 1990s. “ The Batman TV show, starring Adam West, had ended its run only two years prior to Austin’s freezing. He was unaware of the Michael Keaton interpretation. ” This would transform the novel from a mere adaptation into a meta-commentary on cultural memory. Ultimately, a novelisation of Austin Powers would almost certainly be a commercial and critical failure. It would be too weird for fans of the film and too juvenile for literary audiences. But as a theoretical exercise, it is a perfect object. It would capture the very essence of Austin Powers himself: a man profoundly out of time, attempting to apply an outdated set of tools (spy novels, wood-panelled prose, the passive voice) to a modern problem.
At first glance, the idea of a novelisation for the Austin Powers film series seems absurd. The trilogy— International Man of Mystery (1997), The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), and Goldmember (2002)—is a purely cinematic creation. Its humour relies on sight gags (a man frozen for 30 years trying to use a payphone), auditory puns (“Allow myself to introduce… myself”), and the manic, shape-shifting physicality of Mike Myers playing multiple roles. How could the quiet, linear medium of prose possibly capture the shagadelic chaos? austin powers novelisation
The solution would be to lean into deadpan literalism. The novelisation would describe these events with the solemnity of a war memoir. “The steamroller, a construction vehicle of significant tonnage, passed over the diminutive figure of Fat Bastard. Remarkably, the compression resulted not in organic disruption, but in a temporary, two-dimensional state from which the Scotsman verbally protested.” The absurdity is heightened, not diminished, by the lack of visuals. The reader’s imagination is forced to do the work of the film editor, which is inherently funnier. The novel’s greatest asset would be its ability to play with voice. Mike Myers’s performance is iconic, but a novel could capture Austin’s idiolect through punctuation, capitalization, and rhythm. Every “Yeah, baby!” would be italicized. Every “Oh, behave…” would trail off with an ellipsis dripping with innuendo. Dr. Evil’s dialogue, complete with the unnatural pauses and the raised pinky, would be rendered as: “Very well, Austin. I shall now… (he paused to stroke the Persian cat)… unleash the laser .” He was unaware of the Michael Keaton interpretation