25 best cold-opens in SNL history
By David Rouben
16. Dr. Evil returns to roast North Korea over Sony hack
Mike Myers’ most famous SNL character may be Wayne Campbell, but it’s far from his only recognizable role. After leaving the show as a series regular, he became the face of the Austin Powers franchise, where he effortlessly switched between up to four roles. But while Austin was great, Dr. Evil often stole the show with his catchphrases, musical numbers, bumbling idiocy and constant shushing of his son.
Whenever SNL brings back Myers, they try their best to get Wayne on the show. But when that doesn’t work out, they often go to the next best thing, and in this case, it was Dr. Evil. In order to really make this a surprise, they hid this sketch behind a Christmas message from Sam Smith. And no disrespect to Smith or Taran Killam, but Dr. Evil talking about the Sony hacks is way more interesting than that.
While Evil is known for his incompetence, he takes the Sony hackers to school. The Sony hack was a widespread attack on the film studio that pressured them to pull The Interview from theaters while also releasing top-secret emails between employees. It seemed like North Korea was behind it, but they never claimed responsibility for it.
Chief among Evil’s concerns with the hack is the unoriginal name — “there’s already a GOP, and they’re already an evil organization” — Kim Jong-un watching “laser” discs and their decision to target Sony since they haven’t had a hit since the Walkman. He also thought The Interview wasn’t that great, and that a more effective strategy for killing a film is to release it in January or to have theaters screen The Love Guru — as an aside: it’s great to see Myers has a sense of humor about that.
Seeing Myers come back to SNL this late, and to bring Dr. Evil with him, was like watching Michael Jordan drop 40 with the Wizards. It was clear as day that he still has what it takes, and this sketch only made everyone yearn for Austin Powers 4 even more.