‘Mystery Men’ Made Fun of Superheroes 20 Years Ago, Before Superhero Movies Were the Thing

Superhero movies have changed a lot in 20 years. They’re ubiquitous, for one thing, having emerged as the default form of blockbuster. That wasn’t the case in 1999, a year where the big screen heroes were Liam Neeson with a lightsaber, a shag-adelic super-spy, an office drone turned kung fu master, and Indiana Jones by way of Brendan Fraser. 1999 wasn’t just pre-Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor. It was pre-Spider-Man and Wolverine, too.

To really see just how different things were 20 years ago, you only have to look at the superhero movie output of each year. 2019 dropped Captain Marvel, Shazam!, Avengers: Endgame, Dark Phoenix, Spider-Man: Far From Home, and the upcoming Joker film. 1999 had… Mystery Men. And that’s it.

Unleashed on theaters 20 years ago, Mystery Men starred a bunch of known comedians as unknown super-zeroes. Ben Stiller played the ineffectual raging lunatic Mr. Furious; William H. Macy played the family man Shoveler, who is good at shoveling; Janeane Garofalo played the Bowler, a crimefighter whose weapon of choice is a bowling ball containing her father’s skull; Paul Reubens played the farting Spleen; Kel Mitchell played the Invisible Boy, who’s only invisible when you don’t look at him; Wes Studi played The Sphinx, a wise hero with nothing but mixed metaphors; Hank Azaria played imperialism-themed Blue Raja, a character who challenges Apu for the title of Hank Azaria’s most problematic role.

Like almost all of the superhero output of the ’90s (Tank Girl, The Phantom, The Shadow), the film was based on a property that absolutely no one in the mainstream knew about–that property being minor characters from Flaming Carrot Comics, an indie superhero parody published in the ’80s starring–no joke–a do-gooder with a flaming carrot for a head. Like the comic it was loosely inspired by, Mystery Men was perfectly suited to skewer the superhero movie genre… except… what movie genre?

The entire superhero movie explosion happened after this satire was released, meaning Mystery Men was essentially just poking fun at the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher Batman series as that was the only consistently successful depiction of caped crusaders in TV and film for the previous decade. Even that franchise had tanked by 1999. Audiences were done with superheroes after 1997’s Batman & Robin. 1998’s Blade gave the genre the jolt it needed, but Mystery Men totally ignored Blade’s fresh take and instead lampooned the superhero tropes of yore.

Watching it in 2019, Mystery Men is a film that parodies the genre as it was and not as it would be. I mean, obviously–it’s not like screenwriters Neil Cuthbert and Bob Burden had precognitive powers and could foresee massive cultural impact of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Like the comic it’s sorta based on, Mystery Men mines into the already goofy Schumacher-ized world of Batman for jokes.

Champion City, a Gotham-lite metropolis, is protected by a cadre of on-the-nose, single-topic heroes (Bowler, Shoveler, etc.). They fight cackling supervillains who are similarly focused on their narrow brands (you either love disco dancing or being a retro gangster!) and hang out in elaborate mansions whose intimidating curb presence has to make them nightmare for real estate agents while the villains are imprisoned. There’s even a suiting-up montage that’s right out of the Schumacher playbook, even if William H. Macy never wears a rubber construction vest with protruding nipples. It’s all over-the-top, to be sure, but it just barely outdoes the heights of ridiculousness achieved by Batman & Robin, Batman Forever, and even 1966’s Batman TV series.

As antiquated as all these references feel, there are a few tiny things that have shades of what’s to come. Captain Amazing’s supersuit is decked out in brand patches, making him look like a muscular NASCAR driver. That feels like a precursor to Amazon’s The Boys, albeit a G-rated one.

Mystery Men is also the first superhero team movie, predating the Justice League, Guardians of the Galaxy, the Avengers, and the X-Men. The recruitment drive montage is right in line with the one seen in Deadpool 2, and Shoveler’s rousing speech to his band of misfit heroes has echoes of Star-Lord’s “12% of a plan” speech to the Guardians. The super-villain’s plan even involves a big ol’ destructive portal, which feels very much inline with too many superhero movies from X-Men to Marvel’s The Avengers.

And then there’s the big way Mystery Men was ahead of the curve, and it doesn’t have anything to do with superheroics: the movie introduced the world to Smash Mouth’s “All Star.”

Okay, actually “All Star” introduced the world to Mystery Men, since the single was released three months before the movie and the video features a ton of footage from the film. This video has been watched over 230 million times on YouTube. More people have seen William H. Macy in “All Star” than Shameless. Yeah, the most meme-able song in history was inextricably tied to Mystery Men before it was inextricably tied to Shrek and inexplicably tied to, uh, existence. The only thing that’s lasted from Mystery Men has eclipsed Mystery Men, like a shooting star breaking the mold.

But while Mystery Men feels dated in almost every single way, it also feels timeless, albeit timeless in the super specific way that drives me, a lifelong fan of superheroes, nuts.

Mystery Men revels in all of the tropes, the capes and bland codenames and generic powers and camp theatrics, that Batman cemented in our pop culture consciousness in 1966–and not even 11 years of blockbuster, genre-pushing, Oscar-winning, auteur-powered, diverse AF Marvel movies has changed that perception. Do not get me wrong: I love the 1966 Batman series. I just wish that people would realize that superhero movies and TV shows have moved on to newer, equally ridiculous tropes!

But instead, whenever you see superheroes in a commercial, or when they’re the inspiration for a challenge on Project Runway, or when celebrities just casually talk about them in interviews, these tropes–the ones on display in all of Mystery Men’s surprisingly lengthy runtime–are what you see. There are parts of Mystery Men that look like they could be a car insurance ad or a RuPaul’s Drag Race challenge in 2019, because the larger cultural perception of comic book superheroes has–somehow!!!–barely budged an inch in 53 years. There are so many new cliches (rampant property destruction, villains manipulating the heroes from inside a prison cell) and archetypes (the playboy-turned-hero, the hyper capable token woman) to riff on, and modern shows like The Boys and The Tick do/did, but pop culture outside of the superhero realm is stuck in 1966.

That’s why watching Mystery Men in 2019 is weird. They don’t make superhero movies like this anymore, but they still make fun of superhero movies like this today.

Where to watch Mystery Men