Trivia / Spy

Film: Spy (2015)

• Billing Displacement: Jude Law gets third billing. His character vanishes from the plot 15 minutes in being presumed dead and only returns right before the start of the third act, having far less screentime than Miranda Hart or Rose Byrne.
• California Doubling: The outdoor scenes in Paris and Rome? Aside from the obvious establishing shots, those scenes were shot in Budapest as well, adding some CGI generated monuments. The river where Agent Ford throws the bomb in his backpack is supposed to be the Seine In-universe in Paris, but was actually shot at the shores of the Danube.
• Dueling Movies: With Kingsman: The Secret Service and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
  • When the movie was dubbed for Brazilian audiences, the part where Aldo/Albert claims he learned his English from Downton Abbey is changed to have him learn it from the Kingsman movie.
  • The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018) bears several similarities to Spy.
    • Protagonist is a woman who at first has a boring/dead-end job but who gets recruited into a secret mission in Europe and takes a level in badass to become an Action Girl (Susan and Audrey)
    • Protagonist has a wacky, female best friend who is loyal to a fault and helps out on the secret mission (Nancy and Morgan)
    • At the start of the movie, the protagonist is involved with a hunky international spy who dies in the movie’s first act. He’s also Faking the Dead and revealed to be involved with the bad guys in both movies. (Bradley and Drew)
    • Protagonist also grows a spine over the course of the movie and stands up to the secret agent who walked all over her at the start of the movie
    • The best female friend has a connection to a celebrity that provides crucial help to the mission (50 Cent and Edward Snowden)
    • The head of the CIA/MI6 is a tough-as-nails woman (Elaine and Wendy)
    • One of the agents assigned to the same mission is a British man who goes rogue and later helps the protagonists (Rick Ford and Sebastian)
    • One of the antagonists is a European woman who has been trained in the life of crime her whole life (Rayna and Nadejda)
• Fake American: Jude Law makes a valiant attempt at an American accent.
• Fake Nationality
  • Australian Rose Byrne plays Bulgarian Rayna Boyanov.
  • Italian agent Aldo is played by Brit Peter Serafinowicz. Maybe. He might actually be MI-6 agent Albert. They leave it ambiguous.
• Playing with Character Type: Jason Statham plays the same type of intense badass that he is known for only here, he is a Small Name, Big Ego bumbling buffoon.
  • While the trailers played up the usual McCarthy pratfalls, Susan is presented not as a bumbling accidental spy over her head, but one who is legitimately hypercompetent in both tracking and combat as a field agent. A lot of critics expressed gratitude that McCarthy was in a movie that doesn't make her an blustery Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist like her recent previous roles.
• Production Posse: Feig alumni Melissa McCarthy and Rose Byrne reprise lead roles after previously appearing in Bridesmaids.

---