Well you may be surprise but Americans aren’t The only people who are busy making so many  movies base on comic books. For while Europe – especially French – is making a lot of movies base on their comic book properties and recently the first Teaser for the New Asterix movie appear.


What the hell is Asterix you may ask? Well it’s a comic book series  of 33 vols  created by illustrator Albert Uderzo  and scriptwriter Rene Goscinny (who is the Allan Moore of European comedy comic books) It’s incredibly popular in Europe, much like Tintin if not more (it’s has it own theme park, which I visit this summer and I must say it’s amazing!) and it’s center around a village of Ghouls fighting off the Roman occupations.  The series is know for its’ sophisticated humor, satire and tons pus (Cyrus would love this! Almost every line is a pun) I’m myself an huge Asterix geek (some geekout about Star Wars, some about Star Trek and Lord of the Rings… I fave Asterix) and I strongly recommend it, especially the first 24 books.


Ok, having this introduction out of the way, there where plenty of Asterix movies. 8’th animated features and three live action – all staring Gerald Depardieu as Asterix’s super-strong and super-fat buddy Obelix.

The first one “Asterix and Obelix Takes on Cesar” (1999) is an Rental (few fun moments but over all a very weak movie and the third act it one big WTF if you read the books)

The second one “Asterix and Obelix Mission Cleopatra” is Full Price… unless your fan of the books then its’ “Better then Sex”. Not only it did a kickass job of brining the humor, wit and characters into live action form but it’s an incredible funny comedy on it’s own. Sadly the English version re-edited this film cutting over 20 minutes for some reason I just don’t get.

The third one ‘Asterix and the Olympic Games” (2008) is some old bullshit… No! Sorry! I take it back – It was a Fuck you! They had a great example set by “Mission Cleopatra” and at the time it was made it had THE BIGEST BUDGET in Europe history and some incredible visual effects… and they screw up the whole movie by having incredible weak script! It drop the storyline of comic book it was adapting, dropping everything that made it clever and satirical in exchange for some clishey bullshit, the humor was strongly dumb down, there where plenty of forced pop cultural references (some of which didn’t even made sense),  the main villain had way too many screen time and was annoying as hell, and  it was simply strongly unfunny.

Now we finally get the trailer for the forth movie “Astérix Et Obélix - Au Service De Sa Majesté”  directed by Laurent Tirard, who already did one (very good to be honest) movie base on Rene Goscinny book – “Le Petit Nicholas” .  The book fallows mainly the plot of the book “Asterix in Britain” when Asterix and Obelix must transport a barrel of magic potion that makes you invincible to rebel village in Britain.



It hard do say to be honest. There is nothing spectacular about this one, but at the same time being “spectacular” was never the point of Asterix, just the humor and the movie appears to capture the some of grotesque spirit of the books having  everything full of anachronisms mixing modern world with ancient times.

We wait, wee see. The movie is coming out this October and I will be glad to review it for you guys :)

Yours

Maciek of Poland :D