ASTERIX THE GAUL (1967)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*

While I generally like films adaptations to be reasonably faithful to their source material, there’s such a thing as showing too close a fidelity.

The French comics-series ASTERIX might be described as “Popeye the Sailor in ancient Europe.” Set in the days when Imperial Rome had conquered most of the continent, Julius Caesar—the series’ most frequent “villain”—learned that all of the Romans' military power could not vanquish one small tribe in Gaul. The hardy Celts of this tribe possess a super-strength potion, brewed by their local druid, and just as Popeye would be invigorated by his spinach, the warriors only need drink a swig of the potion to obtain strength that can pummel whole legions into submission. In fact, not only do the Gauls not require messy weapons like spears and arrows (this being very much a juvenile series), they only need two fighters to repel all hostile forces—namely, the titular Asterix, a diminutive but canny combatant, and his hulking but not too bright buddy Obelix.

The reader of the first comics-album learns about the characters of the tribe(most of whom have the suffix “-ix” in their names), and observes mighty Caesar sending a spy into Gaul to learn the tribe’s secret. The spy succeeds insofar as the Romans learn that the Gauls have a special strength-potion, but after a lot of slapstick antics, the invaders are right back where they started: they may know how the Celts can beat them back, but they can’t do anything to break the stalemate—which thus becomes the status quo for the remainder of the series.

And as for the animated film. Well—it’s the exact same story, from first to last. I didn’t do a scene-by-scene comparison, but I’ve rarely seen a film adaptation that followed its source so accurately. Given that the original story is not any sort of classic, even within the halls of popular culture alone, ASTERIX THE ANIMATED FILM proves something of a bore.