Les douze travaux d’Astérix
Year:
1976
Running time:
84 mn
Nationality:
France
Language:
French and English
Genre:
Animation, Comedy, Adventure
Director:
René Goscinny, Albert Uderzo, Pierre Watrin
Producer:
Dargaud Films, Les Productions René Goscinny, Studios Idefix
Screenwriter/s:
René Goscinny, Albert Uderzo
Cast:
Summary of the film
The Gauls have the chance to become the new masters of the Roman empire if they can solve twelve tasks set by Julius Cesar. (Filmaffinity)
Iris tries to hypnotise Asterix using the formula "for Osiris and Apis, you are a wild boar" (Source: https://legrandpop.fr/avis-critique-12-travaux-asterix-film-animation.html)
Egyptomania narratives or motifs
This film, an Anglo-French co-production from 1976, which adapts the comic of the same name, reinterprets the 12 Labours of Hercules. In this case, Caesar proposes to the leader of the Gaulish village of Asterix and Obelix that the Gaulish heroes undergo 12 trials to determine who will control the world.
In the fifth of these tests, they must overcome the hypnotic power of Iris, the Egyptian. He receives them in his hypnosis clinic, which looks like an Egyptian temple, decorated with free interpretations of famous Egyptian works of art, such as the Sphinx of Gizah and the paintings of Ramses II at the Battle of Kadesh. Iris, dressed in a caricature of the attire of the Egyptian pharaohs (including the Nemes but with the Uraeus replaced by an oil lamp placed on the magician's forehead) specialises in transforming people into animals through hypnosis, using an oral formula that includes the mention of the gods Osiris and Apis. Iris tries to make Asterix believe he is a wild boar. The scene is a criticism of the power attributed to hypnotists in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Simultaneously, it makes a free critical interpretation of the relationship between the Egyptian world and magic in contemporary popular culture. In the end, reason, represented by Asterix, defeats superstition and magic embodied by Iris. This success is due to the concatenation of absurd questions and interruptions by the film's protagonist, which cause the hypnotist to lose the thread of his own implausible discourse and end up hypnotising himself, leaving his clinic believing himself to be a boar.
The film was eventually turned into a comic book with the same title and development, which was published shortly afterwards. In the English version, Iris speaks with a blatant oriental accent.
In the fifth of these tests, they must overcome the hypnotic power of Iris, the Egyptian. He receives them in his hypnosis clinic, which looks like an Egyptian temple, decorated with free interpretations of famous Egyptian works of art, such as the Sphinx of Gizah and the paintings of Ramses II at the Battle of Kadesh. Iris, dressed in a caricature of the attire of the Egyptian pharaohs (including the Nemes but with the Uraeus replaced by an oil lamp placed on the magician's forehead) specialises in transforming people into animals through hypnosis, using an oral formula that includes the mention of the gods Osiris and Apis. Iris tries to make Asterix believe he is a wild boar. The scene is a criticism of the power attributed to hypnotists in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Simultaneously, it makes a free critical interpretation of the relationship between the Egyptian world and magic in contemporary popular culture. In the end, reason, represented by Asterix, defeats superstition and magic embodied by Iris. This success is due to the concatenation of absurd questions and interruptions by the film's protagonist, which cause the hypnotist to lose the thread of his own implausible discourse and end up hypnotising himself, leaving his clinic believing himself to be a boar.
The film was eventually turned into a comic book with the same title and development, which was published shortly afterwards. In the English version, Iris speaks with a blatant oriental accent.
Author: Alfonso Álvarez-Ossorio Rivas
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