Word: asterix
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...Wednesday, nearly 50 years on from the comic's debut, the third live action adaptation of his adventures was released, in an extravagant promotional blaze that would have even made Hollywood sit up and pay attention. The movie, Asterix at the Olympic Games, comes just six months before the Beijing Games, which the marketing campaign gleefully exploits...
...film is based on the 1968 comic book of the same name, which was the 12th in the series of 33 about Asterix and his portly friend Obelix, who travel to Olympia in Greece to compete in the games...
...Their complaints are unlikely to dim the movie's prospects. The reviews were similarly scathing back in 1998 for the first Asterix film - Asterix and Obelix versus Caesar, which sold 25 million tickets, 15 million of them overseas, and only slightly better for 2002's Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, which did almost as well. Asterix has a massive fan base to draw upon: the comic books have sold 330 million copies in over 100 languages. While France likes to boast of its high-brow credentials, Asterix books easily outsell those of worthy rivals Proust, Sartre and Balzac...
...ingrained is Asterix in French culture that many French people now mistakenly pronounce the word asterisk ('asterisque') as asterix. His success spawned an Asterix theme park outside Paris in 1988: it manages to compete honorably against Disneyland Paris, although it has a fraction of the resources of its American rival. And while the U.S. has remained immune to the Gaul's charms, his celebrity has already been recognized by one venerable American publication: Asterix was the cover star for a TIME magazine special edition on "The New France...
...Even today, Asterix stories seem to chime with the country's discomfort with globalization as it rails at the hegemonic power of the day, be it Roman imperialism or Anglo-Saxon capitalism. Commentators refer to France's 'Asterix syndrome', a tendency to withdraw from the rest of the world, yet rejoice in splendid isolation...