After four years of work, the actor-director is preparing to release his adaptation of the famous comic strip by Goscinny and Uderzo throughout Europe. He tells behind the scenes of this crazy adventure.
Expected for four years in dark rooms, Asterix and Obelix: The Middle Kingdom finally hits theaters this Wednesday. With a pharaonic budget of 67 million euros, and an impressive international cast, the blockbuster has experienced many insults before arriving on our screens.
First postponed due to the covid pandemic, Asterix and Obelix: The Middle Empire could not be shot in China, where the action of the film is located, but in the Massif Central. There, the team faced torrential rain. Guillaume Canet has also published a video on Instagram, showing the difficulty of the shooting conditions.
Challenged by the elements, the film also had to face a lot of criticism on the cast. But the irreducible Guillaume Canet, ignores the critics:
“I encourage people, before they criticize, to see the film first, to see the work that has been done first, and then to criticize whatever they want. It’s always dangerous. to speak too soon because you could be wrong. If you want to be able to continue to do this job, and as best as possible, you need a little bit of indulgence and curiosity.”
A deconstructed Asterix
Because Asterix and Obelix: The Middle Empire full of finds. The first is size. Asterix is a deconstructed Gaul who has stopped eating wild boars. He doesn’t want to drink magic potions anymore, to prove his true value as a warrior to Obelix. An idea added by Guillaume Canet to the original script by Julien Hervé and Philippe Mechelen, the creators of Tuche.
“He’s a character that I like in my films and that we see in The Little Handkerchiefs and rock ‘n roll: the somewhat boring guy who questions everything and who must look a little bit like me somewhere”, analyzes Guillaume Canet. “I found it interesting, in a film like this, to shake up what was established and to use, like Goscinny , Of actuality.”
It’s also a way to bring depth to a character often described as simple. “I thought it could make it quite touching,” continues Guillaume Canet. “There was a real desire on my part, in this scenario, to place Asterix and Obelix at the center of the story, that they have more to play than in the other films, where they were a bit of secondary characters.”
Avoid going all over the place
The other challenge ofAsterix and Obelix: The Middle Empire was to find the duo of actors to embody the two Gauls. Canet originally wanted to play Caesar, before being convinced to take on the costume of Asterix. The choice of Gilles Lellouche was then easily imposed: “It took a couple of friendly actors to play Asterix and Obelix and that’s where I thought of Gilles Lellouche.”
Around the two heroes revolves a rather crazy cast, made up of Vincent Cassel, Marion Cotillard, rapper OrelSan, singer Angèle and footballer Zlatan Ibrahimovic. We also meet singer M, comedian Jason Chicandier, youtubers McFly and Carlito, singer Philippe Katerine…
They evolve in sumptuous decorations. Because for his Asterix, Guillaume Canet wanted a “realistic artistic direction, with magnificent costumes, magnificent sets, which stick to the reality of great adventure films”. The filming of Himin preparation forAsterixwith a reduced team and in a few weeks, also allowed him to prepare more effectively and to refine his work as a director.
“On the other films, I shot a lot of things then during the editing, I made the film. There, all of a sudden, I really thought about what I’m saying. It saved me, on Asterix, to get lost on a set with 500 extras and to go all over the place. It was more structured. I think that in my staging I have matured and above all I have learned to have confidence in myself about what I say.
“An Asterix without pirates does not exist”
To stand out from Mission Cleopatrathe ultimate reference for film adaptations ofAsterix, Guillaume Canet refused to make a film of gags. “The problem is that gag films can age badly,” he says. “It can also be risky because there have been gag movies where the gags fell a bit flat.”
Above all, he wanted to reproduce on the screen the feelings he had when reading the albums. “When I was a kid, I didn’t have fun reading them all the time. I paid attention to what the story was about. I went in that direction for the movie.” The scenario thus adopts the same structure as albums like Asterix among the Bretons:
“I wanted to stick to some must-haves. The first scene takes place in the forest where they hunt, how in the albums. I added a scene with the pirates. I really struggled a lot with the production to maintain this sequence because a Asterix without the pirates, it doesn’t exist.”
The middle Empire is the very first film not based on one of Uderzo and Goscinny’s albums. The two Gauls go here to China, territory unexplored in comics, to save Princess Fu Yi, only daughter of the Empress imprisoned after a coup fomented by Deng Tsin Quin, a traitor prince. Helped by Graindemaïs, the Phoenician merchant, and by his faithful warrior Tat Han, the two brave warriors will come to the aid of the princess.
But as in the albums, the film is full of references to classic films: Once upon a time in America, Rambo, The goat or Les Bronzés go skiing. “It was writing stuff that made me laugh,” says Canet. “These were nods to the cinema that interested me when I was a kid.” He also slipped in anachronistic details, essential to any good Asterix, such as an Italian cover of the blue words of Christopher.
“Never done with malice”
Guillaume Canet does not fear the reception of the film’s many jokes about the Chinese: “There are not a lot of them and they are in Caesar’s mouth. It’s in his character. He is someone who despises. I don’t have that worry because it’s part of comics Asterix. Every time they travel in the albums, there are puns on customs and it’s never done with malice.”
The director says he asked the question to the actors and actresses of Chinese origin in the film. “I was worried,” says Canet. “I asked Julie Chen [qui incarne la princesse, NDLR] if she found that there were scenes that could be a little too much and she reassured me on that. She said, ‘not at all, it’s really funny’. I honestly don’t think any jokes there are to be taken as disparaging or disrespectful jokes.”
“I really like this movie”
A few days before the release, Guillaume Canet is more and more anxious. “Until now, I was not apprehensive about going out, because I had been with my head in the handlebars for 4 years. I was a little carefree. Now that it has stopped, that I meet the press, it becomes concrete.” Whatever happens, he is proud: “I really like this movie.”
Over the past few months, he has multiplied test screenings to verify that the film was working. This is the first time that he has used this process from the United States and that the “Bande à Fifi” has been practicing for years. “It was very interesting, because we saw what worked, what worked less, why it worked less. I was able to rework the script, the editing”. Two scenes skipped during this process.
“I really did everything to make the film as successful as possible”, insists Guillaume Canet. “I would like it to work. I would like it to work already for the 1000 people who worked on it and who put all their passion, all their talent into the film. I would like these four years of work not to have no use.”
The pressure on Asterix and Obelix: The Middle Kingdom is huge. The blockbuster aims to bring spectators back to theaters en masse after three years of the pandemic. “I am well aware that this film is also eagerly awaited by the profession. It is very important that cinema picks up again, that films like this can generate enthusiasm and make people want to return to the cinema.”
