History Recap / AsterixAndCleopatra

* RapidHairGrowth: The henchman of the villain Artifis vows never to shave his head again until the pesky Gauls are killed. The rate at which his shaven skull becomes extremely hirsute then becomes a RunningGag.

* AnimatedAdaptation: Released in 1968. Features the first animated appearance of the pirates.

* BetterToDieThanBeKilled: Better to Sink than Be Sunk, courtesy of the pirates. Amounts to the same thing and saves them a few knocks. The animated version averts this and their ship gets hijacked by the Gauls, who have a good time trashing them.

** How Artifis managed to make a cake without eggs or flour is never explained. It's even lampshaded as, just before turning the large bowl of toxic batter upside down on the table without having baked it (revealing it as looking quite like a normal cake, which has somehow already been frosted), Artifis gives a wink to the viewer, as if saying "Just wait till you see our little trick !".

!!The comic book and animation provides examples of the following tropes :

A 1968 adaptation of the well-loved ComicBook/{{Asterix}} album.

!!Tropes

!!Despite being the straightest of the LiveActionAdaptations, ''Asterix et Obelix: Mission Cleopatre'' does a lot of new things that they deserve mention.
* AdaptationalAttractiveness: Edifis, Otis, and Nexusis.
* AccidentalMisnaming / MaliciousMisnaming: Edifis and Ceplus, respectively. Edifis can never seem to get the Gauls' names exactly right and has to be reminded all the time, though the tries and means well. Ceplus, on the other hand, outright states that he doesn't care about names (he only gets three right: Caesar's, Cleopatra's, and Cartapus') and, depending on who he's talking to, will correct himself or snap at being corrected.
* AdaptationalBadass: Edifis and Artifis each get a chance at some magic potion (Getafix giving some to the former to help Obelix while Asterix is bringing Dogmatix to Cleopatra, while the latter gets ahold of Asterix's flask that gets dropped when the latter broke through enemy lines)
** HandicappedBadass: By virtue of Jamel Debbouze playing Edifis.
** Artifis' lackey is now implied to be an assassin, and certainly looks the part. That being said, he' still carries the same role as his comic self, though avoids any altercation with the Gauls.
* AdaptationExpansion: Minimal, compared to the other adaptations. The biggest one being Asterix's charge through Roman lines to deliver Edifis' message to Cleopatra not being as simple or easy as in the comic. He ends up dropping his potion gourd (for Artifis to find and drink), potion wearing off midway during the journey, and thus, having to steal a chariot to get to Alexandria. To solve his journey back through enemy lines, he gets "[[CoveredInKisses the best potion]]", as Getafix puts it.
* AdaptationalHeroism / AdaptationalVillainy: Yes, Artifis is both, though the Heroism part is very downplayed. His reasons for undermining Edifis are less about greed, as rather than Edifis refusing his one-sided offer, here, as the Cleopatra's royal architect and doesn't know Edifis, he gets passed up for what he sees as a young upstart. On the other hand, he doesn't make peace with Edifis and they even duke it out. Edifis even offers terms of peace, but Artifis refuses stating "a lion doesn't cooperate with a cockroach".
* AdaptationNameChange:
** Artifis' right hand man, Nexusis, was originally named Tournevis in French, Krukhut in English.
** Exilbris (Misenplis in French), Edifis' scribe, is renamed Otis, mostly for an elevator joke.
** Combined with GenderFlip and RaceLift, Caesar's spy is renamed Cartapus from Mintjulep/Ginfis.
** A lot of English names were changed in the English dub, Artifis now being Criminalis.
* AdaptationalPersonalityChange: Along with being AdaptationalAttractiveness, Otis trades his original self's dignified self for having a penchant for long-winded speaking about...anything.
* AdaptedOut:
** While the cake scene plays out pretty much the same, the taster is never seen to be cured.
** The group never visit Edifis' house after their audience with Cleopatra.
** Caesar's spy is never shown to drink the potion, primarily because of the spy's RaceLift and GenderFlip wouldn't allow being disguised as a worker to work.
* CanonForeigner
** Redbeard has a daughter here as one of his crew. No mention or hint of Erix.
** Cleopatra has an entourage of four courtesans, one of which is named (Gimuieakis) and serves as a parodic LoveInterest for Asterix.
* InformedAbility: While he's still shown not to be the best of his craft due to his unusual decisions, Edifis' construction abilities aren't shown to be as bad as his comic self, said unusual decisions including including a door high on a wall....just in case a second floor will be built.
* MsFanservice: With Creator/MonicaBellucci as Cleopatra, they couldn't pass up flaunting her. Her courtesans follow suit.
* ShoutOut:
** Caesar's second-in-command is named Caius Ceplus, "Ceplus" would be how the French pronounce "C+", the short name of Canal+, a French channel.
*** Speaking of Ceplus, he's a walking Darth Vader parody, though this is only milked during the big battle. Complete with Imperial March snippet.
** As in the comic, Cleopatra complains being tired of profile art, and prefers a three-quarters angle...proceeding to give us a famous example: the Mona Lisa, complete with similar hairstyle and outfit.
** Edifis and Artifis' battle is a shameless wuxia parody, complete with both randomly speaking Mandarin at one point. Anime-esque SpeedLines are also present.
** As the pirates begin the charge against Edifis' ship, Redbeard is on the prow, exclaiming "[[Film/Titanic1997 "I'm the king of the world!]]"

Note: The AnimatedAdaptation is the first animated appearance of the pirates.

* AnimatedAdaptation: Released in 1968.

*** Speaking of Ceplus, he's a walking Darth Vader parody, though this is only milked during the big battle.
** As in the comic, Cleopatra complains being tired of profile art, and prefers a three-quarters angle...proceeding to give us a MonaLisafamous example: the Mona Lisa, complete with similar hairstyle and outfit.

** As the pirates begin the charge against Edifis' ship, Redbeard is on the prow, exclaiming "[[Film/Titanic "I'm the king of the world!]]"

** Artifis' lackey is now implied to be an assassin, and certainly looks the part. That being said, he' still carries the same role as his comic self, though avoids getting launched by Asterix after escaping the pyramid

* MsFanservice: With Creator/MonicaBelucci as Cleopatra, they couldn't pass up flaunting her. Her courtesans follow suit.

** Redbeard has a daughter here as one of his crew. No mention or hint of Erix

** As the pirates begin the charge against Edifis' ship, Redbeard is on the prow, exclaiming [[Film/Titanic "I'm the king of the world!"]]

** HandicappedBadass: By virtue of Jamel Debbouze playing Edifis.

[[Creator/GaiusJuliusCaesar Julius Caesar]] has insulted UsefulNotes/{{Cleopatra|VII}} by saying that the Egyptians have become decadent. To prove him wrong, Cleopatra declares that she will have a palace for him built within three months. The Queen of the Nile warns her architect Edifis that if he fails to make the three-month time limit, he will be fed to the crocodiles. Since such a thing would not be possible without magic, Edifis goes to Gaul and enlist the aid of his friend Getafix, with Asterix, Obelix, and Dogmatix along for the ride.

* BigBadEnsemble: Julius Ceasar and Artifis act as 2 seperate big bads who, despite their common goal (both want to see Edifis fail) never join forces. Artifis tries to sabotage the construction by convincing the workers to go on strike, bribing the stone-delivery man to throw his load away, kidnap Edifis, send Cleopatra a poisoned cake and blame the Gauls for it, and have the Gauls locked up in a pyramid. Julius Ceasar on the other hand resorts to brute force, using his soldiers to lay siege to the construction site and attack the palace with catapults.
* BlackFace: The animated version has the black pirate in the pirate's nest turn white of fear when he sees the Gauls appear. This gag has been removed nowadays.

* FaceDeathWithDignity: Parodied; When Cleopatroa thinks the Gauls are going to assassinate her, she launches into a big speech that they will see how a queen faces her fate until Asterix interrupts to explain what's going on.
* HistoricalInjoke:

** The album cover is a parody of the movie poster to Film/{{Cleopatra}}. Several scenes are also directly inspired by this film, including Cleopatra travelling on a large sphinx, pulled by slaves.
** In front of the pyramids Getafix tells Obelix: "20 centuries look down upon you." This is a reference to Napoleon's comment in 1797 to his soldiers during his campaign in Egypt when they were standing in front of the same monuments: "40 centuries are looking down upon you."

* BetterToDieThanBeKilled: Better to Sink than Be Sunk, courtesy of the pirates. Amounts to the same thing and saves them a few knocks.
The animated version averts this and their ship gets hijacked by the Gauls, who have a good time trashing them.

* ArtisticLicenseChemistry: The famous Arsenic Cake. See why in TamperingWithFoodAndDrink below.

* CleopatraNose: Cleopatra is drawn with a huge pointy nose and her fame rests on it. Throughout the book, characters (including Caesar) comment on how she has a pretty nose.

* CardboardPrison: Cleopatra's prison can't keep Obelix in or out any longer than he feels like it. (Then again, what prison could?)

** In the comic version, after he and his crew have been forced to take jobs as galley slaves on Cleopatra's barge, the captain expresses the unusual determination to wreak revenge on the Gauls — in other books, he simply wishes never to encounter them again.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness:
** The pirates look different in this film than in the comics and the later animated films. The captain is taller and more muscular, and his hair is more orange than red. The lookout in the crow's nest is smaller, and the wisecracking old pirate is replaced by a parrot.

** After he and his crew have been forced to take jobs as galley slaves on Cleopatra's barge, the captain expresses the unusual determination to wreak revenge on the Gauls — in his later book appearences, he simply wishes never to encounter them again.