For those of you who’ve never read the original Watchman, or seen the movie, Dr. Manhattan is the only superhero in the story who has actual superpowers. He was originally Dr. Jonathan Osterman. Through a horrific accident, Osterman is annihilated in an “Intrinsic Field Subtractor”. Osterman’s mind continues to exist in a quantum state, and he then reconstructs himself as a muscular, hairless, glowing blue naked man (with heavy indigo eye shadowing.)
For those of you who’ve experienced both book and movie, you may have had the same reaction when the OTHER blue-skinned character appears in the film. “I don’t remember an azure trouser python from the book!” I jest. Of course I’m referring to Dr. Manhattan’s massive blue manly bits.
But I wasn’t wrong. In the original comic the issue of Dr. Manhattan’s quantum-generated genitals was handled quite deftly and with style. Dave Gibbons, one of the creators of Watchmen said:
We were very careful about the way we introduced the nudity, though; it didn’t happen in the bedroom scene but while the good Doctor was alone in the desert. I was careful to give him understated genitals, like a piece of classical sculpture, too. I’m sure some people didn’t even notice he WAS nude for a page or two and by then, it was too late!
The movie jettisons this care with the same sang-froid that one might take a flame thrower to a dog-cart filled with cerulean smegma.
But like the other major change to the original story, I actually think this reimagining of Dr. Manhattan’s sapphire sexual apparatus makes some kind of sense.
You are Dr. Jonathan Osterman (or you were, before you were disassembled molecule-by-molecule in the “Intrinsic Field Subtractor”). But yet, you remain conscious, and you discover that you now have the power to rebuild your body as you see fit. Are you going to saddle yourself with a tiny little thing, just because you had one in your previous existence, or because, you feel some Puritanical need to not shock the public? Understated genitals? Screw that man, you’re going to deck yourself with a gigantic glowing man-stick that will cause women and gay men to gasp, and cause the straight men around you to do one of several things:
- look askance
- use the phrase “humungous blue package” in a way that is meant to be jokey, but just comes out jealous
- run away, gibbering with insanity.
You are Dr. Manhattan baby! Check it out! You want superpowers? I’ll give you superpowers!
Alas, approval of this elementary change to the Watchmen is not universal, though some critics have positive things to say, and a number have even given Dr. Manhattan’s giant blue wiener “glowing” reviews.
One also imagines that there may have been some problems on the set :
Alltop and humor-blogs.com are not intimated. Not one bit.
You can find the full interview with Gibbons here. Snarky Gawker story about Film-makers begging Fanboys to see Watchmen again here. Thanks to Bronwynlewis for the bisexual blue dudes.
Alert readers will notice that I did not use the word “penis” once in this whole post.
Hands down the funniest post I’ve read recently, but maybe that’s because I wasn’t as…impressed as other critics were with the giant blue wiener.
‘Screw that man, you’re going to deck yourself with a gigantic glowing man’
Just the one… I’d being going at least two, just to really rub it in.