Screenhead

So today’s installment of the Watchmen Video Journal is devoted entirely to possibly the most difficult character to bring to life, Doctor Manhattan.

For those of you who aren’t already familiar with Watchmen, Doctor Manhattan is the result of a scientific accident that winds up destabilizing the power balance between the United States and the Soviet Union at the height of its power in the 1980s.  He actually has the ability to manipulate matter at the atomic level, which of course allows him to, essentially, do just about anything by just altering the matter around him.  Put him in a freezing cold room and he’ll just cause the molecules to spin faster, warming it up.  Lock him in a room and he’ll expand the empty spaces between molecules and walk out through the nothing.  And forget about trying to poison him–he’ll just turn it into chocolate by shifting some carbon atoms around.

And man, does it ever take a lot of juice to put this guy on screen.  He’s almost totally CG, with Billy Crudup serving as his human side, a model for the computer to work with, and occasionally at least some of his voice.  They’re planning to do some pretty amazing things with the Doctor Manhattan character–let’s just hope they’re worthy of the character himself.

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