A Closer Look at Watchmen’s Dr Manhattan Essay

Neil Armstrong, Clark Kent, John F. Kennedy, Professor Charles Xavier, Gandhi, Chuck Norris, Master Yoda. The men mentioned above are fictional or real characters with quite a few things in common. They are all heroes in their respective universes, they fight for what is good, and they are all experts in their fields of profession. In fact, they are the supposed best or the most renowned at what they do. Neil Armstrong has to be the most famous Astronaut of all time while Clark Kent’s alter ego, Superman is arguably the greatest superhero there is and if not, he is definitely the most famous. Chuck Norris is the best ass-kicker in the world while Professor X is the greatest telepath in the Marvel Universe. JFK was a great president, Gandhi changed revolution, and Master Yoda taught nine hundred years’ worth of Jedi Knights. Yes, these men are all very talented and very powerful. However, these outstanding heroes have one more thing in Common: they all fall nothing short of insignificant to the power, intelligence, and capabilities of Dr. Manhattan. Dr Manhattan’s powers and abilities include immortality, shapeshifting to any form he chooses, seeing the future, reading minds, teleportation, and bending matter to his will. He practically has no physical weaknesses. Superman and Yoda could possibly put up a fight but that’s another story. In the world of Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan made human life appear insignificant. Yes, insignificant. Can you imagine? The supposed dominant species in the world could have been a clump of dirt on Dr. Manhattan’s shoe compared to his Godlike persona. This became the aggravating external conflict Dr. Manhattan had with humans. In fact, Dr. Manhattan ended up believing that Humans had become irrelevant and mattered little to him, thus, resulted in him eventually leaving Earth and living on Mars. This caused momentous discomfort and major uproar in Earth, namely, The United States. Dr. Manhattan may have lost his purpose of necessity for human beings but The United States needed him as if their lives depended on it. In fact, The United States practically worshipped him as a God. In the Watchmen storyline, The Cold War between the Russians and the Americans was at the brink of becoming nuclear warfare and either side was very close to opening fire and sending all their nuclear warheads at each other. If both sides fired every missile they had, they would destroy all human life on Earth. Dr. Manhattan, being America’s greatest weapon and greatest defence, was expected to use his power and eliminate every Russian warhead that he could and give the United States a chance to fire back at Russia and ultimately win the Cold War. What the Americans hadn’t counted on was Dr. Manhattan leaving Earth after losing his temper during a live-on-television interview. The Russians took this once in a lifetime opportunity of an AWOL Dr. Manhattan to ready their missiles to fire at the United States. Of course, that is not what happened. But we will get back to that later. You may be wondering, â€Å"Okay what’s your point? Why are you mentioning all of Dr. Manhattan’s capabilities and how he serves the United Sates? † Well to answer your question, let me restate what I pointed out earlier: In the world of watchmen, Dr. Manhattan makes human achievements and ultimately being human, almost completely irrelevant. Imagine, the nuclear warhead is possibly the most powerful weapon humankind has to offer and Dr. Manhattan can make them disappear with a wink of an eye. Man’s mission to the moon took billions of dollars, a rocket ship, and years of planning and preparation for this life-changing project to become a reality. However, as seen in the opening credits of the film version, Neil Armstrong was not the first person to arrive on the moon. When Armstrong first set foot onto the moon’s surface, what does he find? He finds nothing other than Dr. Manhattan in his, blue, naked form with no spacesuit, no spacecraft, and no artificial aid whatsoever. What does this tell us? Whatever humans can do, Dr.  Manhattan can do it much better. And if humans are ever to make a new life-changing discovery, Dr. Manhattan has already discovered it. However, Dr. Manhattan does have some personal, noteworthy, and very human limitations. In his eyes, he would even call them â€Å"Flaws†. Let’s take a closer look at some of these flaws. For one thing, Dr. Manhattan may be all-powerful and superior to humans but he still experiences human emotions. Namely, love. To expound on the significance of Dr. Manhattan’s ability to love, let me first talk about another flaw of his. Dr. Manhattan is the most powerful being in the Watchmen Universe and he knows it. Soon, his Godlike power eventually causes him to lose all respect for humanity and he begins to question their significance in his life. Getting drunk with power and losing respect for anyone under your power is indeed a very human imperfection. Now, going back to his ability to love, the only reason Dr. Manhattan has not given up on humans and abandon Earth completely was because of one person, Laurie, better known as The Silk Spectre. Dr. Manhattan was in love with her. He even tells her that she had become his only link to humans and without her, he would have no longer cared and simply let the United States and Russia destroy each other. It can even be inferred that if it wasn’t for Dr. Manhattan’s ability to love, Veidt would not have gotten his way and the Russians and Americans would have still caused nuclear war. In the Watchmen storyline, Adrian Veidt, also known as Ozymandias, was meant to appear as the villain. Readers and the audience would be quick to assume that since he was not on the side of Dr.  Manhattan, NiteOwl, Rorschach, and Silk Spectre, and the fact that he killed The Comedian, he was automatically the villain. However, in the end, and to everyone’s surprise, Ozymandias ironically turned out to be the unconventional hero. Veidt’s subtitle of â€Å"World’s Smartest Man† suited him because he knew that the solution to preventing the nuclear war was to direct both superpowers against a common enemy. And that enemy had to be none other than Dr. Manhattan. Somehow, Veidt just knew that the only way to prevent global destruction via nuclear war was to make the United States fear Dr.  Manhattan just as much as The Soviets feared him. Veidt tricked Dr. Manhattan into helping him make generators that could replicate the energy that gave Dr. Manhattan his power. When Dr. Manhattan left the planet and exiled on Mars, Veidt seized the opportunity to attack a number of major cities in the world using energy from the generators he and Dr. Manhattan made. Because of these attacks, thousands of people were killed and the areas affected by the blasts endured colossal damage. Yes, Veidt had killed thousands of people but he believed that sacrifices had to be made if we truly wanted to save the world. After the attacks from Ozymandias, scientists examined the affected areas and the energy readings led the humans to conclude that Dr. Manhattan himself had caused these global crimes. Thus, causing the Americans and Soviets to turn their weapons away from each other and point them towards an even greater threat: Dr. Manhattan. Dr. Manhattan knew that Veidt was right and he also knew that if he stayed on Earth, it would cause even more destruction and more unnecessary deaths. Without hesitation, he left the planet once again.