And Jeremy Irons plays... HBO's Watchmen

Spoilers ahead - kind of. Go away if you never seen the series and want to do it.


In HBO "Watchmen", we are told that Jeremy Irons plays Ozymandias/ Adrian Veidt or, as the script says, "The Blond Guy".

Well, the writer of the series hints at that and all the indices go there - but, do they?
 

Jeremy Irons has a passable resemblance with the comics character, but as of the second episode some things ring quite odd.

In the first episode mr. Phillip, "The Blond Guy"'s butler, seems unable to cook a cake worth eating - which hints at him not being completely human, a replicant of a sort - android or clone.

In the second, we see that there are indeed many copies of mr. Phillip, and many have been sacrificed in the past.

In this episode we still see the same kind of "odd family life" from the first, as "Blond Guy" and his cronies go about playing "The Watchmaker' Son", the play in five acts written by B.G. - at the end, as mr. Phillip is sacrificed in a fiery fire (it was years I wanted to sprout that phrase) we are indeed introduced to the multiple nature of B.G.'s servants - as in, there are many copies of each one of them.

In Watchmen, the comics, the character Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias has spent his time delving into eugenics/genetic engineering, a significant product of such activity his tiger-sized, highly intelligent Lynx pet, Bubastis just a lead in to the master-piece: a building-sized telepathic squid, created to be teleported and kill half a city on his arrival through a terrifying telepathic outburst.

It stands to reason that such a character may possibly create his cadre of clone/android servants, especially in light of the "reward" he had to bestow on their predecessors at the end of the comics, where he took a page out of Alexander the Great's Gordian Knot solution to address the fact that "if four know a secret, that ain't a secret - that's just public knowledge that hasn't spread yet".

Veidt drastic solution to its need for secrecy is to kill every one of his collaborators in his plot to save the world, much to his shame - and pain: they represented the almost totality of all his acquaintances and friends.

All seems to be clear, and yet...

While riding toward his palace, B.G. stops  a moment and tastes a fruit dangling from a branch. It looks gorgeous, but it tastes afoul and when B.G. squeezes it, all we see flowing out seems to be water.

Now, while I can see Ozymandias having troubles re-creating functional humans, I can hardly accept that a human expert in genetic engineering would make a variety of fruit that looks wonderful, yet tastes bad and has no nutrients... it would simply not being worth the effort.

That's the kind of misstep that I would expect from a "god" trying to recreate life from the molecular basis up, without re-using the existing biologic material so easily available on Earth.

What I would expect, in other words, to see done by a Dr. Manhattan, in his Mars palace, as he makes good on his vague idea to create human life, some day.

I  henceforth suspect that Jeremy Irons is not really playing Adrian Veidt, in the HBO series.

He is playing Jon Osterman - dr. Manhattan.

As to why should a physical god decide to take the shape of a frail, old white man, it beats me - but if I am right, I think Damon Lindelof devised a funny reason for it.  
 
(HBO's Watchmen seems to be one hell of a series, but we won't forgive Lindelof any time soon for writing "Prometheus"' script).