HerbertWigglesworth t1_iuj3h9y wrote on October 31, 2022 at 6:36 PM

Reply to comment by Archamasse in how is there no really good Warhammer 40k tv show? by jamtwin1

Thanks for spending the time writing that.

Sounds up my street - fine with obscure sci-fi nerd imagination, and the idea of ultra twisted dark themes throughout is kind of what I want to see on screen.

Seems quite accessible to be honest based on some of the recent things I have seen, and there is a gap in the market for more justified shock/to the bone productions.

Do you think it is viable as something for the screen, as someone familiar with the universe?

Archamasse t1_iuj4v6p wrote on October 31, 2022 at 6:46 PM

I think it would be possible if you picked a "street level" human to start with, yeah, to give you a sense of the overwhelming scale of the universe and battles they're living in the middle of, and if you had a HBO scale budget commitment.

The main thing though is to be really careful to depict the human Imperium as a bad thing.

The game lore has faltered on this lately as an accidental byproduct of making some beginner game packs accessible "good guys vs bad guys", and the side effect has been to suggest that the atrocities they've committed may have been necessary evils, rather than an illustration of its ongoing downfall.

That sounds like splitting hairs, but it’s a really important distinction that could be really easily lost in translation to tv - there are individually good and heroic humans, but the human imperium as it is, is a monstrous, mindless abyss of suspicion and indifference. If you don't get that right, it reads too much like a fascist apologetic - all the intentionally insane in-universe warcrys and mottos etc will just turn into Facebook motivational shit people take deadly seriously.