Hello 40k fans, SaltyJohn from Pod Save the Imperium and TFG Radio here to talk a little lore and 40k hot topics with you.
I am confident that there’s nobody reading this who isn’t already aware that Henry Cavill and Amazon are working on Warhammer 40k-related live-action content. The memes are everywhere, and the arguments are all over social media, if you somehow missed it all then you were living in a state of ignorant nerd bliss and I am sorry to destroy that, but here we are. Anyway, one of the only discussions I saw on social media after the news about Amazon/Cavill/40k that was worth reading was simply this: are the Astartes and Primarchs characters that are relatable enough to be the main characters of a 40k series?
So that got the crew at Pod Save the Imperium thinking and we got off our butts and made recorded a new episode of our podcast discussing this very issue. You can find the episode here or on your favorite podcast-listening app including Spotify. It’s a perfect listen for the drive or flight to LVO, it’s short and you can discuss it with your friends for hours!
The basic debate we had on the show centered around the idea that in many respects the Primarchs and Astartes are only relatable for a few reasons.
- We, 40k players and fans, already know who and what they are. Normal people who will be introduced to them through a show do not.
- In the books the Primarchs and Astartes are more relatable because we hear their inner thoughts, their cold, implacable, fearless exterior is broken down for us.
- Every great Astartes/Primarch character from the Horus Heresy series and some in the 40k books have a human character that makes them more relatable.
There are plenty of other points made in the episode and points that have been made online. So what do you think? Can the Primarchs and the Astartes be made into relatable characters that would be palatable to audiences that are only tangentially aware of Warhammer 40k?