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I would love to see Death Watch vs any major xenos faction be it necrons tau tyranids just something

This is the fan film that I feel has best captured 40K. However, it plays more like a dramatized reading of a book and the exposition would have to lightened up in tone, I think (and the visuals redone - works for a fan film, but not a feature film). Overall, I could see this being a story that could do well.

You couldnt do anything mass-market 40k themed (Netflix, HBO or movie) without making the main character a standard human.

Pretty much all stories with a wild and fantastical setting need you to identify with the main/viewpoint character. It gives you a sense of "I have no idea what's going on but that guy doesn't either". They learn as we learn.

Often the main character is critical in the end due to their actions, but relatively powerless compared to companions.

This is why the ideal scenario is where a new guardsman is posted to a platoon who are sent to suppress something prosaic like a rebel uprising which quickly escalates to a chaos cult (we learn about chaos and psykers with him)
Then the Astartes come in (we learn about marines)
Then a chaos incursion breaks out (we learn about the warp and daemons)
Then a Xenos species (probably an uneasy alliance between an Aeldari farseer and SM librarian to suppress chaos)
Then, perhaps briefly, a small fraction of the power of the imperium... showing their glorious glittering power.

Then just as the credits roll, we discover the entire thing was all part of the Farseer's plan to distract the Imperium from their real goal.

If it's successful, the 2nd and 3rd movie can introduce inquisitors, different chapters of marines, some type of Imperial civil war/conflict set up by the Aeldari etc, then the Imperium discoving they are being played by the space elves and a final conflict against them.

All the while you might slowly develope that grimdark thought that "hold on the Aeldari are just trying to survive and the Imperium seem like genocidal bastards"

40k has to be treated like you're in the middle of an onion and every time you find a new layer of mad, it turns out just to be a stepping stone of mad.

 Silentz wrote:
You couldnt do anything mass-market 40k themed (Netflix, HBO or movie) without making the main character a standard human.

Pretty much all stories with a wild and fantastical setting need you to identify with the main/viewpoint character. It gives you a sense of "I have no idea what's going on but that guy doesn't either". They learn as we learn.

Often the main character is critical in the end due to their actions, but relatively powerless compared to companions.

This is why the ideal scenario is where a new guardsman is posted to a platoon who are sent to suppress something prosaic like a rebel uprising which quickly escalates to a chaos cult (we learn about chaos and psykers with him)
Then the Astartes come in (we learn about marines)
Then a chaos incursion breaks out (we learn about the warp and daemons)
Then a Xenos species (probably an uneasy alliance between an Aeldari farseer and SM librarian to suppress chaos)
Then, perhaps briefly, a small fraction of the power of the imperium... showing their glorious glittering power.

Then just as the credits roll, we discover the entire thing was all part of the Farseer's plan to distract the Imperium from their real goal.

If it's successful, the 2nd and 3rd movie can introduce inquisitors, different chapters of marines, some type of Imperial civil war/conflict set up by the Aeldari etc, then the Imperium discoving they are being played by the space elves and a final conflict against them.

All the while you might slowly develope that grimdark thought that "hold on the Aeldari are just trying to survive and the Imperium seem like genocidal bastards"

40k has to be treated like you're in the middle of an onion and every time you find a new layer of mad, it turns out just to be a stepping stone of mad.

problem is guardsmen are kept ignorant, the best way to fill people in would be an Inqusitor with the "everyman" being a new acyolyte. It woul;d be very VERY easy to bring in the nesscary exposition for the setting because said Acyolyte may not KNOW it.

Good point!!

The real grimdark twist might be the guardsmen being "kept ignorant" at the end of the film by being executed for knowing too much.

Or if you wanted it sequel friendly, having the man dude escape before he was... made truth compliant.