TBH, this report seems all over the map. They want to cast actors whose real age match characters' book age, while acknowledging some were written as very young looking centenarians?

Besides Ian McClellan, who would be viable?

I mean sure. In a perfect world, etc.

But in reality, no content creation powerhouse is going to cough up millions per episode to make an orthogonally related serialized fan fic.

A few years ago, The Wrap ran this great story about a series of high level executive meetings happening at all the major streamers--it happened during the covid-content bottleneck--in which all these middle managers were asked to present ideas on launching new projects based on popular IPs that they weren't currently "maximizing."

Which really meant, which beloved franchise have we not wrung every penny out of just yet.

Meanwhile, I'm no longer raging against these projects; rather I'm rooting for them to be great, preparing for them to be abortions, and hopefully in the middle, I will find a few things to pleasantly surprise me.

That's the correct attitude. We should give this show and its cast a chance.

Does the decision seem a little weird and discordantly self-contradictory? Yup. And I do find it a little troubling.

But I really, really want this show to work and for sure I will put aside my reservations and give its initial few episodes a true, charitable chance.

And why wouldn't any fan of this fantastical universe want this to be great?

I don't understand how folks can dunk on it sight unseen and still claim to be fans more than they are just cultural iconoclasts using another beloved franchise to proclaim a contrarian world view.

I actually missed that the swordmaster was an Atreides. But given the way episode one set the table, that totally tracks. I'm a little concerned about what seem to be departures from some very well established lore, but I have to it that overall, it was a solid, engaging pilot that I think would have people coming back for more. I'm rooting for this series!

I completely get why purists are put off, esp with many of the departures from original lore. Personally, my complaints lie more with pacing and unnecessarily elongated character arcs.

Regardless, season two is leagues better than the dismal first season. So if we can reliably see similar quality jumps for each subsequent season, the show has a chance to finish up as something really special, a welcome addition to the modern canon.

And besides...this show would have to fall hard and deep to approach the levels of cringe reached in certain beats of that Hobbit movie trilogy. THAT was a real abortion.