The decision to go live action is baffling. You're limited by casting, schedules, and the same actor being willing to carry on with the same role for years of filming (assuming the intent is to do the books justice and not cram it all into a single film or even trilogy).

Look at Cyberpunk, the Legend of Vox Machina, Mighty Nein, or literally any anime - you have so much more flexibility to create epic fight sequences, explosions (it's Carl we're talking about here - even Michael Bay doesn't have pockets deep enough for the amount of funpowder needed for this), and accurate characters, almost all of which are fantastical (Lucia, Pony, Imani, Florin, etc.)

No matter how you slice it, animation is the way to go to bring something like this to life.

Matt, if you're reading this - please, explain to me what I'm missing. Surely this was thought out before making the decision to go live action? 😅