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Notes -
I'd posted a while back about how Wizards of the Coast was making Aragorn black in the soon-to-be released Lord of the Rings Magic set.
Since then most of the new cards have been released.
There were several more race swaps—see, for example Theóden, along with many other Rohirrim, was made black, but not Éomer. If they had made them all black, this would have been closer to my original suggestion—that they change races, if they really must, do so in ways that make sense in the world. But they did not do that for some reason, and keeping Éomer white makes no sense, if you're changing the rest of the Rohirrim.
Nevertheless, I was surprised at how good the set was, if you ignore the race changes in the art, for fans of Lord of the Rings. They referenced all sorts of relatively obscure things, had cards that had thematic abilities, (for an especially fun example, see how Merry+his blade or Eowyn can defeat the Witch King, who is ordinarily rather invulnerable), or just had fun flavor text quoting from the book, or nice art. And was faithful to the lore in another respect where Rings of Power was not, although I don't remember such a character actually existing…
Ignoring the race issue, I was very impressed overall. I think it's interesting that they were willing to put so much effort into it, while at the same time having unnecessary race changes. I suppose it's not entirely the same people making the various decisions. But I had read it as first as "we don't care that much about Lord of the Rings," which now seems to be false. They must have cared both about signaling leftist politics and about making a good product, and so this was the result.
I might be willing to overlook the problems, because Tolkien is dearer to my heart.
You know, this brings to mind Romeo + Juliet, a film that uses the exact same dialogue as Shakespeare's play, but changes the characters and setting to one that is familiar to Americans.
Would it be unreasonable for a British person to complain about this for the same reason? It's not inconceivable, the movie is partly a cultural and national swap in the same way Aragorn was race swapped - the original most certainly did not conceive of the character(s) this way. I say "partly" because they kept the same dialogue, and language is an important part of placing a culture.
And yet, I suspect most Americans don't mind this, perhaps because it was a swap in their favor, but probably because Shakespeare just isn't as big a culture war topic. Are the British upset about it? I doubt that as well, but maybe I'm wrong. I don't follow their media critics.
@problem_redditor says precisely what I suspect is the real belief of many here - that there is nothing illegitimate about X-swapping, only with the intentions behind it.
I actually think that is most people’s gripe. They know something is wrong but have trouble sorting it out so they latch onto things like “not historically accurate” or “ruins the immersion” when in reality it is that the creator of this new work hates you the white consumer and therefore wishes to vandalize works you love with vulgar political displays.
Maybe at its most base level that is the case, but there is really far more to it than that. Say the film retained its original setting but introduced a single modern American as Romeo. This would ruin the story to a much greater extent than a full retelling does for numerous reasons.
In the Wheel of Time show, canonically anyone can and does have children from any race. They literally changed the rules of reality for diversity, despite the fact thatthe main character is a different race from the rest of his hometown, which is a major plot point .
Fantasy nations should mostly be somewhat racially homogenous, maybe with exceptions for big cities. I would much prefer a fantasy movie starring 100% black people made by people who hate me to one starring an unnaturally diverse cast made by people who don't hate me. At the end of the day I just care about my own suspension of disbelief and I think a lot of other people do too.
An adaptation of a Shakespeare play that had an all-black cast could be great. Peter Brook's version of the Mahabharata - 9 hour stage play then 6 hour TV mini-series then 3 hour movie - had that kind of unnaturally diverse cast because he felt it was a universal story, not just one applicable to India (I don't know how Indian people felt about this, I'd understand not being too gruntled about having Asian, African and white actors play historically Indian characters). It was a good effort, but it was definitely not the original.
You could make a version of the Three Musketeers that was all-Asian (in fact, there was a Korean TV series that did just this but was dropped after the first season). It'd be odd, but it would work way better than having the traditional version except now d'Artagnan is Korean but he's also still from Gascony.
That being said, casting a black Porthos for the 2014 BBC version of the Three Musketeers worked extremely well, but they were careful to give him a back-story to explain this. They didn't just drop in black Porthos and nobody blinks an eye.
Original African or Caribbean legends/myths with appropriate character art, or shows, or movies, would be great. Taking white characters and race swapping them isn't for anybody's benefit in the long run.
Like this one
Oooh, that could work really well. Orson Welles had imagination and theatrical vision to spare. Caribbean island (cough Haiti cough) as the place where a warlord believed the promise of witches about becoming king? Translates over with little difficulty!
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