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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 think the setting may be more important to Lord of the Rings than it is to Romeo and Juliet, maybe?
There would also be a reasonable chance that a black man could end up in a position of authority in Messina, if he's the son (even by the other side of the blanket) of an important local guy. There were allegations that one of the Medici was the son of a black woman, or a woman of African ancestry, but this is much debated.
Anyway, I'm with you that for some roles, if the actor can pull it off, then the casting doesn't matter if it's a black guy playing a white guy (the white guy playing a black guy is still problematic; I would like to see a production of Othello where everyone is black except Othello, in order to help us recapture the strangeness of an African being in a position of power in Venice and to make the social and racial elements really stand out).
It comes down to one thing, as it always does in these race swapping arguments: good faith.
You can easily argue that race swapped characters can be fun and entertaining in plenty of movies and in many cases, the casting can appear to be meritocratic - the best actor gets the role, regardless of race.
I don't think any of the people who complain about race swapping in 2023 think that the swapping is being done in good faith and I would have to agree because frequently these actors are actually incredibly bad and the meta-promotional material for these shows and movies is dominated by "only a racist wouldn't like this" messaging. Not to mention, that in my experience, blue tribers are frequently anti-meritocratic, or at least are willing to argue against it on equity grounds so you're left wondering "based on their declared and demonstrated values, are they making these swaps in good faith?"
The reviews I've seen of "The Witcher: Blood Origin" seem to indicate that it was indeed terrible, so I think Jodie Turner-Smith was sensible that 'oh dear such an unexpected scheduling conflict' happened.
Same with the recent Disney streaming version of "Willow", which - from the clips I saw - looked amazingly cheap. The costumes were dreadful and the sets looked plastic. Much the same as with "Rings of Power", but even that was higher quality. It honestly looked like some bad 90s fantasy show filmed in Australia with no-name/upcoming actors on the cheap (and I've seen my share of those).
That's what I can't understand - they claim to be spending huge amounts on the new shows, but when you see them, the cheapness is there on-screen. Where is the money going? Accountancy shenanigans? Luxury five star hotels to put up the seventeen producers/ assistant producers/boyfriend of the hairdresser of the assistant producer?
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