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Their switch-over of Liet-Kynes to a random black woman for diversity points alone shows how badly the Director's understanding of the Dune universe works; a very wide but shallow puddle that completely misses the mark.
I didn't see the first one, won't see the second one. Don't even get me started on them showing off the Sardaukar homeworld.
Fun aside; None of the movies ever get the Padishah Emperor right. In the books he's described as a youthful, thirty-something redhead. Yet they always have him as an old man past his prime. Pity.
I'm pretty sure they cast the character as an African woman because the actress playing Chani (Zendaya) is biracial, and if her father is going to played by European Javier Bardem, one African parent is necessary for her ethnicity to make sense.
Although frankly I'd have preferred if they'd recast all the Fremen with Arab actors. It may not be canon, but in my head the Fremen are Bedouin, damnit!
That still boils down to diversity, hence my critique and criticism of the movie as a whole.
And yes, the Fremen should have been Arabic.
I really don't think Zendaya was mere diversity casting. She's a popular actress and her character is described in the books as being 'skinny, with an elfin face' and having 'darkly elfin features'. When I heard she was being cast as Chani, I immediately thought she was the perfect choice. And if we're in agreement that the Fremen should have been Bedouins, well, here's what a real Bedouin girl looks like. You can hardly claim Zendaya is too dark to play the sci-fi version of her.
Doubt. While my experience with most modern movies is fairly limited, everything I've seen of her is the metaphorical equivalent of a cudgel - an ambiguously brown women/girl they can shoe-horn and pretend everyone finds attractive, and if you point out the obvious race-switching, they make the typical noises about racism.
She's not even that good an actress, from everything I've seen.
I've only seen Zendaya in the Spiderman movies and Dune, so I can't speak to her acting chops, but I can't disagree more on the idea that people are pretending that she's attractive. IMHO she's easily the most attractive prominent Hollywood actress right now. Maybe Rebecca Ferguson and Gal Gadot might come close? In any case, purely based on looks and ignoring any acting skills, her apparent popularity seems entirely justified to me.
I can't even think of there being any particular hubbub about her race in casting decisions. Even in the super hero movies she was in - a genre notorious for filmmakers accusing fans of bigotry in recent years - her casting as the character-equivalent to the traditionally red-headed white woman Mary-Jane was basically a non-issue, similar to Sam Jackson being Nick Fury.
Maybe that's true, I'm not much for the movies or Hollywood. But I'd then say that there is a dire lack of actually attractive 'prominent Hollywood actresses' right now.
Hollywood has been ethnically cleansing its movies of redheads for a while now. A quick Google search will reveal that there is plenty of discussion on the topic. If there hasn't been any hubub in 'recent years' then it would only be because it's an old culture war that was has been completely lost by 'team red'. More and more of those.
The ginger genocide (aside: this phenomenon + the anagram is probably the strongest evidence for the simulation hypothesis I've encountered) is a fair point, but my perception of this is that even the very phenomenon is little known outside of fairly niche circles of people who pay attention to this kind of thing, and even those who know don't often realize that this is endemic in the industry, with Zendaya's MJ being just one example. It's not nothing, but I don't recall it rising to even the level of Tilda Swinton's Ancient One in Doctor Strange (aside: any sort of race/sex swapping is justified if it's to get Tilda Swinton to play the character), much less, say, Ariel from The Little Mermaid (another example of the ginger genocide! And generally talked about on its own instead of part of the larger trend). Maybe MJ's case is due to the complete victory by one side, but honestly I thought it was more like Nick Fury where people just didn't care much since it's a supporting character whose race isn't much of a factor in the story.
Nick Fury was cast by Samuel L Jackson due to a version of the Comic having the character be a blatant Samuel L Jackson expy.
Jackson then basically went 'I get to play him in any movies that happen and won't sue'.
And here you are.
The original character of Nick Fury was white, but when he was effectively 'recast' was before alot of the culture war blew up in a big way, so it was seen more of a 'huh, neat' among comic circles than an active purging of whites.
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