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Film is norm-setting. That's how norms are established and reinforced. I think people really underestimate how much of an impact that has on culture, and by extension how much of an impact it has on the way we perceive the world.
I think the goal of film has always been to be as realistic as possible. That just wasn't possible given the state of tech, and the ability of everything to visually look very realistic is going to have some self perpetuating properties in that if things can look realistic visually they should also be realistic in other ways. If film did not appear to resemble or have a basis in real life, people would have no interest in it. A joke, a plot, is only considered good if it can relate to some extent to the actual experience of existence, even in superhero movies.
Diversity in media is great. But in some cases the demographic profile of a character is relevant to the story. portraying, for instance, a black kid as being the natural offspring of two white parents just doesn't make sense, nor does the expectation that someone suspend disbelief for that to make sense. let's say that's portrayed in the beginning of the movie. If we are supposed to suspend belief we are going to say 'i guess that's just something we have to suspend belief and accept' but then later in the movie it's revealed that the kid is actually adopted and they are on a quest to find their birth parents. You have to see how that's confusing and nonsensical and how skin color actually does matter in some cases. Diversity can be added in ways that actually make sense. I mean, fuck, in the example I just provided, why don't you just make one of the parents black? I refuse to accept that the only way for diversity to added is for it to be forced in almost specifically in ways that objectively defy logic and require that we regard skin color or gender to be the same as someone having superpowers with respect to the expectation that we suspend disbelief.
This also ignores how we cognitively process film. In a given scene we are trying to make sense of the premise so we can then understand the nuances, words, and body language of the scene. We have to clearly know what we are expected to suspend disbelief for and what we are not expected to suspend disbelief for. So there are very clear and sensible places where we are supposed to suspend belief. Like if a character has the ability to fly, yeah we are going to suspend belief in that case, but even that always comes with an explanation of why they can fly. We can't just say 'you were cool with that guy who was able to fly, but for some reason the fact that we made the king of england a black trans woman requires an explanation??'.
It's not that the only form of belief suspension that's absurd is when it pertains to DEI. It's that that's the only area in which belief suspension is applied in such an absurd way. If you are portraying a historical event, or something that occured in that timeframe, it has to adhere to some extent to the realities of that timeframe.
It seems like a pretty far reach to claim that observing that an English noblemen, or a character that was literally a man in the book and whose character revolves around that, should probably be white is somehow dehumanizing. You can't simultaneously claim that we should interpret history with respect to the valid observation that x group of people were not treated as equals during a given time period, and then just seamlessly shift to conveying that group of people in an unrealistic position in a historical piece. You can't seamlessly go from the color of the character's skin being the entire point to belief concerning their skin color needing to be suspended.
In regards to the house of dragons example I mentioned, check out this video clip. Obviously, we are not supposed to entirely suspend disbelief. The race of the character undeniably matters in some cases. Even the guy playing the character was like 'we know they aren't her kids because they aren't white'.
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