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No, but Maverick was a new character and so when watching the original Top Gun I had no priors as to what he should look like. In an alternate universe where Maverick were originally black I don't think there would be any immersion-breaking; if the new Top Gun movie had a black guy play Maverick after Tom Cruise already had in the original then it would be immersion-breaking.
Things have to be internally consistent. I have the same issue with fantasy settings where something happens that doesn't make sense in the setting but people try to tell me "bro it's all make-believe, they're time travelling anyways who cares if that character suddenly can do something with no explanation that would have been helpful before". I accept the premises of the world upon starting a show and am fine so long as the conclusions follow from those premises even if they don't follow the premises of real life; if the show starts creating contradictions with its own premises then that is a problem and I can no longer believe anything it tells me.
I feel like Dwight from the "Asian Jim" bit on The Office: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cLNyF1Zw5tg
Imagine a new Top Gun movie where originally black Maverick was replaced by Cruise, or whatever white actor is the Hot New Action Star.
Yeah, I think we all agree that right now in this current climate, this is not a world where that can happen, and anyone trying the "this is a different version of the original world, so it's copacetic to have a black character played by a white guy" argument would be flayed alive.
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That is fair, but if in the new rebooted universe there are black mermaids then that can be internally consistent. It doesn't need to be internally consistent with the previous version necessarily. Like 616 Nick Fury was white and Ultimates Universe Nick Fury was black. If Ultimates Fury was shown having white parents then if it wasn't explained that would be strange, but he doesn't have to be consistent with 616 Fury's white ancestry.
In our example, it wouldn't be white Jim becoming Asian Jim, it would be a rebooted version of the Office where (in that new universe) Jim was always asian. Internal consistency is internal to the reboot, not to the previous version. Otherwise actors would have to be the same as well.
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