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I think Top Gun proves my argument because nobody was distracted from the "authenticity" by minority and black casting. People say they're just bothered by LoTR being a bad show but they keep talking about the black actors. Nobody cared about it with Top Gun when Top Gun did exactly what people say they don't like by taking an existing franchise and including black people.
People keep saying that criticism of LoTR has nothing to do with diversity, but then they keep criticizing diversity.
I'm biting my tongue very hard here to keep from swearing. Top Gun: Maverick is explicitly set in our current day world, where yeah, minority and BIPOC and even female women of the feminine persuasion exist and join the armed forces. You are trying to make it parallel that someone saying "Why is there a black Elf in Rings of Power?" is on the same level as someone saying "Oh my stars and garters, why is there a coloured person who is not a servant in that movie set in 2016, and what is more, they allow him to be on terms of equality with his white betters?"
Given that there have been black soldiers in the American military since the Revolutionary War, that would indeed be a thinly-veiled racist question. But imagine a movie set in a world where there had never been any black soldiers at all, and this new movie had one (1) black soldier or pilot amongst an otherwise all-white cast. I think that there could legitimately be asked "who is this guy and what is he doing here and where did he come from?" without it being racist. Is he from a country where they always had black soldiers? Is he meant to be the first black soldier? Is this a propaganda movie trying to get black people to enlist in the army?
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I mean, do you not see how the settings of these two works might cause 'diversity' to be less distracting and noticeable in one, compared to the other?
Especially when, again, the creators center marketing around it and make it out like they're doing something brave and special... and show that they're not prioritizing the source material.
If Maverick were set in, say, WWII and there were female fighter pilots added in, you think that might stick out a bit and cause some dissonance?
And even then, there are certainly ways they could do it effectively! But it helps to not intentionally stir the controversy and then play the victim.
Again, RoP's creators made the deliberate choice on casting as they did, and further deliberate choice to emphasize said casting. Why did they do it? What creative process led to this outcome, and how much of it was related to the quality of the series?
I could ask Maverick's creators why they did cast the way they did and maybe they can give answers that relate to increasing the strength of the story. Or they can say "well we literally just chose the best actors we could find because the characters' racial and gender identities doesn't effect the plot." I don't know if they would, but they have that out.
They especially have that out because they made a great movie from start to finish.
Can RoP's creators do the same? It just seems obvious that the choice is made specifically for the controversy and not to serve the story.
And indeed, it may have led to the story being less good.
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