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In the books Glorfindel drives back the Nazgul. In the movies it is Arwen. Two different versions of the same story. Each is a separate contained universe. One is the original and the other is an altered adaption. You don't need an (internal to the story) multiverse for that. It's an issue that already exists. The 80's animation, the books, the movies, the extended version of the movies.
And if they pay the licensing fee to Tolkiens estate they absolutely can claim that. They bought it fair and square. With caveats of what they could and could not do. Art can be bought and sold.
They replaced Glorfindel with Arwen, and while I hate this choice, I understand it.
They did not replace Glorfindel with a single mother brown Human healer from an invented village in the far South populated by the descendants of the Men who fought in Morgoth's armies, and had Jackson even tried doing that, the first movie would have sunk like a stone that looks down into the darkness which is why it does not float like a ship that looks up at the light.
They did not have Japanese Elrond or Hispanic Legolas.
Think about what you are saying, because what you are saying is "Amazon are making their own version of a fantasy world and just calling it Middle-earth", which is in agreement with what the rest of us are arguing about.
If a Chinese studio wanted to do a version of LOTR and cast every single part with Chinese actors - it would be feckin' glorious because they know how to do epic fantasy and ethereally beautiful people of fairy descent. I would not say a single word about it.
I would, however, squawk like a goose if they decided that Gondor was in fact the Qin Dynasty and Númenor had been Korea, and cast accordingly with the rest of the parts being White European as per the book.
Right but your original point was that you needed a multiverse to have different versions. But that isn't the case (which you seem to accept), which is fine, now we are back to objecting to the SPECIFIC changes made, which is also fine I think. Let me rephrase. If you dislike the race swapping because:
No changes should be made at all, Arwen replacing Glorfindel is also wrong (and what happened to Tom Bombadil, Jackson you monster!)- entirely reasonable in my view (maybe a minority opinion across the population, but when has that ever stopped us here?)
The changes they made were not explained appropriately within the setting - entirely reasonable in my view.
The changes they made were explained within the setting, but I don't accept that change because black people can't be natives of this area of Middle Earth, no matter how well it is explained in universe. - this seems like it may be an issue (again in my opinion) - see below.
I don't care about the Watsonian reasons, I object because of the Doylist reasons for the change (i.e. creators pushing diversity in casting) are ones I dislike for x reason - entirely reasonable in my view (I may disagree with it, but it is I think it is a reasonable position to hold).
Going back to your example, if the makers of RoP had a flashback to Aule creating dwarfs and revealed he made them in different skin colors, I think you said, that you would be ok with this. (Please correct me if I am wrong!) but the OP I was responding to seemed to be of the opinion that if you included anyone black they would HAVE to be explained as a foreigner within the concept space of this version of the show and also import our own race dynamics such that it should also be regarded as racial "cucking" et al. That's the part that I think is a little unreasonable.
None of that should be taken to say that the writers have indeed explained it, or even agree with me that they should. More discussing the hypothetical.
You need a multiverse to have black Arwen, which was your argument; you're the one who brought up Marvel universe and Nick Fury is white in one Earth and black in another.
You can't skip from "different versions belong in different universes" to "different versions in the same universe" as it suits your argument. Either Middle-earth is indeed different in every version, in which case Amazon do not get to call it Tolkien's work, or it's the same world in the different versions.
You're trying to argue that we could change George Washington to a New Zealand Maori because hey, a history text book is different from a painting of him crossing the Delaware is different to the movie made about the Revolutionary War.
Ok, so what is your interpretation of Jackson's movies? Is it Lord of the Rings? Is it Tolkien's work? Marvel deal with it using multiverse within their overall meta universe (though whether their tv shows and movies are part of that comics metaverse seems to change, is the MCU Earth-616 or 199999 for example?)
Given we already have multiple versions of Lord of the Rings properties, how do you see those? That is what I am really trying to get at. Forget what the specific differences are, if Jackson's movies had been identical to the book except for the Arwen/Glorfindel change for example. Is it Lord of the Rings? Is it Tolkien or not?
Is your position that ANY change invalidates calling it Lord of the Rings or is your issue with specific changes?
Edit: I think you kind of answered this below actually.
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