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I agree, but I think the problem is the lazy cash grab, not the race swapping. All of Disney's live action remakes have been dull and uninspired, and the race swap in The Little Mermaid was hardly its biggest problem. Let's start with the fact that they somehow turned a lean 83 minute movie into a two hour and 15 minute slog!
Obviously, I prefer good storytelling and craft to bad storytelling and craft, when deciding my media diet. I would like to hope the vast majority of people do, though the evidence is strong that the masses prefer "junk food" more than works that are profound, thought-expanding, etc.
This is me, though I think a lot of the mania for “race swapping” has more to do with the terrible state of Hollywood writing and, as someone mentioned below, cost cutting than any desire to create minority heroes.
The evidence comes through quite clearly.
First of all, other than Morales, these are not new characters telling new stories in ways that are different than the “white” versions of these stories. In almost every case, what changes are made to the character are almost always superficial, and can often be very obviously inserted into the white character by adding a few throwaway lines of dialogue, or simply recasting the role. If you took those bits away from the character, they are still the original version. The little mermaid isn’t really that different from the original 1990s version. Rey, other than falling for Kylo Ren doesn’t do very much specific to being a woman. She’s a male character played by a woman.
Second, the way these films are marketed is pretty obvious. There had been female leads in adventure stories before. Aliens has a female leas, and she’s pretty badass in my opinion. Star Trek Voyager had a female captain (and a black captain in DS9). The stories weren’t sold as “minority character takes over”, but as stories in their own right. The preening of telling the audience, repeatedly, and at every opportunity that the minority protagonist is superbadass and has it so much harder than any mere man isn’t there.
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The problem, such as it exists here, is that our society so undeservingly valourises minorities, that race swapping functions as an aegis against people calling out your shitty product for being shitty. "They're not upset because our product is low quality, they're just RACIST! Quick, buy our shite and tongue-bath it online to show how NOT RACIST you are!"
There's also an element of "the so-called writers care more about hamfisting their precious representation and sermoning their diversity spiels through the script than about actually making a good product". The product is more often than not just a vehicle for propaganda, and so much the better if it entails the desecration of something a group of their hated enemies (whites, men, nerds) holds dear. Hollowing out an IP and puppeteering the corpse to spout your dogma is the ultimate in cultural conquest.
I think the alternative view is that they’re sermonizing and hamfisting representation as a mostly successful way to sell a shitty product that if it weren’t diverse wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. I can’t remember the last movie I saw that had me thinking about it more than ten seconds after the credits roll. That’s not diversity, that’s shitty writing. Most modern movies are playing the same CGI action tropes and the same jokes and the the same franchises over and over. The world of Hollywood writers have been drinking their own kool aid for half a century with no new ideas allowed.
I think that what you’re describing is fetishized anti racism. I’m not even sure how much the writers and producers care about anything they produce. It’s just used to avoid criticism as criticism of something with a diverse cast is racist.
But I’ll point out that even the shows that are produced without special attention to diverse casting are equally shitty, and equally as poorly thought out. Picard isn’t spectacularly diverse, but there are all kinds of plot holes and plot armor and so on that really make the show hard to watch. It’s everywhere and I think it’s a big problem.
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