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Notes -
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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