Gender swapping is anther interesting one. Let's look at Ghostbusters, they did it but they did it so damn poorly without any thought to the original that it made no sense and the humour was poor at best. The story didn't connect at all and was all over the place. 

The worst part about that gender swap was is the black girl. Now instead of keeping it simple and basically making her a female Winston, they went all stereotypical loud mouth black woman that you would find at walmart arguing about something and everything. Now Winston was a smart black man and a scientist, so why couldn't they transition her to be the same? Are black women only seen as loud mouth obnoxious people who look to pick an argument with everyone in America? To me that felt far more racist by portraying her that way. Every race has smart people(men and women) in it and people fighting ghosts should be as such and not a bunch of clowns that couldn't get a gig at a kids birthday party.  

Now look at Ghostbusters Afterlife. There was fricken kids involved boys and girls, however they were tided into the universe and the little girl was literally 10x smarter then the all female cast movie. Guess what when you put some fucking thought into the plot and don't try to turn it into cheap poor written humour with political agendas, it fucking works and made it a very enjoyable movie to watch.

So the point being if done right anything is possible, if done poorly to be just political to cash in on a franchise name it will end poorly. 

Hollywood has been white washing parts for 70 years, so I'm not going to get bent out of shape over there being a black Little Mermaid (the actress was fine in the role anyway) or a black Nick Fury (Sam Jackson is great in the role) when you've had white people playing black parts (in black face), Asian parts, Middle Eastern parts, etc. etc. for decades prior. And this is not even like "well that happened in the 60s and 70s" ... this was happening as recently as Jake Gyllenhall playing the Prince of Persia and Emma Stone being cast as an Asian woman not that long ago. 

The demographics of North America and Europe are very different from 40-50 years ago. If anything Latino people should complain that they are underrepresented in movies and TV shows. For box office the Latino audience is the no.1 movie going demographic in the US, for example the Super Mario movie, Latino audiences were the no.1 audience for that movie. If those people want to ask where is their representation, it's fair IMO, Hollywood still has major problems putting a Latino actor in a lead role.

Eh, I can think of several recent movies with Latino/Latina actor/actress main characters, including Coco (Anthony Gonzalez), Encanto (Stepanie Beatriz), The Book of Life (Diego Luna), Vivo (Lin-Manuel Miranda and Ynairaly Simo as co-leads), Alita Battle Angel (Rosa Salazar), and the upcoming DC movie Blue Beetle (Xolo Maridueña) among them. You've also got Zoe Saldana appearing quite often in Hollywood blockbusters these days, from JJ Abram's Star Trek trilogy as Uhura, to the MCU as Gamora, to the Avatar series as Neytiri, so many blockbusters in fact that she is now the #2 grossing actress in Hollywood behind only Scarlett Johannsen, and #4 on the combined actor/actress grossing chart behind only 2 men, Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Downey Jr. Are the levels of Latino/Latina leads equal to white leads? No, but they have definitely risen considerably over the last decade or so. Hollywood is definitely getting there with their Latino/Latina representation, another decade and you probably will see about as many Latino/Latina leads as white leads.

I don't think it's risen, if anything it's probably gone backwards, Antonio Banderas had a phase in the 90s where he was becoming a legit leading man but that fizzled out. Zoe Saldana is usually in make up or behind Avatar CGI in her better known roles, she's not even as big of a star as Banderas was trending to be. 

But movies have become more diverse than like the 2000s sure. Pirates of the Caribbean? Largely all-white cast. Spider-Man 1/2/3? Largely all-white cast. LOTR all white cast except for New Zealand natives being allowed to play the orcs, Star Wars prequels, all-white cast basically aside from Sam Jackson who had to beg to get the role. Batman Begins/The Dark Knight/Dark Knight Rises, largely all-white cast. Harry Potter movies, principle leads are all white but there are some background supporting characters of color. Transformers had Bernie Mac as a side character, but largely an all white cast for the principle leads. 

And I liked a lot of these movies, but lets be honest ... that's a whole lot of white people, lol. 

The demographics for the US and even global demographics today are quite different, it doesn't really make sense to make movies with all-white casts unless the subject material absolutely demands it. Half or even more than half the audience is non-white. Like for the Super Mario Bros. movie (this year's biggest movie), the demographic split was like 70% non-white for the opening weekend, with Hispanics being the no.1 portion of the Mario audience for its opening at 40%.

If a Hispanic person asks why they aren't seeing more representation for themselves in movies, they have a fair point.  

I am somewhat persuaded by this line of thinking. I can agree that the individual action is the same but the impact is felt greater because there are more characters from one race than the other. But I cannot agree that this impact should be felt in a positive or negative way.

I cannot agree that there is no double standard. Because the point I make is not about a tally of how many asians are still allowed to be portrayed before optimal representation is reached (and if they overshoot, any asian role can and should be swapped to something else). My point is about principal. It is that one race should not be regarded as a better option than the other. This whole representation game smacks of trench warfare. Of tid for tad morality.

It seems that some people might think that in a world of bad representation character x has less of a right to be race x and should be changed. That is certainly not what I would think. That a white character in a see of white people should be celebrated to become some other race - "yeah, another one for the team." That is not my team. I don't want to fee bad for hispanics when they "lose" another character, because I don't want to see race like that. As a tally to get right.

And the whole representation stuff is unwinnable, because the rules are not even clear (to me at least). The moment you make movies with an international release, what in the world should you represent? And even if you strive for perfect representation of the general population that you portray in film, individual groups of people (of which movies are about) are unrealistically expected to have the same mix of races as the general population.

In short: representation (however it is) should not be a reason to make race swapping more or less okay. That is at least how I think about it.

Ah, complex topic.

First of all, race swapping (white washing is one form of it) is often criticized under the broader view, that good IPs should not be changed in their core. If the skin color touches that core is up for debate, but it often is. And for the ones claiming that old IPs need fresh blood and to be changed: why not make a new IP to begin with and throw away the shackles of the old. You can copy pretty much everything, only change the names and what you wanted to change.

But there are qualifiers, and a lot of them. If an IP has fallen out of the public consciousness or never entered it in our part of the world, then you can change a lot without much fan backlash. When Tarantino made Django black I think barely anyone complained. I complained because the movie is mediocre (except the perfomance of Waltz, who is exceptional), but not because of the skin color of Django.

What is with adaptations from different cultures. Journey to the West is probably the most well known novel of all time (you may have heard of Dragonball or Monkey King) and it was adapted in different countries. Seeing the characters not as chinese is weird - but nothing really that breaks the immersion.

"I'm not a huge LotR guy, but from what I gather, in Tolkien's lore the different groups of people are very homogeneous (makes sense for a fantasy setting with limited means of transportation), but there are vast regions populated by non-white races. Why not write the show so that one of the main storyline strands takes place in one or more of these regions, and/or focusing on characters from those other races? Same with Wheel of Time - the little isolated backwater village at the start is so diverse that it made me chuckle."
In "The dragon prince" the elves are racial homogen, while the humans are very diverse. But there is a good reason for that: the history is, that humans were banned from the lands andf had all to move to new regions. That got them all mixed upo and they had to restart their civilizations.

Generally I would recommend making a new IP, but there is also another trick. I think MIles Morales is a great way to increase diversity, while retaining the core of the IP. Miles Morales does not replace Peter Parker, but they coexist. That is a nice trick.

Also, as a last comment: Akira Kurosawa adapted a lot of Shakespeare (under different names though). He casted japanese actors, so that is one very early raceswap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwP_kXyd-Rw

Whitewashing is largely a thing of the past at this point; the current trend is going in the opposite direction, with people of colour being swapped into white characters and stories in a way that's quite tokenistic and lazy.

If representation isn't authentic and reflective of society, then it's nothing but skin deep. Tokenism is not genuine.

There's also the risk that if you push too far with noble intentions, you end up overrepresenting; for example, in the UK in 2020, it was found that 22% of roles on TV went to ethnic minorities, which might sound like under-repesentation, until you factor in that they make up 12% of the UK's population, so their presence on TV is actually double their real world presence.

Ideally, representation on screen should accurately reflect society, so that everyone gets a fair and democratic share.

Sorry but I call bullshit on a lot of this. Firstly how many of those British shows have a non-white lead? Probably not 20+% of them. 

The fact of the matter is when it comes to TV/movies, white people have been massively over represented to the point where the issue actually is it's like a spoiled child that is used to all the attention now throwing a shit fit when they realize they have to share once in a while. 

Who really is actually being "hurt" by Ariel being black in 1/20 times Disney has had a non-white "princess"? The people whining most loudly about this are coming from the place of the "status quo is white people in the lead in everything all the time and anything different is an affront to me" basically, the spoiled brat of a kid who is used to be catered to non-stop now throwing a crying fit because they're realizing they have to share with other kids on the playground once in a while. 

This status quo you're referring to is the past, not the present. Recent studies show that in the US for example Black people already comprised about 13% of lead roles in cable shows, which is pretty much a match for their share of the population.

If you're say 13% of the population, getting 13% of the representation isn't underrepresentation, its democratically proportionate. Likewise, if you're 75% of the population, then 75% of the representation isn't overrepresentation.

Funny how there's only an outcry about this when PoC get a few blockbuster lead roles (this year specifically one of the few in Hollywood's history where you can probably point to more than 2 blockbuster movies headlined by a PoC actor). 

But when Jake Gylennhal was Prince of Persia, and Emma Stone was cast to play an Asian woman, and Robert Downey Jr. was in blackface that was no big deal and/or hilarious or just "get over it". Curious how when the shoe is on the other foot there's a group of people (not saying people in this thread but we know the types that are out there) that are having a meltdown like a toddler. A black Ariel and a black-latino Spider-Man is just too much to cope with. 

The demographics have shifted far more than that too, for Americans under 18 (ie: the future generation of content consumption), that crowd is now actually so-called "minority majority", meaning there are more non-white kids in the US than white kids. For 30 and under the demographics are very diverse still. If anything, as I've said Latinos are very underrepresented on screen, and they are the no.1 theater going demographic in the US but they barely get any love. Hollywood is only now realizing black people not named Eddie or Will can be a lead in a movie, it will probably take another 15-20 years for Latinos to get the same treatment. 

The fact is though most big budget or even mid budget or even low budget Hollywood movies are still white-leads. Indiana Jones, check. The new Star Wars had Finn and then embarrassingly sidelined him after teasing him as a Jedi type in the trailers. The Flash, check. Barbie check. Oppenheimer check. Guardians of the Galaxy check. Mission: Impossible. Even the Fast series became minority drive less by design and more by tragedy, Paul Walker passing away made the franchise Vin Diesel centric instead of the two of them being co-leads (and the original movie itself being basically a "white dude becomes cool with inner city types" fantasy to begin with). 

For the person out there that's getting hysterical over dark melanin in their blockbusters, relax and breathe. There's plenty of white bread in movies and TV still, the majority thereof in fact. It's just going to be going forward you're going to have to learn to share rather than having everything tailored exactly to just one demographics over and over again ... it's like a child that's gotten used to being an only having it explained to them that with a new brother or sister they're going to have to learn to share things and can't be the center of everything all the time anymore.