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"THERE ARE NO BLACK PEOPLE IN RIVENDELL, IT'S UNREALISTIC"
To be honest, I absolutely would expect the cast to be way more diverse if the movies were shot today. It's shocking how white those movies are- I'm pretty sure the haradrim are the only on-screen POC in the entire trilogy. The Hobbit movies tried to correct for this by having POC extras in the crowd scenes in Laketown, and some of them may have even had a few lines. Still no actual characters though
It's kinda funny that the terrible Dungeons and Dragons movie with Jeremy Irons that came out a year before Fellowship had an elf portrayed by a black actor as one of the main characters
it fucks me up how many people get upset about nonwhite people being cast as characters they expect(?) to be white, which is somehow more pronounced and embarrassing when it's in fantasy.
like, get a grip. it's fantasy. and of course if it's a nonwhite actor, it's political wokism and cynical marketing, but if it's a white actor it authentic, artistic, and real.
aside from how incurious and un self aware these critiques are, I just can't imagine caring so deeply about it that I would even think to bring it up, when there are so many other engaging critiques around media these days... like how much of it is endless retellings of pre-existing IP, how conflicts are always same same tropes, and how the arts suffer under the austerity of artistic education, since only the rich are allowed to pursue them, only the rich can fund them and only the rich can platform/distribute them.
but no, gotta hear from a guy in his mid 40s how the new little mermaid sux because she's doesn't look like some 3rd century Hibernian smoke show.
it's like basically a tantrum over no longer being the exclusive target demographic of media, but not being able to admit that the "classic" versions were similarly inauthentic either.