Depends on the role....
I don't see why you can't admit it's happening, Disney has been caught saying as much, Amazon, Netflix all have similar targets, if they have an target of 50% of the cast to be LGBT or a minority(Black), then chances are based on demographics in the US.... the best person for the job will told to take a hike because they've reached their straight white person quota..
I think it’s a bit of a pendulum swing.
We have had many years, decades, of under-representation in
leading roles in Western productions. So there is now, as you say, a leaning towards encouraging diversity. This means, as you allude, that there probably is some element of discrimination against some actors/actresses for the purposes of hitting targets - although it’s very hard to quantify how much of a problem this is in practice.
There is, I think, currently a swing
away from clumsy artificial/forced diversity quotas and messaging in films. People are tired of it. So I think the pendulum is now returning back towards the bottom of its swing.
Just look at Lord of the Rings. Those films barely had any representation at all in it. Which was fine but it does perhaps limit it’s audience / wider appeal. Then, the Ring of Power TV series was quite prominent with its display of diversity, which was OK but it was so prominent that it was distracting for some - it seemed to just be a counter to the original films. The right balance is probably somewhere between the two…? Diversity but not to the point of distraction?
The kicker is that if you let yourself become bothered by it, you will perpetually distract yourself and will unable to objectively determine whether something is good or not. On that front, I think people really get unduly bogged down when it comes to so called ‘race swapping’ when it really has very little baring on anything.
What is far more annoying than ‘race swapping’ is where the cast is a diversity / social justice checklist. That’s completely different and, IMO, it very rarely happens… probably because people find it tedious.
It’ll take some time to get right… so I’ll extend some patience and try not to get too bogged down in it for the meantime. So long as the end product is good. That’s the main thing.
I have absolutely zero hope for this live action remake because all of them have been absolutely terrible… the very worst one being Mulan; the title character was this flawless goddess and had no growth at all. I have no idea what they were thinking with that one
the lead actor is of Polish/Columbian decent.
