@Nihil When things are as good for the gander as they are for the goose, I'll see your point. But white actors have not suffered for these changes. There is no shortage of roles for them, and no shortage of depictions of white people in media for white audiences to relate to. When the default main character in every movie we see, the default romantic interest, the Everyman, is automatically assumed to be a person of color, I'll see your point, but for now, that really isn't the case, is it? I mean, look at 300. The whole cast was English, Scottish, Australian... No one batted an eye. Same with Troy. Were there any Greeks cast at all? Almost every biblical movie ever stars a white cast. Look in the backgrounds of movies that take place in very diverse cities like London or New York City and you'll notice that even the extras are all white. And keep in mind that in your examples, the vast majority of these characters that have been changed were mostly minor and/or supporting characters. The hero is still white. Thor is still white. Superman is still white. Andy Dufresne is still white. Harry Potter is still white. Mr. Fantastic and Daredevil are still white. Unless the star is a big box office draw (Will Smith or Denzel Washington), the hero is always white. Even in movies like Crazy Rich Asian, the romantic lead was portrayed by a guy who's half-white (full Asian in the book). In Hidden Figures, the movie about the efforts of black female mathematicians in NASA, they CREATED a fictional white man (Kevin Costner) to defend them. So it's really not the same situation at all.
And incidentally, Mary Jane Watson has yet to appear in the new Spiderman series. You're thinking of Michelle, who is not Mary Jane. The new Annie was a retelling (like The Wiz, or Patrick Stewart's revision of Othello in which he was the sole white actor and everyone else was black). Nick Fury Jr is black in the comics and the son of Nick Fury Sr, the white man who led the Howling Commandos in the 40s and 50s. Nick Fury Sr is still white in the comics. And the Catwoman movie was based on a character named Patience Phillips (not Selina Kyle) who took up the mantle of Catwoman. Not that it matters. That movie was a train wreck. If you haven't watched it, don't bother.
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@Nihil When things are as good for the gander as they are for the goose, I'll see your point. But white actors have not suffered for these changes. There is no shortage of roles for them, and no shortage of depictions of white people in media for white audiences to relate to. When the default main character in every movie we see, the default romantic interest, the Everyman, is automatically assumed to be a person of color, I'll see your point, but for now, that really isn't the case, is it? I mean, look at 300. The whole cast was English, Scottish, Australian... No one batted an eye. Same with Troy. Were there any Greeks cast at all? Almost every biblical movie ever stars a white cast. Look in the backgrounds of movies that take place in very diverse cities like London or New York City and you'll notice that even the extras are all white. And keep in mind that in your examples, the vast majority of these characters that have been changed were mostly minor and/or supporting characters. The hero is still white. Thor is still white. Superman is still white. Andy Dufresne is still white. Harry Potter is still white. Mr. Fantastic and Daredevil are still white. Unless the star is a big box office draw (Will Smith or Denzel Washington), the hero is always white. Even in movies like Crazy Rich Asian, the romantic lead was portrayed by a guy who's half-white (full Asian in the book). In Hidden Figures, the movie about the efforts of black female mathematicians in NASA, they CREATED a fictional white man (Kevin Costner) to defend them. So it's really not the same situation at all.
And incidentally, Mary Jane Watson has yet to appear in the new Spiderman series. You're thinking of Michelle, who is not Mary Jane. The new Annie was a retelling (like The Wiz, or Patrick Stewart's revision of Othello in which he was the sole white actor and everyone else was black). Nick Fury Jr is black in the comics and the son of Nick Fury Sr, the white man who led the Howling Commandos in the 40s and 50s. Nick Fury Sr is still white in the comics. And the Catwoman movie was based on a character named Patience Phillips (not Selina Kyle) who took up the mantle of Catwoman. Not that it matters. That movie was a train wreck. If you haven't watched it, don't bother.