I'm not trying to argue at all, I'm just trying to explain how i personally feel about it without being written off as just racist because people disagree. And this will come off as redundant since I've talked about this before but I'll try to explain the best i can
First of all I really dont care about her being ariel because i dont care about little mermaid at all and they could do whatever they want to the series and i wouldnt bat an eye, but that's what sparked the discussion of this whole thing
But i understand people not liking it because when it comes to series i do like, i want it to be accurate to how I'm familiar with it, as nobody is a fan of "change" in any sense, including this
Main example that comes to mind is when people complained Annabeth from Percy Jackson was brunette, people complained
Maybe not as much but people did complain about it
And i remember also thinking it was stupid because how hard would it be to make her blonde so it's more accurate
And one involving race that irked me was when they were making the Witcher series, the director was looking for minorities to play Ciri which was annoying because it didnt make sense.
And then the new percy jackson series a black girl was casted as Annabeth and when people complain, theyre just racist, even though they complained about her hair color before, so they expected them to not complain with an even more drastic change unless they're just racist
Ive had people tell me that the percy jackson stuff was more niche and didnt have such a backlash
Which may be true
But i think the backlash is louder and more talked about because it's involving race which is already sensitive of a topic, where as seeing people complain about a girls hair color wouldnt draw as much eyes or arguments, even though it still happened
Now... the problem with it the other way is the lack of diversity in the original works, especially of main characters. So i think that should be on the original authors but that does make it complicated on the answer just being to only cast white people? That isnt really fair
Although back to Percy Jackson. In the original movie Grover, a main character was changed to black but people were more distraught over Annabeths hair because Annabeth already had a descriptive look and design, where as Grover didnt so there was more leniency to change it without changing his character from the original depiction.
Miles Morales is his own character, person, and story
Hes not just spiderman changed to being black for no reason
And everybody likes Miles Morales
But it's when they change characters who already have specific designs that we're familiar with getting changed that causes the commotion and disagreements
