I don’t think it erases the overall theme of good vs. evil but Tolkein was pretty specific in the racial features of the people in Middle Earth and that those with white features were the good guys.
Some of the most evil characters were light skinned - Boromir & Saruman for instance, and Tolkien never described the skin color of Dwarfs and has mentioned dark skin men amongst various races. He was fiercely anti-racist in his personal writing as well. So the whole narrative of the Lord of the Rings being a story about white people is largely unsubstantiated from his writings. but rather reflect how people mainly interpret his books.
Watched 30min of that show, got bored and didn't watch the rest. 1/5 stars....not enough Asians in it. Damn racist show.
I understand how uber fanboys get all uppity whenever something non-canonical gets included in their favorite work of fiction. So many people wrap up their entire identity in these things. Movies, books, games, etc. Anything new or different they just instantly have an allergic reaction to. That being said, a lot of the time the race/gender/nationality of the people represented is largely either just coincidental or simply just not relevant to the story. If a black elf or female dwarf pisses you off, you probably need to go outside and touch grass. If anything I think it draws in more people and allows them to identify with the content which, if you're a fan, you should be celebrating.
I think there is truth to the idea that it shouldn't matter, but I also recognize that there is an element of forcing the issue that is off putting.
Those men with dark skin were the Southrons and they fought for Sauron. Theoden defeats their king in the battle of Pelinor Fields. He also described the orcs as: “squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien_and_race Tolkien did oppose Nazi Germanay and South African apartheid but universe he creates the good guys are if the West with the features of the West and his bad guys are of the south and East. I don’t think Tolkein was an outright racist but his views were the views of most mid 20th C. Brits.
But he also described other groups of men "the good guys" who had dark skin. I think it's an oversimplification to say that the bad guys were dark skin and the good guys were white, and the orcs were Asians. Northern people are always going to be fair skin compared to Southern people, this is just a fact of evolution.
As you can tell I’ve read a lot of Tolkein and I don’t recall him having a group of good guys with dark skin. You might be thinking of people like Haladin who had darker hair but otherwise description fits the Celts. The “Dark Elves” weren’t black but elves that lived in the Mirkwood so they almost never saw the Sun.
This whole thing reminds me of Hamilton for some reason. My father in law got his panties in a bunch when he heard that they deliberately went out of their way to cast minorities in roles of Caucasian historical figures. At first I agreed with him. Seemed kinda dumb to so blatantly misrepresent the characters. Then I saw the show and I came to realize something. A black or Latino kid spends their whole life seeing the founding of the country represented by white people. It's alienating to them. They feel like it's not their story/country. When they see someone who looks like them, it draws them in, pulls them closer to the story and helps them identify with the content.
Boromir was definitely not evil. The whole point was that he was a paragon that was tempted by the ring because he wanted to save his people from certain annihilation. I agree with you that skin color = evil is an overblown topic wrt LoTR, but Boromir isn't the counter-example. Grima, Sauruman, the Sackville-Bagginses, the Witch-King, the Master, the Wood-Elves in the Hobbit, etc. are better choices.
Not that I can recall and am not a fan of how the Hobbits have been depicted as being small fat elves in the LOTR movies. The Elves are noted though as having much finer features than humans.
Another interesting thing is that the orcs are descended from Elves. They were originally elves that Morgoth tortured and twisted in the First Age.
