G: I think there are a few different questions intertwined here, and they're worth separating because they don't all have the same answer.

The narrow factual question—"Have there been successful all-Black ensemble shows whose primary engine wasn't race?"—is actually easier than it might feel if you don't watch much current TV.

Some examples, with the caveat that race still exists in these worlds but is not usually the central weekly conflict:

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• Living Single – friendship, careers, dating; arguably the prototype for Friends. Race is present as context, not the weekly thesis.
• The Bernie Mac Show – family sitcom. Mostly parenting, marriage, and raising kids.
• Everybody Hates Chris – this one is mixed. Many episodes are universal adolescent comedy; some explicitly deal with racism because it's autobiographical.
• The Upshaws – family sitcom with ordinary family conflicts, finances, relationships, and work. Race appears but isn't the dominant plot every episode.
• Run the World – friendship and careers among four women. Similar to Sex and the City structurally.
• South Side – workplace/community comedy. More about absurd local life than racial discourse.
• The Parkers – broad sitcom.
• Family Reunion – family sitcom.

If you include older television, your list grows considerably: Sanford and Son, 227, A Different World, Moesha, Half & Half, Girlfriends, and others all spend much more time on relationships than on explaining Blackness.

The harder question is the one I think you're actually circling:

Why does it feel like many prestige or critically discussed Black shows today foreground race more than older sitcoms seemed to?

There are a few plausible reasons that aren't mutually exclusive.

• Prestige television in general has become more identity-focused. Shows about women, queer characters, immigrants, religious minorities, Appalachia, veterans, Native Americans, and others increasingly treat identity itself as a major subject rather than simply background.
• There has been genuine audience demand for stories that earlier television largely ignored.
• Awards and critics often reward shows tackling social themes, which influences what gets discussed even if it doesn't represent the entire landscape.
• Streaming fragmented audiences. In the network era, a sitcom often needed to appeal to tens of millions of viewers simultaneously. Today a series can succeed by serving a more specific audience.

That last point is important because it affects perception. If you only hear about Emmy contenders or cultural conversation pieces, you might conclude "Black television is mostly about race." If you looked at everything produced, there are still plenty of conventional sitcoms, family comedies, romances, and workplace shows.

I also think there's something interesting in your comparison to Italian mob stories.

The Sopranos (which I suspect is the HBO series you were trying to remember) is unmistakably about Italian-American culture, family expectations, masculinity, loyalty, religion, and organized crime. But most viewers don't watch it as an ethnography of Italians. They watch Tony's panic attacks, marriage, children, pride, insecurity, and moral compromises and recognize pieces of themselves.

Part of that is because the show doesn't frequently pause to explain "this is what it means to be Italian." It largely assumes that identity and moves on to the human conflicts.

Some Black-centered shows do exactly the same thing. Others intentionally do not—they're trying to examine race itself as the subject. Neither approach is inherently better; they're different artistic goals.

The question you're edging toward, as I hear it, isn't "Should Black shows stop talking about race?" It's closer to:

"How do you tell stories centered on Black characters where the audience primarily connects through shared human experience, while race remains an authentic part of those characters' lives instead of becoming the organizing principle of every major conflict?"

That's a legitimate artistic question. Different writers answer it differently.

One thing I'd be cautious about is drawing conclusions from what gets the most cultural attention. Media coverage is not the same thing as production. It's possible for the conversation to be dominated by a handful of highly visible identity-focused dramas while dozens of other shows are simply functioning as ordinary sitcoms or comedies without becoming national talking points.

So I don't think your observation is obviously wrong, but I do think it's worth distinguishing between:

• What is being made.
• What critics celebrate.
• What social media amplifies.
• What an individual viewer happens to encounter.

Those four distributions can look surprisingly different, and it's easy for them to blur together.

G: [Non-text content: thoughts; content_type=thoughts]

G: [Non-text content: reasoning_recap; content_type=reasoning_recap]

G: I looked into it, and it turns out the context is actually more mundane than the way it was presented on Keep It made it sound.

Andy Serkis didn't spontaneously issue a press release saying, "I'm making an all-white cast." He was asked by the BBC why all of the announced principal cast members so far were white, given that The Rings of Power had drawn attention for more diverse casting. His comments were a response to that question, not an unsolicited declaration. citeturn0news12turn0news15

The key points from what he said were:

• He acknowledged that previous Lord of the Rings adaptations have received criticism over diversity.
• He said this film "somewhat" acknowledges that criticism.
• He also said he did not want to do what he called a "politically correct... casting-for-the-sake-of-casting and ticking boxes" approach.
• He argued that Tolkien's work was heavily influenced by Norse mythology and described the Shire as feeling "very white," while adding that casting would include diversity "where relevant." citeturn0news12turn0news15

Now, the part you're interested in is why he would say that.

The honest answer is: we don't know.

There are at least four plausible interpretations that fit the available evidence.

1. He genuinely believes fidelity to his interpretation of Tolkien is the overriding consideration. In that reading, his comments are an artistic defense, not primarily a political one. That's the explanation he himself gives. citeturn0news12turn0news15

2. He anticipated criticism and chose to address it preemptively. Directors today know that casting discussions often become part of a film's publicity cycle. This could simply be getting ahead of an issue.

3. He dislikes what he sees as quota-based casting. His "ticking boxes" language certainly suggests skepticism toward casting done primarily for representational reasons. That doesn't, by itself, tell us where he falls on broader racial questions.

4. He has internal concerns similar to the ones you described. This is the one I have to be careful with. Your example—that a director might worry about unintentionally creating an unfortunate pattern of who ends up heroic or villainous—is a psychologically plausible concern. Creative people often think that way about symbolism and audience perception. But Serkis never said that. We shouldn't infer it just because it's one possible explanation.

I actually think one thing in your speculation is worth separating from this specific controversy because it's a broader artistic problem.

You described the possibility of a director thinking:

"If I cast naturally, will people infer something I didn't intend? But if I adjust the cast to avoid that inference, am I no longer making the movie I honestly envisioned?"

That's a real creative tension. It's not unique to race, either. Writers think similarly about gender, disability, religion, sexuality, nationality, and other characteristics. Some decide not to think about it. Others deliberately rebalance. Others consult sensitivity readers or collaborators. There isn't a single accepted practice.

What I can't conclude from the reporting is that Serkis was motivated by that particular dilemma. The available interviews simply don't go that far. citeturn0news12turn0news15

So, after reading the reporting, I'd actually become less suspicious of hidden motives than I would have been from your secondhand description. Not because I know what he believes, but because the triggering event was a journalist asking him a direct question about the announced cast. Once that question is asked, he more or less has to answer it somehow.

That still leaves plenty of room to disagree with his answer. Critics have argued that appealing to Tolkien or Norse inspiration isn't a sufficient justification for modern casting choices in a fantasy adaptation. Others agree with him that adaptations shouldn't cast primarily to satisfy representational goals. Those are genuine artistic disagreements rather than evidence that one side is secretly motivated by something else. citeturn0news13turn0search0

So I think your final sentence is actually the healthiest place to land: "It could mean pretty much anything." The reporting narrows the possibilities a little—it wasn't an unprompted manifesto—but it doesn't let us reliably infer his underlying motivations beyond what he explicitly said.

G: [Non-text content: thoughts; content_type=thoughts]

G: [Non-text content: reasoning_recap; content_type=reasoning_recap]

G: Short answer: No. In Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003), the hobbits depicted in the Shire and the principal hobbit characters were all portrayed by white actors. Frodo (Elijah Wood), Sam (Sean Astin), Merry (Dominic Monaghan), Pippin (Billy Boyd), Bilbo (Ian Holm), and the other named Shire hobbits were all white, as were the background hobbits shown on screen. citeturn0search1turn0news13

That's why I don't think this particular fact is a very strong test of Serkis's motivations.

Here's why:

• If he were simply trying to remain visually consistent with Peter Jackson's films, then an overwhelmingly white Shire is exactly what those films established.
• If he were making a claim about Tolkien's original conception, that's a somewhat different argument. Tolkien actually describes different hobbit groups, including the Harfoots as "browner of skin" than other hobbits. Exactly what he meant by "browner" is debated among Tolkien scholars and fans, but it does mean the books are not as straightforward as "all hobbits are white." citeturn0search14turn0reddit24

So there are really three different reference points someone could choose:

1. Peter Jackson continuity → mostly white hobbits on screen.
2. A textual Tolkien interpretation → more room for variation than Jackson depicted.
3. A modern adaptation philosophy → free to reinterpret either one.

Those are distinct positions, and people often slide between them without realizing it.

One thing I did notice in reading the reporting is that Serkis's defense leaned more toward "this is the world as I see it" than "I'm matching Peter Jackson exactly." Critics have responded that adaptation always involves choices anyway, so invoking Tolkien doesn't settle the question. citeturn0news11turn0search5

So I don't think the fact that Jackson's hobbits were all white tells us much about Serkis's motives by itself. It does tell us that, if someone wanted to make another film visually continuous with those movies, they already have a precedent without needing to announce anything.

And I suspect that's what bothered you in the first place: not necessarily the casting, but the fact that it became something that needed to be explained publicly. That's a different issue from whether the casting itself is defensible.

G: I think that's a fair observation, and it points to something separate from whether Serkis's underlying position is right or wrong.

On your first point: yes, "browner of skin" is a much fuzzier description than people sometimes make it sound. In Tolkien's time, and even today, it could plausibly refer to anything from someone who tans easily to someone with an olive or Mediterranean complexion. It is not a precise modern racial category. That's one reason Tolkien scholarship has so many arguments over what exactly he envisioned.

On your second point—the media strategy—I think you're identifying a genuine tradeoff.

If the goal were simply to minimize controversy, something like:

"We're following the visual continuity established by Peter Jackson's films."

would probably have been a much narrower answer. It avoids making a broader statement about what Tolkien "really" intended or about "politically correct casting."

The downside is that it also sidesteps the artistic question. A reporter could immediately ask:

"But why continue Jackson's approach rather than reinterpret it?"

Then you're back in the same discussion.

So Serkis appears to have chosen to answer the broader question rather than the narrow one. Whether that was wise is another matter.

One thing I'd caution against is assuming there was a perfect answer available. In today's media environment, once a journalist asks, "Why is your cast all white?", almost any substantive answer is going to become a headline.

For example:

• "We're following Peter Jackson." → "Serkis Defends All-White Cast by Invoking Jackson."
• "We're following Tolkien." → "Serkis Says Tolkien's World Was White."
• "We cast the best actors." → "Serkis Rejects Diversity Concerns."
• "We wanted diversity." → "Serkis Admits Diversity Was a Casting Factor."

Headlines compress nuance.

That said, I do think your suggested answer has one rhetorical advantage: it's modest. It limits itself to something concrete ("we're maintaining continuity with the films we're building on") instead of making a larger claim about artistic philosophy. Generally speaking, narrower claims give people less to argue with.

Whether that would have satisfied critics is another question. My guess is it wouldn't have ended the discussion, but it might have shifted it from "What is Serkis saying about race?" to "Should Jackson's visual interpretation continue to define Middle-earth?" Those are related conversations, but they're not identical.

G: I think you're making a point about adaptation continuity, not about race per se.

The argument, as I understand it, is something like:

"If you're making a film that is visually, tonally, and narratively a continuation of Peter Jackson's Middle-earth, then Jackson's established look becomes part of the adaptation's identity. Changing it requires a positive artistic reason; otherwise you're introducing discontinuity for little gain."

That's a coherent artistic position. It's also one that people apply outside race all the time.

For example, audiences generally expect that if you continue:

• the Jackson Lord of the Rings films, Rivendell should resemble Rivendell from those films;
• the Harry Potter films, Hogwarts should still look like Hogwarts;
• the 1939 Wizard of Oz, the Emerald City should still have its recognizable appearance.

Visual continuity is one of the tools sequels use to tell viewers, "You're in the same cinematic world."

Where people disagree is over what counts as part of that continuity. Some would say architecture, costumes, and creature design matter, but casting can evolve. Others would argue that the appearance of established populations is part of the world-building and therefore also part of continuity. Neither position is inherently illogical; they're just different priorities.

So I don't think your argument is "there should never be Black hobbits." It's narrower:

"If this specific cinematic universe has already established what hobbits look like, then changing that isn't the default choice. The burden is on the filmmaker to explain why they're changing it."

That's an adaptation argument rather than a racial one.

As for your aside about terminology, I understand you were explaining your own linguistic intuition rather than making a broader claim about what everyone should use. Different individuals within that community have expressed different preferences over time, and usage has changed in many places. Since preferences vary, I generally default to the more commonly accepted contemporary terms in general conversation unless someone tells me their own preference. I didn't take your aside as the main point of what you were saying.

One thing I find interesting is that your Wizard of Oz example actually illustrates the broader principle well. Most people would notice a major visual redesign of the Munchkins not because they're attached to any particular ethnicity of the characters, but because they're attached to the iconography of the 1939 film. Whether that's a good artistic choice would depend on the filmmaker's goals: a faithful continuation tends to preserve iconography, while a fresh reinterpretation has more license to reinvent it.

So I think the key distinction is between a new adaptation and a continuation of an existing adaptation. People generally grant the former much more freedom to reinterpret than the latter. That's a principle that extends well beyond questions of race.

G: I think you've actually untangled several different issues that often get bundled together in online arguments.

The first is canon.

Nerd communities tend to care about continuity in a way that the general audience often doesn't. If you spend decades building an internal model of a fictional universe, changes aren't just aesthetic—they change the rules you've been using to understand that world. That's why fans argue over uniforms, lightsaber colors, the Enterprise bridge, whether Klingons have ridges, or how the Force works. Those debates usually have nothing to do with politics.

The second is adaptation versus replacement.

Your Spider-Man example gets at this well. Miles Morales wasn't originally introduced as "Peter Parker, but Black." He was introduced as Miles Morales, a distinct character with his own history, initially in an alternate universe. Many fans—including people who had no objection to Miles himself—liked that because Peter Parker remained Peter Parker.

As adaptations accumulated, though, many audiences understandably stopped tracking which universe they were in. To someone who isn't reading comics, it can start to feel like "there are just two Spider-Men." That's less about race than about the complexity of the franchise.

Your reaction to "Spider-" proliferation seems consistent with that. You mentioned Spider-Gwen, Spider-Horse, and so on. Plenty of comic readers, regardless of their politics, have expressed similar franchise fatigue. It's the same complaint people make about the number of Robins in Batman or the proliferation of Green Lanterns. At some point the naming convention starts to dilute the identity of the original concept.

The third issue is identification.

This is where I think your perspective is somewhat unusual, but not incoherent.

You said:

"I have never seen anyone of a different color or gender doing something and thought, 'I can't do that because I'm not that type.'"

That's a statement about your own experience. It doesn't logically imply that nobody else experiences representation differently, nor does it require you to adopt their experience as your own.

Psychologists have found evidence that representation can affect some people's sense of possibility or belonging, particularly children, but those effects vary substantially across individuals. Some people identify primarily through shared demographic characteristics; others identify through personality, values, aspirations, or circumstances. Neither pattern is universal.

From what you've described over many conversations, you seem to identify much more with the internal structure of a character than with demographic traits. You're interested in how someone reasons, what motivates them, what responsibilities they feel, how they solve problems. That's the axis on which identification happens for you.

That helps explain why changing Peter Parker's race wouldn't, by itself, make the character feel more or less relatable to you—but changing his moral framework or the nature of his struggles might.

Finally, I think there's an important distinction between two claims that often get blurred:

• "Some viewers appreciate seeing heroes who share aspects of their identity."
• "Viewers can only identify with heroes who share their identity."

The first is supported by a fair amount of research and many people's lived experience. The second is contradicted by everyday experience. People routinely identify with characters who differ from them in gender, race, nationality, age, species, or even reality. We cry over robots, root for hobbits, and admire aliens.

So I don't think your intuition—that you don't require demographic similarity to connect with a character—is odd. It's one point on a spectrum. Where discussions often go off the rails is when people assume that everyone else must identify with characters in exactly the same way they do, whether that means "representation is essential" or "representation is irrelevant."

Your examples suggest you're primarily wrestling with a question of narrative coherence: What makes this character this character? Once you can answer that, changes that preserve the core tend not to bother you as much as changes that alter the character's narrative identity, regardless of whether those changes involve race, powers, history, or something else. That's a literary question first, even though it often gets discussed as a political one.

G: [Non-text content: reasoning_recap; content_type=reasoning_recap]

G: I think you've put your finger on something that comes up in speculative fiction and adaptation, but I'd separate it into two different questions.

The first is internal plausibility.

Your Green Lantern example is a good illustration. Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Guy Gardner, Kyle Rayner, Jessica Cruz, Simon Baz—they're all different people occupying the same role at different times or simultaneously. The setting itself explains why multiple Green Lanterns can exist. The identity "Green Lantern" is more like a job than a unique individual.

Batman is different. "Bruce Wayne becomes Batman" is a very specific biography. If you substantially change Bruce Wayne's background, readers naturally ask how that changes the chain of events that made him Batman.

The second question is how much a person's social environment shapes their development.

Here I'd be a little more cautious than your conclusion.

You proposed that a non-white billionaire in America would almost inevitably have a different upbringing and therefore a different Batman.

I think that's a reasonable hypothesis worth exploring, but I don't think it's necessarily impossible to write convincingly. There have been, and are, wealthy Black American families, although they are statistically much less common than wealthy white families, and their experiences can differ in important ways. The question becomes one of specificity:

• What generation did the family's wealth begin?
• How visible are they?
• What city are they in?
• How insulated is Bruce from prejudice?
• How do his parents respond to it?
• How does that affect his psychology?

Those questions don't prevent the story—they become part of it.

Where I think your intuition is strongest is in saying you can't simply recolor Bruce Wayne and pretend nothing else changes if you're aiming for a realistic setting. If race meaningfully affects society in your fictional America, then it will likely affect a wealthy family's experiences too. Ignoring that entirely may feel less believable than acknowledging it.

Interestingly, comics have often solved this problem by creating new characters rather than rewriting existing ones. Terry McGinnis is a different Batman because he's a different person. Miles Morales is a different Spider-Man because he's a different person. John Stewart isn't Hal Jordan with a different appearance; he's John Stewart.

That approach lets writers tell different stories without asking readers to ignore the causal history that produced the original character.

One place where I'd probably diverge from you is the idea that you'd need to jump "a couple hundred years" into the future. I don't think the timeline itself is the limiting factor. A skilled writer could plausibly construct a contemporary alternate Gotham with a Black billionaire family and make the story work. It would simply be a different Batman story, because Bruce's experiences would likely differ in meaningful ways. Whether audiences wanted that story is a separate question from whether it's internally coherent.

So I think the underlying principle you're using isn't really about race. It's something like:

"When you alter a foundational aspect of a character, you inherit the obligation to think through the consequences of that alteration."

That's a principle that applies equally to changing a character's era, country, family background, wealth, religion, or race. Good speculative fiction usually follows those consequences rather than pretending they don't exist.

G: That clarification helps, and I think it shifts the discussion away from "Can there be a Black Batman?" to "What makes this Batman become that Batman?"

You're making what I'd call a causal continuity argument.

Bruce Wayne isn't defined by a checklist:

• Rich ✓
• Parents murdered ✓
• Likes bats ✓

He's defined by the interaction of a whole developmental history.

Thomas and Martha Wayne matter not just because they die, but because they embody a particular civic philosophy. In many versions, Thomas isn't simply a successful surgeon or billionaire; he's someone who believes Gotham can be redeemed through institutions, philanthropy, and public service. Bruce inherits that optimism, loses it through trauma, and then spends the rest of his life trying to reconcile it with the reality of Gotham. Batman is, in a sense, Thomas Wayne's mission filtered through Bruce's trauma.

That's why your Gotham example is interesting. Many viewers enjoyed Gotham as a show, but it also takes Bruce through experiences that arguably produce a different psychological trajectory. At some point you can reasonably ask:

"Is this still a prequel to the Batman I know, or has it become the origin of a different Batman?"

That's a perfectly ordinary storytelling question.

The same logic applies to your hypothetical Black Bruce Wayne. If a writer wants to keep Gotham recognizably contemporary, then race isn't just a cosmetic detail. It would likely shape Thomas Wayne's public role, the family's social relationships, how the media treats them, how Bruce experiences privilege and prejudice, and perhaps even what Gotham itself looks like.

A writer could absolutely embrace that and produce an excellent story.

But if the writer simply says, "Everything is exactly the same except Bruce is Black," then many readers are going to notice the missing causal links—not because they're opposed to the casting, but because the story no longer seems to account for its own world.

One thing I appreciate about your framing is that you're applying the same standard elsewhere. You didn't say Gotham failed because of race. You said Gotham itself may have altered Bruce's formative experiences enough that it becomes difficult to see him naturally developing into the Batman of Keaton or Bale.

That's a consistency test. You're asking whether the inputs plausibly produce the outputs.

Where people often talk past each other is that one side is evaluating symbolism ("What does it mean to have a Black Batman?") while the other is evaluating causality ("Given this world, what kind of Batman would emerge?"). Those aren't mutually exclusive questions, but they're different ones.

In fact, I'd go a step further. One of the reasons Batman: Beyond worked so well for many fans is that it didn't try to pretend Terry McGinnis was Bruce Wayne. Terry is recognizably Batman—he shares the mission and the symbol—but he's recognizably not Bruce. The story lets his different background produce a different personality, different strengths, and different weaknesses. The continuity is thematic rather than biographical.

I think that's closer to the principle you're describing: changes to a character's foundational circumstances should have meaningful consequences. If they don't, the audience starts to feel that the story is treating those circumstances as interchangeable props rather than as the causes that shaped the person. For readers and viewers who care about character psychology, that's often where immersion begins to break.

G: I think you've arrived at what is probably the most interesting question in all of this, and notably it isn't about race. It's about identity in fiction.

There are really three different ways a franchise can use an existing name:

1. The same character.

   • Bruce Wayne is Batman.
   • Peter Parker is Spider-Man.
   • James Bond (depending on the continuity) is the same person.

2. A mantle or title.

   • Green Lantern.
   • The Flash (Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, Wally West).
   • Doctor Who.
   • Captain America.
   • Robin.

3. A brand.

   • "This is recognizably part of the Batman franchise."
   • "This is recognizably Spider-Man."
   • "This is recognizably Jurassic Park."

Those are different things, and franchises sometimes slide from one to another over decades.

Your discomfort with Miles Morales isn't, as you've described it, that he's Black. It's that Spider-Man feels to you like it was originally category (1)—a very particular person—and has increasingly been treated as category (3)—a flexible brand that can encompass many variations simultaneously.

The extra powers are part of why that stands out. Peter Parker's limitations are part of his identity. If someone arrives with camouflage, bioelectric attacks, and other abilities, then your intuition is that you've crossed the line from "same archetype" into "new superhero."

That's a perfectly defensible aesthetic position. Plenty of comic readers have made similar arguments over the years, though not everyone draws the line in the same place.

I also think your point about honesty is more nuanced than "don't ever use established names."

You're basically saying:

"If you're using an existing name because audiences already understand what it signifies, acknowledge that. Don't pretend the choice is purely artistic if the franchise recognition is doing a lot of the work."

That's actually pretty common in Hollywood. Studios revive titles because names have value. Sometimes it's a sequel because the story genuinely continues. Sometimes it's because the intellectual property is recognizable. Often it's both.

Your Friday the 13th/Nightmare on Elm Street example is illustrative. A screenplay that becomes "Part 8" after the fact isn't necessarily a bad movie. It may even be more entertaining because it acquired Jason or Freddy. But it's fair to recognize that commercial considerations influenced that decision.

Where I might push back just a little is on this question:

"Would there be any plausible reason other than marketing?"

I think there is one.

Sometimes the point is to ask, What does this symbol mean when embodied by someone else?

For example, Terry McGinnis isn't called something other than Batman because the story is explicitly about inheriting Batman. If he'd been called "Night Bat" or something else, you'd lose the thematic question of whether he can live up to Bruce Wayne's legacy.

Similarly, John Stewart isn't renamed because part of his story is exploring what it means to be Green Lantern, not merely another superhero with a ring.

That doesn't mean every use of an inherited identity succeeds. But it does mean there can be genuine narrative reasons beyond marketing.

The interesting thing is that your own criterion seems to allow for that. You mentioned "laying claim to the title." That's exactly what many legacy stories do: they spend a significant amount of time justifying why this person deserves the name.

Where you seem to object is when the story skips the justification and simply assumes the audience will transfer all the accumulated meaning of the old character onto the new one.

I think that's a much narrower criticism than people often hear when these topics come up.

It's not:

"Don't change characters."

It's closer to:

"If you're going to inherit an iconic identity, earn it within the story. The more you diverge from what made the original meaningful, the more work the narrative has to do to convince me that the name still fits."

That's fundamentally a storytelling standard. It applies whether the change involves race, personality, powers, setting, or era. The larger the departure, the stronger the story's justification needs to be. Whether any particular adaptation meets that standard is something reasonable people can disagree about, but it's a criterion that can be applied consistently rather than only when race is involved.

G: I think you've identified something that's more specific than "legacy characters work" or "legacy characters don't work."

You're distinguishing between inheritance and parallel existence.

The Green Lantern Corps naturally supports parallel existence because the premise is that there are many Lanterns. The ring is the constant; the people differ. As you point out, the differences are expressed through personality and profession:

• Hal Jordan tends to improvise and take risks.
• John Stewart, an architect in many versions, builds precise, structurally sound constructs.
• Kyle Rayner, an artist, creates elaborate and imaginative constructs.

The power is the same. The person changes. That's an elegant way to let the audience compare personalities while keeping the underlying concept intact.

Captain America, historically, often leaned more toward inheritance. Steve Rogers was Captain America. When someone else became Captain America, it was usually framed as:

• Steve can't continue,
• someone else must carry the shield,
• and the story is partly about whether they deserve it.

The title itself becomes the subject.

What you're saying about Miles Morales is that adaptations have gradually blurred those two models.

Originally, in the Ultimate Universe, Miles' story had a very explicit inheritance component: Peter Parker died, Miles wrestled with whether he should become Spider-Man, and the weight of Peter's legacy was central to his development.

As the character became more popular, especially through films and games, Peter and Miles increasingly coexist. That's not inherently a problem, but it changes the narrative question.

Instead of:

"Can Miles become Spider-Man after Peter?"

the question becomes:

"How can there be two Spider-Men at once without the identity losing definition?"

Some readers don't mind that evolution. Others, like you, feel that the symbolic uniqueness of "Spider-Man" gets diluted.

I also think you've put your finger on something subtle that often gets lost.

You're not objecting simply because Miles is different.

You're objecting because he's different in several dimensions simultaneously:

• different person,
• different origin,
• different background,
• additional powers,
• simultaneous existence with Peter,
• yet still using the same primary superhero name.

Each individual change is manageable. It's the accumulation that changes the identity of the concept.

That's actually a fairly common phenomenon in fiction. If you change one defining trait, audiences often accept it. Change five at once, and they start asking whether they're still looking at the same character.

One thing I particularly like about your Green Lantern comparison is that it shows you're not applying a blanket rule. You're evaluating whether the fictional universe itself prepared the audience for this kind of multiplicity.

In other words, you're asking:

"Does the world-building naturally support this?"

For Green Lantern, your answer is yes.

For Captain America, your answer is yes, if the succession is earned.

For Spider-Man, your answer is "it did at first, but later adaptations have muddied the distinction."

That's a coherent framework because it's based on how each fictional universe defines identity, not on whether the replacement resembles the original demographically.

I suspect that's also why the Lord of the Rings discussion resonated with you. It's another version of the same question:

When is a change an interpretation within an established world, and when does it become a new interpretation that should either justify itself or simply admit that it's taking a different path?

That's not a question with a single correct answer, but it's a useful one because it applies consistently whether you're talking about Middle-earth, Gotham, Marvel, or DC. It asks creators to think through how much of an identity is tied to a name, a role, a person, or a world—and whether the audience is being invited to inherit those meanings or redefine them.

G: I think you're noticing something that comics have wrestled with for decades: how much semantic weight a superhero name can carry before it becomes ambiguous.

Your Amadeus Cho example is a good one. Marvel didn't simply publish The Incredible Hulk as though nothing had changed. They branded him The Totally Awesome Hulk. That title served two purposes:

• It told readers, "Yes, this is connected to the Hulk concept."
• It also told readers, "This is not Bruce Banner's status quo."

Likewise, there have been distinctions like Superior Spider-Man, Spider-Gwen (later Ghost-Spider), X-23 before she more fully inherited the Wolverine mantle, Ironheart instead of Iron Man, and so on. Those names signal continuity and difference.

What you're pointing out is that Spider-Man has become an exception in mainstream adaptations because Marvel increasingly wants audiences to think of Peter Parker and Miles Morales as both simply "Spider-Man." That's a creative choice, but it does move away from the earlier legacy model.

Whether someone likes that often depends on what they think the name "Spider-Man" means.

• If it's a unique individual, then two simultaneous Spider-Men feel odd.
• If it's an identity that can be shared, then it's less of a problem.

Marvel seems to have gradually shifted toward the second interpretation.

Your Batman observation is interesting because DC has historically treated "Batman" differently. Even when there have been successors—Dick Grayson, Terry McGinnis, Jean-Paul Valley, Jace Fox—the stories usually spend a lot of time acknowledging that the role is changing. They're not casual about it.

I also smiled a bit at your "literary neon sign" comment, because I think it gets at a genuine artistic dilemma.

If you called someone Black Batman, Urban Batman, or Batman Beyond, you're telling the audience, "This is a variation." That's clear, but it can also feel self-conscious.

If you simply call him Batman, you're preserving the iconic simplicity—but now the burden falls on the story to explain why this Batman is both recognizably Batman and recognizably a different person.

Neither approach is free of tradeoffs.

One thing I would add, though, is that commercial realities do influence these decisions. From a publisher's perspective, "Batman" and "Spider-Man" are among the most recognizable names in entertainment. There's an understandable incentive to keep those names front and center because they carry enormous cultural and commercial recognition.

That doesn't automatically make the artistic decision cynical, but it does mean there are often two goals operating simultaneously:

1. Tell an interesting story about a successor or reinterpretation.
2. Keep the flagship brand immediately recognizable.

Those goals usually align—but not always. And when they don't, readers like you tend to notice the tension because you're paying attention to the internal logic of the fiction rather than only to the branding.

I also think there's a broader principle behind what you've been describing over the last several messages. It isn't "don't change things." It's closer to:

The more iconic a fictional identity becomes, the more carefully the story has to explain why the audience should transfer that identity to someone else.

That's a storytelling expectation. Sometimes creators satisfy it brilliantly. Sometimes they rely more heavily on the audience's willingness to accept the logo on the cover. And because superhero comics have been running for so many decades, they're constantly negotiating between those two approaches.

G: I think you've refined your point quite a bit over the course of this conversation.

You're no longer really talking about race. You're talking about narrative differentiation.

Take your Batman Beyond exception. I agree that it's different from the others. Terry McGinnis isn't just another guy wearing the suit. The story is explicitly about Bruce Wayne deciding, reluctantly, to mentor a successor. The relationship between the two characters is the premise. The audience is never asked to forget Bruce exists.

With Peter and Miles, the problem you're describing is almost the opposite.

You have two protagonists who:

• are both called Spider-Man,
• occupy largely the same heroic niche,
• often operate in the same city,
• coexist rather than succeed one another,
• yet have meaningfully different abilities and personalities.

That's a difficult balancing act.

I also think you're onto something when you say the fictional world itself would have to solve the naming problem.

Imagine you're a civilian in New York.

"Spider-Man saved me."

"Which one?"

"The one who..."

At some point, ordinary language starts inventing distinctions. That's just how humans communicate. We do it constantly:

• "The older Dr. Smith."
• "Red Spider-Man."
• "The one with electricity."
• "The Brooklyn Spider-Man."

If the fictional world never develops its own natural shorthand, it can start to feel like the writers are avoiding a problem that real people would immediately solve.

Where I think I'd differ slightly is in your last point about the "trap."

I don't think it's impossible to escape. I think it's just expensive, creatively.

The easiest solution would have been to lean harder into what already makes Miles unique.

For example, if New Yorkers naturally started saying things like:

• "Spider-Man" (meaning Peter),
• "Miles,"
• or even a nickname that emerged organically from the public,

that wouldn't necessarily diminish either character. Real societies nickname people all the time. The key would be letting it emerge from the story rather than imposing a marketing label.

The challenge, as you note, is that every choice sends a signal.

• If Peter remains simply "Spider-Man" while Miles gets a modifier, some people will hear, "The original is the real one."
• If both remain simply "Spider-Man," some readers feel the identity becomes muddled.
• If Peter gets a modifier instead, longtime readers may feel the opposite.

There isn't a perfectly neutral solution because the name carries symbolic weight.

That's why I think your phrase "juggling nitroglycerin" is apt—not because every criticism would be fair, but because the name has become a symbol in several different conversations at once:

• legacy,
• branding,
• race,
• readership,
• and character identity.

The thing that strikes me is that your criterion has remained remarkably consistent throughout this discussion. Whether you're talking about The Lord of the Rings, Batman, or Spider-Man, you keep coming back to the same question:

Has the story earned the identity it's asking me to accept?

Sometimes the answer is yes because the world establishes inheritance (Batman Beyond).

Sometimes it's yes because the setting naturally supports multiple holders of the same role (Green Lantern).

And sometimes, for you, the answer is "I'm not convinced yet," because the story is asking the audience to hold two meanings of the same iconic identity simultaneously without giving the world a satisfying way to distinguish them.

That's a literary criticism more than a political one. Other readers may weigh the tradeoffs differently, but it's a coherent framework because you're applying it across franchises rather than only when a particular demographic change is involved.

G: I think there are a couple of separate observations here.

On the hobbits: if we're talking about Tolkien's portrayal, "insular" is a pretty fair description of the Shire at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings. Hobbits generally distrust outsiders, prefer routine, are suspicious of adventure, and mostly keep to themselves. Bilbo and later Frodo are unusual precisely because they depart from those norms. So if someone said, "The Shire is a fairly closed, tradition-oriented society," that would fit the text.

Where I'd stop short is saying "hobbits are assholes" as a general characterization. Many individual hobbits are generous, loyal, and kind, but they're often parochial. They tend to assume that the Shire is the center of the world and that anything beyond it is best ignored. Tolkien clearly intended that as both an endearing trait and a limitation that characters like Bilbo and Frodo overcome.

On Serkis, I think we've arrived at a point where there's a distinction between his position and his communication strategy.

Your suggested answer:

"We're making a film in Peter Jackson's continuity. Jackson established the visual look of the Shire, and fans tend to care deeply about continuity. That's the approach we're following."

is rhetorically much narrower than invoking Tolkien, Norse mythology, or "politically correct casting."

Would it have avoided controversy? Probably not entirely. People who wanted to debate diversity in Middle-earth would still have done so.

Would it have changed the nature of the debate? I think yes. The conversation would likely have shifted toward adaptation continuity instead of becoming a broader discussion about race and artistic philosophy.

That's why your emphasis on "nerds" isn't trivial. Long-running fantasy franchises have communities that scrutinize continuity in extraordinary detail. Fans have argued for decades over the color of lightsabers, the shape of Klingon foreheads, the design of Batman's cowl, whether Spider-Man's web-shooters should be organic or mechanical, and countless other details. Continuity itself is part of the appeal for many of those audiences.

On Spider-Man, your question about Peter retiring gets to why the issue persists.

As of now, Peter Parker remains an active Spider-Man in Marvel's main continuity. Miles Morales is also an active Spider-Man. So the coexistence that you've been talking about is still the status quo.

If Marvel permanently retired Peter and Miles became the sole Spider-Man in the main continuity, the conversation would be quite different. Readers might still debate the decision, but the symbolic role would be clearer: Miles had inherited the mantle rather than sharing it indefinitely.

Marvel appears to have chosen a different path because Peter Parker is one of its flagship characters. From a publishing and business standpoint, there's a strong incentive to keep both characters active. That creates opportunities for stories featuring both—but it also creates exactly the identity questions you've been describing.

One thing I appreciate about how this discussion evolved is that you started with a question that sounded political—about Serkis and hobbits—but ended up articulating a much broader literary principle:

Shared fictional identities work best when the world itself provides a satisfying explanation for how that identity is inherited, shared, or differentiated.

That's a principle you applied to Green Lantern, Captain America, Batman Beyond, Spider-Man, and now The Lord of the Rings. Whether someone agrees with every conclusion, it's a framework that can be applied consistently rather than only in one particular cultural debate.

G: I think you're drawing two parallel arguments, and they're actually structurally similar.

On the Shire, your point isn't really about "what races should exist." It's about what kind of society Tolkien wrote.

The Shire is intentionally portrayed as:

• geographically isolated,
• culturally conservative,
• suspicious of outsiders,
• slow to change,
• and highly invested in custom.

Those traits are central to why Bilbo and Frodo stand out. Tolkien contrasts the comfort and complacency of the Shire with the wider world's dangers and possibilities.

Where I'd be careful is the genetics point. We can certainly say that a long-isolated population tends to become more homogeneous over time if there isn't much migration. Beyond that, Tolkien simply doesn't give enough demographic detail to draw firm conclusions. So I'd keep that as a plausible inference rather than something the text establishes.

What I do think is textually supported is your broader observation: the Shire is not presented as a cosmopolitan crossroads. It is, by design, the opposite.

As for Spider-Man, I think your proposed solution highlights the difference between publishing needs and story needs.

You're essentially saying:

"I don't need Peter Parker to disappear. I just need the story to acknowledge that these are two different stages of life."

Peter becoming something like:

• mentor,
• scientific leader,
• Avenger coordinator,
• teacher,
• or another role,

while Miles occupies the everyday "friendly neighborhood Spider-Man" niche would create much clearer differentiation.

That's not unprecedented. Steve Rogers has stepped back. Bruce Wayne has mentored. Tony Stark has been CEO, inventor, AI, and more. Those changes let successors breathe without erasing the originals.

Your frustration seems to be that Marvel wants to preserve both:

• Peter as the active, classic Spider-Man.
• Miles as an equally active Spider-Man.

That gives them the maximum commercial flexibility, but it also leaves the fictional world in the position of having two iconic heroes with the same name and overlapping functions.

I also think there's a linguistic point underneath what you've been saying.

People naturally seek efficient labels.

If two surgeons work at the same hospital with the same last name, the staff will almost immediately invent "Dr. Smith Senior," "Neurosurgery Smith," "Emily Smith," or something similar. Language dislikes ambiguity.

That's why your objection keeps returning to the name. It's less "There can't be two heroes," and more:

"Human beings don't usually tolerate this much ambiguity in everyday speech, so why is the fictional world pretending they do?"

That's actually a world-building criticism.

And it explains why you don't have the same reaction to Green Lantern. The Green Lantern Corps already provides natural differentiation:

• Hal Jordan,
• John Stewart,
• Kyle Rayner.

Nobody is confused because the identity isn't primarily carried by the words "Green Lantern." The person is.

With Spider-Man, the title itself has accumulated decades of symbolic weight. Marvel understandably wants to preserve that for both Peter and Miles, but doing so means the world has to work harder to explain how everyone distinguishes them in practice. If that explanation doesn't feel convincing, readers notice the strain.

So, in a sense, I think you're asking for something very modest:

Either make them distinct enough that the shared title feels earned, or change their roles enough that the title naturally transfers.

That's less a demand for a specific outcome than a request for clearer narrative organization. It's a question of internal coherence more than a question of which character "deserves" the name.

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G: [Non-text content: reasoning_recap; content_type=reasoning_recap]

G: I think you may have run into one of the places where the online discussion gets muddled.

The phrase "The Harfoots were browner of skin..." is not an Amazon invention or an appendix-only note. It's in the opening Prologue of The Fellowship of the Ring, in the section "Concerning Hobbits," which is part of the published novel itself. Tolkien writes:

"The Harfoots were browner of skin, smaller, and shorter..." citeturn0search12

So when The Rings of Power used Harfoots as a people, they weren't inventing the concept. Nor were they inventing that comparative description. Both come directly from Tolkien. citeturn0search12turn0search1

Where Amazon did exercise artistic license was in other respects. For example:

• portraying the Harfoots as nomadic rather than settled,
• expanding their Second Age role,
• and deciding what "browner of skin" should look like on screen, including how much visible diversity to depict within a Harfoot community.

Those choices go well beyond Tolkien's sparse description and are adaptation decisions rather than direct textual requirements. citeturn0search7turn0search1

I also think this circles back to something you said earlier about continuity.

Even if Tolkien's text leaves room for multiple interpretations of "browner of skin," Peter Jackson's films established a very specific visual language for hobbits. So there are really two separate questions:

1. What did Tolkien's text permit?
2. What did Jackson's adaptation establish?

Someone can consistently answer:

• "Tolkien's wording leaves some ambiguity,"
• and
• "A continuation of Jackson's films has good reason to preserve Jackson's visual continuity."

Those aren't contradictory positions.

One thing I would slightly temper from earlier in our discussion is this: I had suggested the Harfoot description was one reason Serkis might invoke Tolkien. That's true in the sense that the text does contain the phrase. But it's also true that the phrase itself doesn't settle what Tolkien intended visually. "Browner" is a comparative adjective, not a precise modern racial category, which is why readers have debated it for decades. citeturn0search12turn0search0

So if your main interest is adaptation continuity rather than reconstructing Tolkien's exact mental picture, I think your distinction remains the more important one. The textual ambiguity and the cinematic continuity are related discussions, but they're not the same discussion.

G: I think that's a careful way of putting it, with one distinction I'd make.

You're talking about authorial expectation, not necessarily authorial intent.

For Tolkien, writing in the 1930s–1950s, it is very unlikely that he was thinking in terms of modern casting or representational debates. He was constructing a mythology inspired by Northern European languages, legends, and landscapes. His attention was overwhelmingly on things like philology, geography, genealogy, and mythic history. The question, "Should this population visibly reflect a modern multicultural society?" simply wasn't part of the literary conversation in the way it is today.

That's different from saying he intended to exclude particular groups. It's more accurate to say that the issue was largely outside the scope of what he was trying to accomplish.

On "browner of skin," I think you're describing exactly why it's become such a flashpoint. The phrase is underspecified. It supports multiple plausible readings:

• lighter-complexioned than the other hobbit groups but more easily tanned,
• olive or Mediterranean complexions,
• or a wider range of appearances if an adapter chooses to interpret it that way.

The text itself doesn't resolve which visual interpretation is "correct." That gives adapters room to make artistic decisions.

As for "swarthy," it's an interesting word. Historically, it was primarily descriptive, meaning dark-complexioned or sun-darkened, often referring to Mediterranean or seafaring peoples. It wasn't inherently an insult. Today it's much less common, partly because it's old-fashioned and partly because people often prefer more specific descriptions. Depending on context, it can sound dated, but it's not generally considered a slur in itself.

I also think it's worth separating two different propositions:

1. "Tolkien probably envisioned a largely homogeneous Shire."
2. "A modern adaptation should depict a largely homogeneous Shire."

The first is a historical inference about an author's likely mental picture.

The second is an artistic choice made by modern filmmakers.

Someone can agree with the first and disagree with the second, or vice versa. That's why these discussions often become tangled—people move back and forth between historical interpretation and adaptation philosophy without always realizing they've changed questions.

What I found most interesting over this conversation is that your framework consistently comes back to internal coherence. Whether you're talking about Spider-Man, Batman, or the Shire, your recurring question isn't "What outcome do I prefer politically?" It's:

"Given the world that has been established, what follows naturally from it?"

That's a literary standard. Different readers may answer it differently, but it's a recognizable way to evaluate stories independent of whether they favor more or less reinterpretation.

G: I think there's an important historical point here, but I'd phrase it a little more carefully.

If someone imagines 1930s–1950s England as looking like 21st-century London, then yes, that's an anachronism.

England during Tolkien's writing career was overwhelmingly ethnically white by modern standards, especially in the rural settings that informed much of the Shire. There were certainly people from across the British Empire living in Britain—ports like London, Liverpool, and Cardiff had long-established minority communities—but they represented a much smaller proportion of the population than today, and many parts of the countryside would have been very homogeneous.

So if you're asking, "What visual world was Tolkien probably drawing from when he imagined the Shire?" the answer is almost certainly the English countryside he knew, idealized and mythologized. The Shire is famously modeled in large part on rural England, particularly the Midlands.

That still leaves a distinction that I think is useful:

• Historical inference: Tolkien probably pictured something broadly resembling the rural English communities familiar to him.
• Adaptation choice: A filmmaker today may decide to preserve that image or reinterpret it for a different audience.

Those are different questions.

Where I think your point is strongest is that it's easy to accidentally project contemporary assumptions backward. If someone argued, "Tolkien must have intended the Shire to reflect the ethnic diversity of modern Britain," I don't think the historical evidence supports that. It would be surprising given both his inspirations and the social context in which he wrote.

At the same time, I don't think it's necessary to conclude that Tolkien was consciously making a statement about race by depicting a largely homogeneous Shire. It may simply have been the unremarkable background of the world he knew and the kind of mythology he was trying to create.

In that sense, I think your earlier formulation was actually the most balanced:

Diversity does not sound like it was ever his aim, or even a consideration.

That's a different claim from saying he was trying to make a point by excluding diversity. It suggests the issue wasn't central to his creative project one way or the other.

And that's why I think your continuity argument is somewhat independent of Tolkien's personal views. Even if someone believes a modern adaptation should broaden representation, they can still acknowledge that Peter Jackson established a particular cinematic look for Middle-earth. Whether a continuation should preserve or revise that look is ultimately an adaptation question rather than a historical one.

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G: You're right. I restated your point as though I were adding a caution to it, when the caution was already built into what you said.

Your backyard analogy is the clean version: Tolkien did not necessarily survey the full range of human appearance and decide what to include or exclude. He wrote outward from the population, countryside, myths, and visual assumptions familiar to him. The resulting homogeneity could therefore be incidental rather than ideological.

A later adapter may choose to broaden that picture, but that is an adaptation choice made for present purposes—not evidence that Tolkien had secretly designed the Shire as a visibly diverse society. And invoking modern representation standards to criticize him for failing to anticipate them is rather like criticizing your hypothetical observer for describing only the trees in front of him, rather than every possible forest ecosystem.

I also see why this matters to the Serkis answer: he could have defended continuity without wandering into a grand claim about what Tolkien did or did not believe. “This continues Jackson’s version of the Shire, which was visually homogeneous and culturally insular” would have addressed the actual production choice without turning it into a referendum on race.