Why Do Shows/Movies Have to Make Needless Changes to Characters?

A while back I watched the first two episodes of The Winter King on Amazon Prime.  The rest of it I had to sign up for MGM+ on Black Friday to watch.  I wrote an entry about the first two episodes and how diversity casting can be annoying when you're really a fan of the source material.  But reluctantly I did have to admit that maybe Merlin could be black in 5th Century Britain.  It's not likely but it's plausible since Rome had a lot of contact with Northern Africa, especially in its wars with Carthage.

A few episodes went by on MGM+ and it was OK, setting things up nicely.  Then finally it gets to the kingdom of Powys and we meet the princess Ceinwyn and her handmaiden Guinevere--as in that Guinevere.  And the casting just sucked for both of them.  Not that either actress is a bad actress, but they both totally looked wrong for the part.  I hate to be shallow like that, but again, when you're a fan of the book, you want things to look like the book.  And especially in this case it seemed easy to do.

In the books, Ceinwyn is the "Star of Powys" because she has really pale blonde hair, like platinum blonde so it's like starlight.  Get it?  And I think she was kinda pale and delicate and so it's a little "opposites attract" when she ends up with Derfel, who's this big strapping warrior.  Basically she's supposed to look kind of like Danerys in Game of Thrones, though the books for this came out long before that show--I'm not sure about the book.  Anyway, seems like it should be really easy to find a pale blonde or just someone pale and use dye or a wig to take care of the blonde part.

But no, they cast some average-looking brunette instead.  (Sorry, Emily John.)  Why?  Well the other half of this is in the books I'm pretty sure Guinevere is a redhead.  Again it seems like that ought to be pretty easy to find.  But no, let's cast a black woman.  A black woman with blonde hair.  WTF?!

I have nothing against black women with blonde hair in modern times, but this is the 5th fucking Century.  And this ain't fantasy like Game of Thrones or Rings of Power.  This is historical fiction.  Why the fuck would there be black women with blonde hair?  Is it a wig?  Doesn't seem like it considering she apparently sleeps with it on when she's with Arthur on their honeymoon.  Is she dyeing it?  

I had to go Google whether they had dye in the 5th Century.  It turns out the Romans did have dyes and even made prostitutes dye their hair blonde--though most wore wigs.  So I guess theoretically it's possible though at this time in Britain the Romans have been gone for a while and most of their technology has been lost or abandoned.  It's possible there could still be a recipe for blonde dye around Britain then, though I doubt it would look that good.

My thinking is that since they made Guinevere blonde for...reasons they then decided they should make Ceinwyn brunette so they wouldn't look alike.  Because why not ruin both characters while we're at it, right?  For no goddamned reason that I can tell.

Does it really matter?  It matters a little bit.  Ceinwyn is kind of a Helen of Troy in that she's the beautiful woman that inadvertently causes a war over her.  In this case it's because Arthur dumps her to marry Guinevere.  Her beauty is another part of her "star of Powys" nickname.  When you make her look ordinary and just shrug off her nickname as "it's just what my mom called me" it really waters down the character.  A character who is supposed to be somewhat important to the overall story for all 3 books.

The Guinevere thing then annoys me because then I feel like a racist even though it's not really about race.  It just doesn't make sense that anyone would look like that in that place and time.  And again it's historical fiction, not fantasy.  It felt like a little bit of a betrayal too because I went along with Merlin being black, suspending my disbelief, and then you do this.  I'm supposed to suspend that much more disbelief?!  Gah!  I can't get behind that!

If you want to think of it another way, imagine if I were going to do a drama set in Central Africa in the 5th Century focusing on the various tribes or nations or empires or whatever was there at the time.  And then I decide to cast a white woman for the princess of one tribe that is otherwise all black.  And I decide this white woman should have pink hair.  Besides being racist, it would be completely implausible from a historical standpoint for a person like that to exist in that place and time.  That's pretty much what they did with this show.

And really it seems like a needless, silly thing to do.  I don't know what their excuse would be.  "We couldn't find anyone else for these parts."  Yeah, right.  That's as lame as when studios whitewash parts and claim they couldn't find a black/Asian/Middle Eastern/Indian/etc person for it.  Yeah, right.

There have been a couple other times in the last few years where something like this happened.  In two different GI Joe movies there's been a "Baroness" character and both times they have her just talk in an American voice instead of an Eastern European accent like she's supposed to have because she's from somewhere in Eastern Europe where they have, you know, baronesses.  After watching that Origins Snake Eyes movie I screamed, "Why is it so hard to get someone who talks with the right accent?!  Is that tiny amount of fan service too much to ask for?!"  I mean, really, how fucking hard is it to get that one little thing right?

Another time was in The Martian they cast Mackenzie Davis as "Mindy Park" who's supposed to be Asian in the book.  It's one of those needless whitewashing things.  I mean, they couldn't find an Asian woman for a pretty minor part in the movie?  Really, Ridley Scott?  REALLY?!?  And I liked Mackenzie Davis in an episode of Black Mirror but, come on, she's not a household name where it's like, "OMG we need to find a role for her in this movie so we can put her name on the poster and stuff!"  

The latter is also true for The Winter King.  Like I said, the actresses they cast are fine but neither is a household name.  Jordan Alexandra's biggest part according to IMDB was playing "Office Worker" in Dr. Strange 2.  So obviously this wasn't about casting star power.

Anyway, this kind of stuff just annoys me because in all of the cases mentioned it was needless.  It really shouldn't have been hard to find someone to actually fit the part the way it was supposed to be.  When you don't do that, your "poetic license" or whatever really starts to become a distraction.  It's definitely not a distraction I needed when I really want to like a show because I love the books it's based on.  Maybe as a fan of the books you could just throw me a bone and not make stupid, needless changes to the characters?  Maybe?  

And like with the Baroness thing, when you don't get simple things right it tells me as a fan that you really don't know and/or care about the source material.  As a fan then that annoys me because it makes it seem like you're not taking this seriously, not as seriously as I take this.  It's more important to you to put your artistic stamp or whatever on it.  Or you're just lazy and don't care who you cast or what they sound like or any damned thing.  Just put whoever in there and shoot this thing so we can go home.  Like with the GI Joe movies, Transformers movies, Star Wars movies, etc. I really just want someone who's going to care about the source material as much as I do.  Needless changes like the Baroness's accent, or the race of particular characters, or hair color of particular characters, or whether the particular character even has hair (ie, Lex Luthor) make me question that commitment.

I did still like the show, but I'd have liked it more if they'd done those two characters right instead of making stupid casting choices for no real reason.