If I write a (non-human, not that that matters anyway) race and describe them as being of "ivory skin" vs "ebony skin" then it matters. If it's just regular people then it doesn't.

It depends on the setting.

It matters if it's a key plot point. If it's got no impact on the plot, there's no harm in changing it a little. Plenty of other things described in the books get tweaked for TV/film; it's a little sus if only skin color changes get you upset.

If you did a find/replace on LOTR for "ivory" with "ebony", zero elements of the story would be impacted.

It's also sus if the only thing that gets changed is the skin colour for no apparent reason, other than to appease twitter. Like I said, the setting is important.

The world was designed in this way for a reason, by the author. It's the same thing the other way around: changing every character from black or 'asian' to white, if the story is otherwise unaffected, would be ridiculous.

> It's also sus if the only thing that gets changed is the skin colour for no apparent reason, other than to appease twitter.

"It must be to appease Twitter, can't possibly be because the actor had a good audition" seems pretty racist. If Amazon was afraid of Twitter, they'd be pro-union.

> It's the same thing the other way around: changing every character from black or 'asian' to white

That's not the same thing, though. The new LOTR series hasn't changed every character to Black or Asian. Nowhere near it.

Well, the oliphaunts might be a bit happier, unless that was The Hobbit (I haven't read these for about 20 years).

But yeah, it'd be pretty weird if a TV adaptation _was_ word-for-word the same as the book, honestly. That's virtually never done, and rarely ends well when it is.

John LeCarre explicitly describes George Smiley as short, overweight, and balding. None of these apply to Alec Guinness or Gary Oldman in their respective portrayals of the character. This doesn’t make their portrayals any less arresting.