There’s black people in it. That’s it. That’s the whole controversy
As someone who doesn't live in the US, it is always a bit amusing when you see these Hollywood productions very clearly add or make some characters certain race or gender because of US politics.
As I said, it's a very US thing, that is very noticeable to non US viewers. Try watching some non US movies or shows and you'll see what I mean.
The US seems to have in general a lot of interest in races for some reason. For some applications or forms I've had to fill for US things, I was asked my race or ethnicity, which to me seems completely bizarre (what does it matter?). Moreover I didn't even know what race I was supposed to put (am I white? am I Hispanic?) because I've never been asked.
The reason being systemic racism imposed on brown and black people in the US.
Look back to the 1990s movies where you'd have large casts depicting everyday life, and there'd be literally 0 non-white people. Non-whites were explicitly excluded in many movies, obviously with exceptions, but we're talking about averages and tendencies here. Racism didn't end in the 1960s.
Conservatives think we live in a post-racial era where there's equality of opportunity just because there aren't laws that explicitly discriminate against certain races. But that's a really flawed sociolegal analysis, given that equality of opportunity isn't exclusively determined by equality under law, and given that there's laws that aren't explicitly racist but cause racist outcomes and likely have unstated racist motivations (e.g. marijuana criminality, immigration restrictions).
> There is rarely focus on including for example Asian or Hispanic characters
I totally agree that they need to do a better job on that.
Well, that kind explains "I just don't understand the level of virtriol about a TV show." from OP.
For instance, I don't live in the US, I don't care about the US and most importantly I don't care about US politics, but the US is the only capable of running shows like this.
I imagine there would be americans that don't want politics or political influences in their beloved stories too.
Me, I just want a Tolkien show despicted as in (or as accurate as possible to) the books. I watched the trailer and I didn't watch the show yet, but I if it follows the trend, I imagine what I will find. I don't know if I will watch it.
How much time will I have to wait for a new version? 15, 20, 30 years? I'll probably be long gone.
I find it extremely ironic that people are so bent out of shape about a couple characters cast with darker skin. These must be the same people that have no clue that every character in their favorite book (The Bible, King James version) was non-white. These are most likely the same people with the historically inaccurate pictures of Jesus Christ as a caucasian man.
The two largest fantasy franchises in the world are Euro-centric white fantasy (Middle Earth and GoT). It isn't enough that our fantasy canon dominates the world, we need to have every actor be caucasian as well?
So here's my theory: LOTR is extremely popular with a huge number of fans. This show is subpar. Subpar adaptation of very popular thing means lots of disappointed fans, meaning lots of negative reviews.