"Ariel 2.0": Yara Shahidi As Tinkerbell In 'Peter Pan & Wendy' Sparks Debate On "Race-Swapping" In Remakes

Yara Shahidi, an actress of African-American and Iranian descent, will be playing Tinker Bell in Disney's upcoming movie, Peter Pan and Wendy. The first look at Tinker Bell has prompted discussions on the "race-swapping" of characters in recent films. A few Twitter users are dubbing this particular news "Ariel 2.0."

Here's what some audience members have to say about the announcement.

"So instead of giving poc their own movies or making new movies with poc characters, they decided to just make white characters black for some reason to be like heey we are so accepting we support everyone.." says @scarletWitch729. Her comment has garnered thousands of likes. She continues, "this is so weird, other then princess and the frog there isnt any other."

"By 2030 every Disney character will be black, even when they shouldn’t," adds @VicSNJensen.

@pranavlbhattad writes, "the double standards, they would not release a movie where Princess Tiana or Jasmine is white. I would be enraged if they did that. And I am enraged they did this to Tinker Bell. This does not even make sense. Peter Pan is gay in this movie or what?"

"Disney loves to race swap these days instead of creating original and new characters that are POC," comments @TheFallKingXO.

Others voiced their apparent exhaustion with Disney's repetitive live-action remakes. "stop live actions i’m so serious," says @purpletigressxo.

"Black tinker bell. Black little mermaid. Brown Snow White. Some writers to Disney: shouldn’t we make original characters and original scripts instead Disney : Nah let’s spent millions of cash in redoing old animation to live action," tweets @OjoPresley.

As most pop-culture fans know, this is not the first time Disney spurred comments on race-swapping. In September 2022, Disney released The Little Mermaid trailer, featuring Halle Bailey as Ariel. The teaser caused a divide among social media users – many were excited about the motion picture, while others voiced their concerns about "whitewashing" and the film industry's tendency to replace white characters instead of making new POC roles.

@ThePencilPimp writes, "No actresses who could pass for Danish were available? My people please stop supporting this stuff...we deserve films about BLACK Fairytales...we don't need to plunder European heritage. We have amazing Fairytales of our own!"

He brings up a good point. Race aside, it seems Disney is just looking for another excuse to make live-action remakes instead of making new movies and telling different stories. Yes, representation is important. But if Disney or Hollywood cared so much about being inclusive and diverse, why don't they share stories from other cultures and hire people of color to represent their own amazing fairytales or myths? Why not introduce new characters?

Perhaps it's because Hollywood and Disney are focused on producing large sums of money in as little time as possible instead of art and the magic of storytelling.

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