Controversy over the black Aragorn card in Magic: The Gathering

Magic: The Gathering is a brand that has some controversy from time to time. This time the waters were stirred up by a new card with black Aragorn, which pissed off most of the fans. For example, one user, Thomas Crown, commented on the move on Twitter: “This is just a racial slur. A publicity stunt of the worst taste.Commentators are primarily bothered by the effort to change the format of Tolkien’s work, because according to them, it has no positive impact, rather the opposite. According to them, the benefit of such moves should be almost zero.

However, not everyone agrees with this idea. Journalist and developer Matt Thrower presented his opinion, for example, as follows: “This is a beautiful piece of work. And while I never pictured Aragorn as black, Tolkien quite possibly did,Certain users don’t exactly criticize the idea of ​​changing the race of the characters, but according to them, it must be done well, which definitely did not happen in the case of Magic: The Gathering, because Aragorn has a clearly described appearance in the books.

The reason for the implementation of this card may be an effort to bring diversity to the world of Magic: The Gathering, or at least that is how the statement from 2022 can be understood: “The Lord of the Rings is about how the different nations of Middle-earth come together to fight Sauron and find strength in their diversity. We want to keep this compelling story fresh and relevant for an even wider audience.However, this move was not received too positively, but it is clear that while for other characters the transformation would have gone smoothly, Aragorn was not the best choice, at least according to the reactions of the community.

There’s nothing wrong with a black guy in fantasy but there is something wrong with race swaps of established and clearly defined characters, seriously the book says Aragorn looks like Vigo Mortenson not a black guy, it’s just bad adaptation like turning Snoopy into a fish pic.twitter.com/xm9Cs6ELwg

— Happy Dinosaur8,000 🇺🇲🈁🦖 (@Dinosaur8New) May 29, 2023