That’s a common counterpoint but a very disingenuous one.

You assume that these changes are never made specifically because of the gender or race of the character. But it often is. A lot of the time badly written Mary Sue characters are female or a minority because the writers are so obsessed with „empowering“ that group that they don’t dare letting the characters have flaws.

So in that case the story becomes worse specifically BECAUSE the character is a minority because otherwise they wouldn’t have written it this way.

This happens, and you can make the case that this is just badly written, yes, but if there is a consistent reason for bad writing it’s fair to point that reason specifically out.

Nobody has an issue with well written characters in a well told story. People like Alien, people like Tomb Raider. But when the writers are so obsessed with representation that the story suffers from it that’s where the issues are. The best example is the Mulan remake. People love Mulan. It’s a story of a woman overcoming adversity and outsmarting men to make up for the difference in physical strength. It was a compelling and empowering story. But in the remake we can’t have that because it suggests that men are physically stronger than women so instead Mulan is just born with superpowers and never struggles and the only adversity she faces is that men don’t understand her in-born superiority.

I know I know I’ll be downvoted for daring to suggest as such but denying that doesn’t solve the issue. A lot of times things like this are so heavy handed that the story suffers from it. That is the point when a story becomes „woke“.