I'm with Bryony on this one. I think gender swapping or race swapping characters takes away from the original intention of the character's creator. I think that intention and representation is important. I think that it's important to remember how sexist and racist certain industries have been in the past and still are today. By gender swapping or race swapping characters, it's like that industry, or some who work in that industry at least, are trying to erase past mistake. Those mistakes shouldn't be erased, they should be learned from. That can only be done by moving forward with new stories, and new characters. The television and movie industry is headed in the right direction with shows like Agent Carter and Jessica Jones in terms of sexual equality in story telling. Now, if they'd just start paying female actors as much as their male counterparts, that would be a serious accomplishment.
I don't think it is an attempt to erase past mistakes. Rather, it draws attention to them and shows what else is possible. As a general rule there are three male characters to every female one in Hollywood movies and mainstream tv shows. Remakes like this show what a movie can look like when that's reversed. Of course ideally I'd just like to see new shows and movies made with a tonne more female characters as villains, heroes, funny sidekicks showing different body types etc. But so far there's still nothing much out there like that.