So much fuss over 10 seconds? Surely it's a joke?

I think the irritation is more about Hollywood's incessant need to wedge these patronizing little social acceptance things into their films that add nothing to the movie and are most often publicity grabs.

It's not about the amount of screen time it got. It's about the filmmakers fundamentally altering a character who, in 50 years of Star Trek, was never gay. Even George Takei literally pleaded with them to not change his character, and he was disappointed when they did it anyway.

Like everything else in the new Trek reboot movies, it feels like something added by someone who has never really watched any Star Trek, just has heard about it and know all the pop culture gags and "memes".

The first movie was practically a checklist of "things non Trek fans thinks Star Trek is": Kirk sleeps with green women, Chekov is a comedy Russian, Sulu has sword fights, the previous captain was in a wheelchair, Kirk cheated on that academy test, Kirk fistfights a lot, McCoy is grumpy and argues with Spock, guys in red uniforms die, etc.

The second film was a poor man's copy of Wrath of Khan, with Tribbles thrown in.

Beyond had only a few cliches left, but of course another big Trek "joke" is George being gay (i.e. silly "oh my" jokes from various lowbrow comedies), so it gets referenced here along with a line about Kirk (Shatner) and hair. Even though these are things about the actors and nothing to do with Trek!

I actually had no idea it was even a gay reference however until I heard about George's opposition to it (totally agree with him that it would have been much better adding a new gay character)... until then, I actually just assumed that was a brother or cousin or relation of Sulu's and the girl was his! If they wanted to make them a gay couple with an adopted kid or something, maybe more that that was needed? Unless the implication was that any two guys who hug must be gay lovers?!

It does raise the interesting point that if reboot Sulu is gay and original Sulu wasn't, it was a choice he made in the reboot universe he never did in the original Prime one, effectively saying gay people aren't "born that way".

It was a unnecessary "homage", uncalled-for to say the least. This whole thing about minorities, PC, etc Most of the publicity moves are just superfulous and predictable. We don't need to forcely accept these things, that's the issue. Also, if there's people who don't accept minorities, that's fine as well. People are entitled to live as they wish, nobody needs to forcibly accept or hate anything.

Even George Takei disagreed with it. Its just put in to be PC.

I agree with you, but gay characters are like strong female characters in that they generate a lot of angry posts on the Internet. It's like clockwork.

Well, it was a bit of a setup. Because they show Sulu looking at the picture of his daughter, and, like a true trek nerd, I said to myself, "Well, I wonder what George Takei thought of the move to give Sulu a wife and kids". Then we see him walk off with his husband, and it's like, ah ha, I see what you did there. I thought it was a neat little bait and switch of screen-writing, but that's the kind of thing that gets people running to social media... and that, in turn, attracts all the haters to social media.

I agree, that Alibaba logo ruined the entire thing for me.


"People get it wrong, but in today's world we don't live longer, we just die harder." -Bruce Willis