>George Takei: making Sulu gay in new Star Trek is 'really unfortunate'
>Actor who played the character in TV series calls retrofitted sexuality – intended as a tribute to his LGBT activism – ‘a twisting of Gene Roddenberry’s creation’
>theguardian.com
Well, now he's just being contrarian.
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not realy
i think its pretty weird too, and im the biggest faggot here
why couldnt they just introduce a new gay character without retconning shit?
>why couldnt they just introduce a new gay character without retconning shit?
Simon Pegg already said that if he did that, then people would think of the new character as merely "the gay character" because he's incapable of writing characters with more than one personality trait.
>introduce a new gay character
>WOW ANOTHER FAGGOT? THEY'RE PUSHING GAYS DOWN OUR THROATS AGAIN
In peg's own fucking words "Then all that character would be known for was being gay"
Why not make Scotty gay then, eh Peg?
Which is why it's totally better that people think of Sulu as the character that's gay because the original actor was.
Or something.
Pegg's words:
>We could have introduced a new gay character but he or she would have been primarily defined by their sexuality, seen as the ‘gay character,’ rather than simply for who they are and isn’t that tokenism?
>Justin Lin, Doug Jung, and I loved the idea of it being someone we already knew because the audience have a pre-existing opinion of that character as a human being, unaffected by any prejudice. Their sexual orientation is just one of many personal aspects, not the defining characteristic. Also, the audience would infer that there has been an LGBT presence in the TrekUniverse from the beginning (at least in the Kelvin timeline), that a gay hero isn’t something new or strange. It’s also important to note that at no point do we suggest that our Sulu was ever closeted, why would he need to be? It’s just hasn’t come up before.
Did Sulu have any defining characteristics at all? In the original series and in the remake? I don't remember. He just seemed like a regular crew member.
if he was poorly written, sure
im pretty sure sulu is canonically str8 though. wasnt he distracted by some scantily clad women at some point?
That's why you make an interesting new character who happens to be gay instead of making him the token faggot.
He never had a romantic relationship in the series that talked about everything from rape to gender to murder but not once GAY.
with like 23 DAYS worth of content...
Well guess which one was easier.
lel, good point, take one for the team ya poof.
I LOVE HOW EVERYONE WOULD RATHER 30 MINUTES OF A GAY GUY DOING A OLLIE KICKFLIP THEN 2 MINUTES OF SULU GOING
>Yeah this is tony and my daughter, suzi
I find it incredible how worked up people can get about which gender a person likes to fuck. As long as the character is well written and interesting, why the hell should I care which way he or she swings? I just want good dialogs and stories, which are two things that Star Trek Beyond definitely won't have.
No matter how well written the character could be they would be seen as only being introduced as the token gay, even if there's only one scene of them with their partner and that's all there is with regards to them being gay.
Even having Sulu be gay stinks of tokenism.
Thing is, I don't really care what gender they like as long as they're an interesting character outside of that.
Unfortunately, when a lot of things have a gay character in them, "Is gay" usually ends up being literally their entire character.
George Takei fought Rodenberry when Gene wanted him to use a katana in the original series. He said a rapier would make more sense because that's what would be taught in America where Sulu grew up, and won.
New Sulu uses what looks like a katana after he said he was a fencer. Because you know, the original actor was Japanese and shit, it's an homage.
Same thing here. But if you go to a gay icon and ask for his blessing to make a character who was presented as straight as a way to "honour" them and their contribution to the Star Trek franchise then turn around and say "Yeah well, gonna do it any way, too bad"... welp.
If they were going to ask Takei what he thought they should have listened. By doing this they basically have reduced his role to "the gay guy" since that'll be more memorable than him as a navigator or Admiral.
I'm totally fine with NuSulu being gay. Who the fuck cares?
I was having this argument with a mate of mine, he reckons that the actor shares some ownership of their role if it's a hugely iconic role, and that if Takei doesn't think Sulu is gay, then he's not gay.
I countered by saying does that mean Luke might be gay, since Hamill's said as much.
He says yes. Which I think is retarded as we clearly see Luke pining after Leia. Sulu pines over no woman (except for the Sulu of Mirror, Mirror, which was in another dimension).
I guess it depends on what you care more about - what you see on screen or what the actor portraying the character says.
>tl;dr: Friend says Luke is cool to be gay but Sulu isn't, and I say Sulu's cool to be gay but Luke isn't.
Takei can be a bit of a drama queen sometimes, but I've got a lot of respect for him as a fellow BurgerJap. I really wish more asian actors would call out this kind of shit, I feel like we're the only minority group that shitty writers can turn into walking stereotypes and get away with it. Shame about the whole being a faggot thing.
How is it contrarian? He is gay in real life, his character is not.
this made me laugh out loud and i almost tripped on the stairs
just leting you know
Cho isn't even a jap.
You'd think Takei would've been sore at that first.
>Well, now he's just being contrarian
It's called having integrity
isnt the black bitch already gay? im sure i saw her fucking a women(ish) thing in the first reboot.
Really if i had to pick one to be gay it would of been her, the dead russian guy and then scotty.
but if couldnt be the black bitch because then she literally would cover 3 minority roles and then she would just be USS Token and as for the russian, tumblr would cry again as they would of killed off another gay character, because as well all know AIDS makes you immortal.
as for scotty, he'd marry some trap/futa/cute thai boy thing.
Women can't be gay you ignorant faggot. Only bisexual.
What the fuck are you talking about?
Why couldn't a new character just go
>yeah this is tony and my daughter, suzi
Mr Sulu has a wife and daughter in the Canon
Nobody cares about gay characters.
When they pander to the audience that wants everyone changed to; lgbt, black, or female, people lose interest because we're sick of hollywood virtue signalling and social justice politics.
We just wanted to watch a shitty star trek movie. Now we gave to watch a shitty gay star trek movie
Takei actually told Cho to take the role, that his ancestry (Korean, IIRC?) didn't matter. What mattered was getting a good Asian actor into a major part to show Hollywood that it could work, that they shouldn't just be reduced to appearing for five seconds to do kung-fu and then vanish into the background while the white people did all the talking and important stuff.
Which goes back to the main problem here; Takei is an activist in ways that are reasonable. Asian representation is low? Put a good Asian actor up for people to see, don't just meet quotas for diversity. A beloved character is straight? Don't turn them gay because muh LGBT, if you want a gay character then make one, but remember that their defining trait shouldn't be I'M GAAAAY, that should just be part of their character.
I'll be honest; if they hadn't asked George first and had just made Sulu gay, I would've said "homage to the original actor, OK" and moved on. And I think that's mostly what they're trying to do. But if the person you want to honour is saying "What the literal fuck, are you guys actually retarded?" I think you need to listen to that. Especially since the reasons he goes on to give make so much sense.
I think the whole "true to his vision" shit is an excuse, he is probably just trying to fight the stereotype that gay actors can't play straight roles.
I can kind of understand how he feels about it. Like, Hikaru Sulu is what Takei is known for. He's built this miniature social media empire, sure, but that just wouldn't have happened without Sulu. He's lived through a literal revolution in terms of how society looks at his sexuality.
And now there's this frankly quite clumsy 'tribute' whereby they retcon his character to reflect that one aspect of Takei's own personality. It's a little mystifying to see Pegg wittering on about not creating a new character simply because that's all that character would ever be seen as, since this retconning rather suggests that Pegg sees, or assumes the fandom sees, Takei as little more than 'that gay guy'.
The hat-tip, the 'tribute', etc, would have been better achieved by having a newly-created gay character hit on Sulu (or maybe teasingly suggest that Sulu is gay). That's the sort of in-joke tribute that can work well.
Technically there are unfortunate implications to the decision also in that we're forced to assume either that Sulu was simply closeted in the Prime timeline and all those scenes where he hits on women are just beard-growth (or that he's bi or whatever) or else we have to speculate that Nero's actions in ST09 like, turned him gay. But that's all getting very very abstract and is something I think only people with rather too much time on their hands will be focusing on.
This
Adding additional factors to a character for no reason other than minority representation is tokenism regardless of how well written that character is. And it sticks out
If you want to make a gay character, use it to make a point. Maybe he faced discrimination at the academy, or maybe he got in on some minority quota and has to deal with people second-guessing his competence because of it.
Maybe Peg should learn how to write characters then
Did he explain why there needs to be a gay character in a fucking sci-fi adventure movie at all?
>Maybe he faced discrimination at the academy, or maybe he got in on some minority quota and has to deal with people second-guessing his competence because of it.
I dunno, Trek's generally been about some sense that all that stuff's been worked out already. When it's shown humans feeling prejudiced in those ways, it's always been abstracted and transposed onto them feeling prejudiced towards aliens and so on. I don't think there'd be any point to having a gay character in Star Trek who experiences homophobia. It would've been inappropriate for Uhura to experience racism during TOS, for example and please don't bring up the episode with Lincoln, that's different.
"If a guy builds a thousand bridges and sucks one cock, they don't call him a bridge builder. They call him a cock sucker."
literally the entire point of star trek is to explore human character and emotions in absurd hypothetical situations
it was never about aliens, action or anything else
Does there have to be a need?
There doesn't need to be. Nor does there need to be a need to be. 'Need' is not the right way to think about this.
On July 7, 2016, it was announced that the film Star Trek Beyond would portray Hikaru Sulu as being in a same-sex relationship raising a daughter. This would make him the first main openly gay character in the Star Trek film franchise.
Star Trek had the first Interracial Kiss on TV. It's a show about social issue. It's like the first Social Justice Warrior show... i guess?
theguardian.com
>Mr Takei even stated that he asked Roddenberry to create a gay character on Star Trek, but made it clear that Sulu was intended to be straight. But can we call Sulu or any Star Trek character truly straight or gay? Should we? We’re applying our 21st-century ideas of sexuality to a story that Roddenberry meant to be about the destruction of the walls that separate us from each other.
>roddenberry clearly had in mind our contemporary fringe tumblrtard ideas of sexual fluidity when he wrote Star Trek 50 years ago
>Star Trek had the first Interracial Kiss on TV.
This is actually a myth. Sammy Davis Jr and Nancy Sinatra kissed live on TV several months before the episode aired.
And, for extra nerd-credit, if you go by production order rather than airing order, Kirk/Uhura wasn't even the first interracial kiss on Star Trek, never mind on TV. In Elaan of Troyius, Kirk and a character played by an Asian woman kiss.
I guess these are fair points. I've completely forgotten these movies are supposed to be Star Trek
It's written in there for a reason. Movies aren't real life
If you've ever listened to Takei on Stern, you know he loves hypermacho dudes, and has always been overjoyed to hang around straight dudes that're okay with showing him their dicks, because as a gay guy, he likes that titilation
Sulu is a little bit of that for him, partly in that he was not only a badass piece of space titilation for any gay guys watching, but also a masculine lead Asian character that was allowed to be a badass WITHOUT being some sort of chingy chongy stereotype
The other part is beyond gays having Takei as a role-model, straight Asian guys have always been starved for a masculine character in basically any media since the dawn of time, and with Sulu, they had someone to either project with or enjoy/relate with on a racial level, as Sulu's Asian heritage was ambiguous to appeal to a giant demographic
Making him gay basically isolates that chunk of straight Asian guys that liked watching the Asian dude do manly and dangerous things in space, and probably creates a lot more Elliot Roger's in the process
Proof that 21st Century tumblrtards will automatically get BTFO by true gay men
>when he wrote Star Trek 50 years ago
Maybe not 50 years ago. But he was getting pretty far out by the late '70s. Bit of an acid casualty.
That said, as a fan I'm tired of this endless yammering on about Roddenberry's intentions and desires etc. The man's dead. More Star Trek has been written and made since his death than was made during his lifetime, never mind made by him directly. Nobody gives a fuck if Colonel Sanders 'would have approved' of the Zinger Tower or the Boneless Banquet or whatever the fuck. Why do people expect us to give a solitary fuck about what Roddenberry 'would have wanted'? Because I honestly just don't care what the old lech would or wouldn't have approved of.
>It's written in there for a reason.
'For a reason' != 'To satisfy a need'.
We might as well ask you why you feel there's a 'need' for there to be NO gay characters in a blah blah blah. It's a mis-framing of the issue to talk in terms of 'need'.
Wasn't Ricker bi?
The biggest reason it's shit is that it implies their are still closeted people in a perfect future where they accepted shit like this hundreds of years prior.
george de gay
>Making him gay basically isolates that chunk of straight Asian guys that liked watching the Asian dude do manly and dangerous things in space, and probably creates a lot more Elliot Roger's in the process
this
t. mixed white + filipino, just like the gentleman himself
>he doesn't know about homo-cleansing of 2141.
>all these people on Sup Forums virtue signaling who are OK with this
So you guys are watching the new Ghostbusters then?
Why is it important at all to address the sexuality either way? Who gives a fuck
>Asian guys have always been starved for a masculine character in basically any media since the dawn of time
In American media.
The big reason I think many Asians in America don't freak about getting shit on in American media is that they look back to China, Korea, or Japan depending on where they are from and see huge megastars kicking ass, getting hot ladies and being eye candy.
Of course I will watch new ghostbusters, when it's out on torrents. Why wouldn't I?
>Who the fuck cares?
I've been hearing this question asked by retards in response to controversial things all day and it's starting to sound like a rhetorical question. A lot of people care. Anyone talking about cares. If you have to ask, you fucking care.
For the same reason we have to adress that charcters are straight (remember the "not gays" part from Plinkett's Star Trek review?). If there's ambiguity, people get scared. And Sulu is the only character in neo-Star Trek who doesn't have a confirmed case of the not gays, but wasn't officially gay yet.
If they make Sulu straight, you know there'd be tons of controversy about it regardless of Takei okaying it. The only logical outcome is to make him gay.
>tokenism
>bowing down to societal pressure
pathetic
>Paramount "had a script for Star Trek that wasn't really working for them. I think the studio was worried that it might have been a little bit too Star Trek-y." Pegg had been asked to make the new film "more inclusive", stating that the solution was to "make a western or a thriller or a heist movie, then populate that with Star Trek characters so it's more inclusive to an audience that might be a little bit reticent.
kek
also a rich straight white dude trying to tell a gay poc how he should feel about being a gay poc is hilarious
I just hope Paramount is forcing Peg to be this retarded.
Ironic that the progressive wanting diversity wasnt willing to make his own character the catalyst for it
Instead he was content with degrading one of the most iconic asian male roles in American media into a shameless pandering.
Anyone else feel bad for Simon? He's basically cucked himself into a corner expecting support from george
and now he's digging the hole even deeper by saying he disagrees with Georges disagreement.........
>we made a character GAY look how progressive we are!
I'll be at home watching a tv series about a polyamorous bisexual woman and her straight/gay/bi sidekicks.
ST has become so tame and so adverse to taking any risks that it doesn't even feel like ST anymore.
Remember Tell Me About Your Sexual Organs? About Mirror Kira? About crewmen in skirts? About the Trills?
>unless you're swooning over ever girl and looking at asses then you're gay
wow its like the 80s
is this what the progressives have done? brought society back 30 years?
Fuck off Simon you sellout
Remember when George jerked that guy off on the Howard Stern show?
Its also a bit insulting because it pushes that Takei couldn't play a straight character becasue he isn't straight.
just like with niggers, women and poor people. wealthy left wing white people now officially know what is best for the gays. they cannot be questioned.
Omar was gay and no one has ever known him as the "gay character". How about you just write better characters you cuck piece of shit?
I don't really care though and Star Trek is pretty gay anyway
>pushing gays down our throat
yes please
BREAKING NEWS
As part of a loving and heartfelt tribute to honor the late great Leonard Nimoy, a short scene in Star Trek® Beyond® will casually reveal that Spock (Zachary Quinto, inspired by Leonard Nimoy) is actually a human wearing rubber ears, just like his original actor, Leonard Nimoy.
In theaters, RealD 3D and IMAX 3D starting July 22nd.
((((wealthy left wing white people))))
>How about you just write better characters you cuck piece of shit?
He's literally admitting that he can't.
Perhaps he should stick to acting then.
>virtue signaling
This is rapidly becoming my favourite thought-terminating cliche.
>Who gives a fuck
Honestly m8 it sounds like you for one give multiple fucks.
Bullshit.
Star Trek is the only universe where you can introduce a pansexual gender fluid character and instead of being tokenism it would just be a retread.
Simon "It's the only reason I'm famous but geek culture is disgusting" Pegg basically said that a straight white man knows what's better for the character than its creator or the guy that played him for 40+ years. Pretty much, "Shut up, you silly queer. We know what's best for you."
Hollywood liberals are literally some of the worst people on the planet.
>Sulu is straight in Prime timeline
>Gay in JJ one
>People are born gay
>but now they aren't
What
To be fair, it's just a character. An alternate version of the character, even.
It'd be silly to pretend you care about the character and not the decision made here.
That risk-averseness goes all the way back to TNG. Tell Me About Your Sexual Organs was piss-weak. Frakes was holding out for the character to be played by a dude to really hammer home the point. Suits wouldn't play ball.
Mirror Kira was just le sexy lesbian/perverted bisexual crap. Crewmen in skirts were just a joke. The truth is that Star Trek spends a lot more time talking about how progressive and envelope-pushing it is than actually progressing and pushing envelopes. It's resting on some 50-yo laurels that aren't even all that impressive to begin with.
He's reasoning was sound though. How would shoehorning in another character whose defining trait would be that of being gay accomplish anything?
Why the fuck would being gay have to be the defining trait?
>implying you'd care about anything else
Blah blah jews pushing agendas, we get it.
I mean, you're effectively asking "Why would being gay be the defining trait of a character created because of the explicit decision to create a gay character?"
I'm not going to say it's impossible but you can see how it might be difficult.
That isn't risk averse.
That is called pushing the boundaries and the fact that execs continually pushed back shows that they were on the edge of what was possible at the time.
Just because they can make a terrible show today where a tranny fucks a black woman with a rainbow colored dildo doesn't mean what they did wasn't testing the boundaries at the time.
What?
Yeah you'd have to not be a completely worthless writer.
This, it's fucking retarted to make him gay in the alternate timeline. Somehow the destruction of Vulcan does that.
No. Make one of the new character gay and make that fact non-important to his/her character arc. Reveal it at the end or late in the movie.
>he picks the tackiest way of introducing and revealing a gay character
Thank god you faggots don't work in the industry.
>make a gay actor's character gay in reboot
>gay actor gets pissed off about it
is this poetry?
You know what really annoys me about all this.
More so then Pegg and co ignoring what Takei had to say on the matter and more then the tokenism.
Its the fact that they're trying to play it as it's some sort of normal natural everyday part of the character, that it's not suppose to be a big deal, but then they go an make it a big deal by talking about it and publicizing it.
If they really wanted to make it just an ordinary part of the character and not the character's defining trait, they would have kept their mouths closed before the film came out. Then when it came out and people went "Oh my god, Sulu's GAY!" they should have replied with a simple "Umm, yeah." as if someone had just said "Oh my god, Sulu has BLACK HAIR!"
While I understand Pegg's reasoning, lets face it the only character who has less going for him/less that makes him stand out is Chekov.
Sulu's entire character can now be described as "The gay asian guy who flys the ship and has a sword"
>Takei actually told Cho to take the role, that his ancestry (Korean, IIRC?) didn't matter.
While Sulu is suppose to be a Jap American, who grew up in San Fran, he was suppose to also be non-specifically Asian. Sulu is named after the Sulu Sea in the Philippians, in order to make him less country specific.
>Hey, Peg, how about making Sulu bi? That way it doesn't contradict anything and makes a good, positive, progressive statement about an overlooked part of the LGBTQ community
>Peg: Bi? What's that?
>That isn't risk averse.
M8 it literally is. Like, they literally refused to cast a dude in the asexual role because they were literally averse to the literal risk of a backlash.
But... that's what they did with Sulu...
The whole sexuality thing was already pushing the envelope at the time. Execs pushing back from going the extra mile doesn't make it risk averse, it means they literally were not allowed to do it.
You didn't even read his post, did you?
>That is called pushing the boundaries and the fact that execs continually pushed back shows that they were on the edge
I did read his post. The claim is that depicting a race of asexuals was 'pushing the boundaries' in like 1989 or whenever it was. It's not that I don't understand the claim, you see - I just think it's wrong. Got that?