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HUGE Mr Sulu Spoiler

I am not totally sure that Takei understands the whole this-is-a-different-timeline/universe thing. (And why should he; that should be reserved for nerds on message boards.)

I suspect that he thinks this change directly affects his original character, which is not necessarily the case. (This would explain his otherwise confusing comments about not wanting Sulu to be 'closeted.')

That, or he is so protective of the 'Totality of Sulus' (college bands, feel free to use that name) that he's just not having it, no matter which version of Sulu this applies to.
 
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mos6507 said:
He's come out in opposition to this using much the same rationale that those who get instantly tarred and feathered as homophobes--that the character was conceived to be straight and played straight by him for decades and LGBT characters are best introduced as new ones rather than being grafted onto old ones. Since he himself is gay, it's hard to turn around and brand him a bigot, so now people are going to play the "he's an old man from an earlier time" argument? Why can't people respect that there's a valid reason to oppose this on creative grounds without trying to accuse them of harboring some character flaw?
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Because his opposition is confusing and disappointing. I don't believe he's concerned about "creative grounds". I'm not buying that. I think he's just annoyed because it wasn't done the way he would have done it in his own time.
 
I also think maybe Takei didn't know the full details and has misinterpreted it as a closeted character.

He won't be closeted - he will be happily married.

But it breaks my heart that the man who made Sulu his own is disagreeing with the new Sulu.
 
mymatty said:
Yeah, I truly don't understand George's opposition. Saying that it's not what Roddenberry wanted in the 60's is pretty irrelevant considering the constraints he was under back then and the fact that times (and the fans) have changed.
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Even without the 'constraints', Gene could be a right cesspit of close-minded ass-hattery when it suited him.

Gene didn't 'want' female captains. Gene didn't 'want' the female characters to be much more than decoration. And when things got really tough for TOS? Gene didn't 'want' anything to do with the whole damn show, and abandoned it to its fate.

Fuck Gene. He's had his three chances to make Trek 'what he wanted.'
 
Pegg is right, if they created a new character just to be gay then they would be defined by that but Takei being gay also seems to define their decision to make Sulu of the Kelvin Universe gay.

“we are all LGBT somewhere”.

Hear hear!
 
Hela said:
Even without the 'constraints', Gene could be a right cesspit of close-minded ass-hattery when it suited him.

Gene didn't 'want' female captains. Gene didn't 'want' the female characters to be much more than decoration. And when things got really tough for TOS? Gene didn't 'want' anything to do with the whole damn show, and abandoned it to its fate.

Fuck Gene. He's had his three chances to make Trek 'what he wanted.'
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M8edANJ.jpg
 
mos6507 said:
He's come out in opposition to this using much the same rationale that those who get instantly tarred and feathered as homophobes--that the character was conceived to be straight and played straight by him for decades and LGBT characters are best introduced as new ones rather than being grafted onto old ones. Since he himself is gay, it's hard to turn around and brand him a bigot, so now people are going to play the "he's an old man from an earlier time" argument? Why can't people respect that there's a valid reason to oppose this on creative grounds without trying to accuse them of harboring some character flaw?
Click to expand...

Let's be real: A lot of homophobes ARE hiding behind arguments of canonicity to oppose gay-Sulu despite having long ago accepted blue-eyed-Kirk and Caucasian-Khan. Not to say that everyone who is fixated on "staying true to the original Sulu" is homophobic, just that some are using that as a shield to hide their biases behind.

And if you oppose this choice "on creative grounds", why are you not agitating about the fact that none of the new characters have the exact same faces or body types as their TOS counterparts? What's the canon explanation for that? Could it be that consistency is not as important as some insist?
 
mos6507 said:
...that the character was conceived to be straight and played straight by him for decades...
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Apologies for snipping out the rest of the post - but this is one of the key arguments I've seen today.

Sulu was played as a pilot. A damn good pilot.

He wasn't played straight any more than he was played gay. It was never stated that he was either. It was however assumed.
 
mos6507 said:
Takei begs to differ.
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Look at Takei's and Cho's Sulus:

Star-Trek-Sulu-George-Takei-John-Cho.jpg


Completely different faces. Outrageous! Why didn't they use modern technology to make the characters look identical? For the sake of consistency, of course, since Sulu has already been long-established to have a certain face. Forget sexual orientation: nuSulu's face is not canon!
 
There's something like irony at play when one uses the phrase "on creative grounds" to try to justify a constraint on creativity in the form of a rule that such-and-such must not be done. Creativity is, after all, the ability to produce something new. How can something be new when it must remain the same?

The success of the new films so far proves both that audiences still like classic TOS on some level but also that audiences accept its updating to fit contemporary expectations. This change in how Sulu is portrayed sounds like it will answer at least one of the long-standing beefs I've had with Star Trek, which is its unrealistically retrograde depiction of human social norms. I love Star Trek, but it always had trouble living up to its own premise of humanity living in a more enlightened future. It sounds like this change fixes part of that, and I hope it does.
 
mymatty said:
I'm not sure George even fully understands what they've decided to do with the character.

He's quoted in the THR article as saying, "I told him, 'Be imaginative and create a character who has a history of being gay, rather than Sulu, who had been straight all this time, suddenly being revealed as being closeted.'" But Sulu isn't revealed to be closeted in STB, he's just revealed to be married, and this is not news to the other characters (who already know and accept him) but to the audience alone.
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I think he means with "closeted" TOS Sulu. TOS Sulu never showed interest in men, although there were a lot of hot ones his age on the ship, not to mention hot alien men. All the other characters showed obvious interest in the opposite gender. The other guys had all female love interests and the women had male ones. Only he didn't show in 102 episodes and 6 older movies any interest in other men. So why not? Now Takei thinks he didn't, because Sulu was in the closet. He thinks that making new movie Sulu gay means also, that TOS Sulu was gay. After all ST09 wasn't really a clear reboot. Sulu's sexuality shouldn't have been affected at all by Nero. Nero only destroyed the Kelvin before Sulu was grown up. So with other words Takei thinks it is canon now, that TOS Sulu is gay. TOS Sulu didn't express it though ever, so Takei concludes he must have been in the closet. And a guy feeling the need to be in the closet in the 23th century, is for Takei against Gene's vision. At least that is how I understood Takei's reasoning. Maybe he says more about it in the future and it will become clearer, what he means.
 
Saul said:
Pegg is right, if they created a new character just to be gay then they would be defined by that but Takei being gay also seems to define their decision to make Sulu of the Kelvin Universe gay.

“we are all LGBT somewhere”.

Hear hear!
Click to expand...
They tried that but sorta chickened out.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Hawk_(Lieutenant)
While rumors have persisted that Lt. Hawk was originally intended to be Star Trek's first openly gay character, the producers of Star Trek: First Contact and actor Neal McDonough have denied this. (citation needed • edit) However, Hawk is indeed depicted as being gay in the novel Section 31: Rogue, which has been referenced again in the Star Trek: Titan novel series, where his partner, an unjoined Trill male named Ranul Keru, serves as the Titan's chief of security.
Click to expand...
 
A little disappointed that Mr. Takei doesn't see the big picture in all this really.

Anyway where was his outrage over Sulu welding a somewhat samurai-looking sword in the 2009 film... after he specifically chose a fencing foil because his belief was "by the 23rd Century a person was greater than their ethnicity".
 
Uhura, a Sub-Saharan Black African is played by a mixed-raced woman who identifies as Latina. Outrage? No. Crickets? Yes
 
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