By the way, the rumor that there was a deleted kiss between Sulu and Ben (the character's name in the script) has been debunked:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/adambvary/sulu-husband-star-trek-beyond?utm_term=.pfZJD0bJ6#.pjOzMLqzN
What the filmmakers never wrote into the script, however, was a kiss between Sulu and Ben, out of a desire to make their reunion as prosaic as possible. “It’s funny, whenever I come home to my wife, I don’t always immediately kiss her hello, either,” Jung said. “At the airport, we sometimes hug, and there are the kids, and it sort of becomes about that. I think it was really important to represent this was a normal family reunion that happens without a lot of fanfare.”
Yeah that made it kind of weird. With Choo and the other actor looking so similar, the whole "Sulu is gay" thing seemed to be that he was in love with an extremely close relative. Really were the producers trying to put him across as being in a gay incestous relationship?
Whaaaat? I don't think
Doug Jung looks much like John Cho at all. He's got a much rounder face, a heavier build, distinctly different eyes and nose -- they're not nearly similar-looking enough to be relatives.
Speaking from my experience as a gay person used to having to comb through media for crumbs of hints that a character might be gay, I'm pretty confident in saying that just about any gay person watching that would look at that and piece together the combination of seeing the picture of Sulu's daughter and wedding band in the same shot, the way that they greeted each other, and the fact that his husband was with him at Kirk's birthday party are all signs that say 'husband.' Like, examining subtext is one of the first things that you start to accept as a way of life when it comes to looking for media portrayals, so to people used to nothing but subtext (look at the massive essays written by fans in regards to Dean Winchester, how there are dozens of bisexual people saying that he fits perfectly with their experiences of repressing their own bisexuality), it is absolutely a neon sign.
Oh, no doubt. But the problem is that it's designed so that heteronormative-minded people can overlook it, and that's too timid. It should've been made more unambiguous.
Allegedly, studios are afraid of having gay characters in their movies because then those movies won't get shown in countries which still practice discrimination against homosexuals, like China and Russia, both of which contribute a decent percentage of foreign sales. Or so it's explained to be in threads detailing why Disney will never allow a gay character in a Star Wars movie.
Oh, that's sad. Putting profit over doing the right thing. (And not just foreign sales. It looks like two different Chinese production companies were financing partners on
Beyond, judging from the opening logos.)
Indeed, look at many other popular movie franchises, or even big movies from this year. The MCU has no gay characters, X-Men uses mutants as an allegory for homosexuality but there aren't any gay characters.
There are two recurring LGBT characters in the television arm of the MCU -- Jeryn Hogarth, the cutthroat lawyer who debuted in
Jessica Jones and appeared in the second-season finale of
Daredevil (with more appearances coming, I believe), and Joey Gutierrez, the metal-melting Inhuman from
Agents of SHIELD. No doubt it's easier to push that envelope on TV than in movies with overseas financing.
Which is reason to hope that
Star Trek: Discovery will be able to be more overt about LGBT inclusion than
Beyond was.
