It actually served a purpose in the movie. Sulu's family lived on the Yorktown and we care about Sulu, so there is increased tension during the climax. It works better than the vague notion of future Earth being attacked by actually giving some identity to the faces in the crowd. This is something that Trek usually fails at and they instead show a nameless kid drop a teddy bear or some generic attractive person looking scared.
Maybe he was thinking: "I wish I could get my ass that firm!" Maybe he was playing along in hopes of a threesome with his buddy Chekov, his earlier plan to seduce him by getting them "lost in the woods" together having been thwarted...
I haven't seen it yet, so no comment on how it was portrayed. The relationship has certainly been well received, so I'm hopeful I'll enjoy the movie.
It makes sense. It does feel like a little pandering, and that is probably why Takei criticized it, but otherwise it seems to have been regarded as a good move.
I thought it worked well in context of the movie, and it certainly was subtle and natural and not like anything was being awkwardly shoehorned in or hammered upon inordinately. For all the press it generated, it was really just a brief moment, and as others have said it served the plot without being a major plot point itself. As for Takei's objection, a perception of "pandering" may have played into it, but it seemed to me that it was largely based on Roddenberry not having conceived of the character that way and Takei himself, despite being gay, having put a lot of work into playing Sulu as straight all those years. It was a definitely a change to the character, not something that just falls in line with what we'd known of him before, but that sort of thing of course is in play to one degree or another for most or all of the characters in the reboot.
He was probably the only option really. Spock and Uhura are in a relationship, Kirk is best known in the popular culture as sleeping with green women and McCoy is divorced and talks about his ex-wife. Really all that's left is Sulu, Chekov and Scotty. Scotty is now BFFs with a wacky alien and no one wants to imagine them as a couple, Chekov is a wacky accent pretending to be a character and any possible mate for him is going to have to be so Russian that Putin would cry tears of joy to see it. Sulu is more or less normal, so it probably works better.
A slide carousel was the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw the saucer.
Sulu's fitness buff.
Don't forget in "Star Trek V," Sulu was admiring the backside of the Klingon woman. That's the first thing I think of when I hear the phrase "Sulu's sexuality."
