15 Most Controversial Movie Moments 2016

Star Trek has a reputation as one of the most progressive, inclusive franchises in the history of sci-fi. The original TV show was first broadcast in 1966 just a couple of years after the Civil Rights Act was passed in the US and its multicultural cast was refreshingly diverse and representative of a changing America. Later, the series featured the first-ever televised interracial kiss between a white man (William Shatner’s Captain Kirk) and an African American woman (Nichelle Nichols’ Nyota Uhura) while The Next Generation series dealt with issues like AIDS and religious tolerance.

It came as quite a surprise then that the latest outing in the movie reboot series, Star Trek Beyond, came under fire for portraying Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu as a gay man. Even more surprising was that one of the main critics of this move was none other than George Takei, the openly gay actor that played Lieutenant Sulu in the original Star Trek show. While it’s revealed matter-of-factly and without fanfare early on in the film in a scene in which Sulu reunites with his husband and their young daughter and marks the franchise’s first gay character, Takei – an LGBT activist himself – felt it was an ‘unfortunate’ departure from Star Trek creator Gene Rodenberry’s original version of the character.

Star Trek Beyond screenwriter and cast member Simon Pegg defended the decision to make Sulu gay, stating it would likely have been something Rodenberry would’ve explored himself had audiences back in the 1960s been more open-minded, while fellow openly gay actor Zachary Quinto, who plays the new Spock in the movie, defended Sulu’s portrayal as ‘tasteful and beautiful’.