While 2016 has been the year that gave us Twitter movements to get LGBT characters into Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar movies, there have been several LGBT moments in the movies so far this year. Whether they're movies made by LGBT creators or starring LGBT actors or films that overtly featured LGBT characters and relationships, we want to celebrate them. Certainly there were plenty of movies that were a step backward this year. This was the blockbuster season that brought us gay director Bryan Singer's fourth X-Men movie (but the first to feature no openly LGBT actors), the straightwashing of Deadpool, the gay panic jokes of Ride Along 2 and Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, and the gay kiss cut from Tarzan. So although Hollywood still has a long way to go where representation is concerned, we thought we'd take a moment to appreciate (and rank) the moments when studios have made moves toward inclusiveness.
8. Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters is a tricky one, because it let lesbian Saturday Night Live star Kate McKinnon shine in a role that was highly coded as lesbian, but the film ultimately caved to studio pressure and didn't confirm the character's sexual orientation. Which was a shame. Before the movie was released, there were rumors that the character would be played gay, and all we had to go on was the winking and sexy suggestiveness from McKinnon's Jillian Holtzman to Kristen Wiig's Erin Gilbert. In an interview with The Daily Beast before the film's premiere, director Paul Feig responded to questions about Holtzman's sexuality by nodding and saying, "I hate to be coy about it, but when you're dealing with the studios and that kind of thing..."
Still, McKinnon by most accounts stole the show, and her smart, wild, and engaging character was never played as lesbian for the straight male gaze, and that makes it something special when it comes to big-budget movies. With studio executives stating that they're committed to the franchise, here's to hope that future installments will let the character out of the closet.
7. Zootopia
Zootopia was a surprise hit for Disney, becoming its second-highest-grossing animated film of all time (after Frozen), taking in over a billion dollars. The last time Disney made a movie about an animated rabbit and a fox, it was Song of the South, which contained a plethora of racist tropes and has since been locked away in the Disney vault forever. Zootopia was very aware of that fact, and it intentionally tells a story about prejudice, stereotypes, class, and privilege that resonated with moviegoers. The story does not include any obviously LGBT characters (some bloggers have called the cheetah police receptionist the most "overt" gay character in a Disney animated film to date, but in the end nothing is confirmed and he's voiced by a straight actor), but it was directed by by two men, one of whom, Byron Howard, is gay and married. The message of inclusion, open-mindedness, and breaking down barriers is as applicable to the LGBT movement as it is to issue of race in America today.
6. Finding Dory
Finding Dory is the final movie on this list that doesn't feature an obviously LGBT character. As with Ghostbusters, the trailer alone sparked hope that the movie would break barriers and include some LGBT love, as a couple of ladies looking at a stroller appeared that they might be Pixar's first same-sex couple. Turns out the bit shown in the trailer was all we saw of the ladies in the actual film, so there wasn't much there to get excited about. But the fact that this movie's lead is voiced by the always excellent Ellen DeGeneres (Kate McKinnon is also in the stellar voice cast) wins this movie some nominal points, and the sweet story about parents who are concerned for a child who is different but who love her unceasingly nevertheless is enough to make any LGBT audience member tear up by the end. Now on to movies with LGBT characters.
5. Independence Day: Resurgence
Disaster movie director Roland Emmerich is gay, although you probably wouldn't guess it from his movies. Emmerich's films, including this, can tend toward xenophobia and jingoism, and they often have been criticized for their troubling use of racial themes, their extreme violence, and their absurdly macho patriotism. Even his foray into LGBT cinema last year with Stonewall, the story of the pivotal moment in American LGBT history, was widely derided for its homonormativity and for whitewashing the heroes of the story. Still, we should give Emmerich credit for including an actual gay couple who behave tenderly toward each other on-screen in what was (intended to be) a big summer blockbuster. The original Independence Day from 1996 featured Harvey Fierstein in a gay-but-not-confirmed role, which was big for the time, even if it immediately fell into the kill-your-gays trope of moviemaking. This year's sequel provided the double revelation that Brent Spiner's character from the original movie is -- surprise! -- somehow still alive after seemingly dying in the first movie, and -- surprise! surprise! -- gay and happily matched with a coworker, played by the also-returning John Storey. We see the men hold hands and one calls the other baby, but the movie is frustratingly coy about their relationship. "One day you'll have a gay character as the lead and nobody will wonder at it no more. But we're not there yet," Emmerich told The Hollywood Reporter in 2015. We're also apparently not at the point where (spoiler) both members of a gay couple can survive to the end of a Roland Emmerich movie, but we're guessing he'd blame that on the studio too.
4. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2
Just like Independence Day: Resurgence and actually all the remaining films on this list, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 decided to out a character we'd already met and never suspected of being LGBT. That's perhaps a nice way that Hollywood is normalizing LGBT characters in film. Comic book and Star Wars movies this year are making the move to include ethnic minorities and female heroes because they know the property will put butts in seats regardless of who the actors are, which might be a nice antidote to Hollywood's excuse that those casting choices don't sell tickets. Similarly, we're seeing LGBT characters popping up in sequels this summer, which may be safer for studios but is also doing a good job of exposing broader audiences to the normality of LGBT life. In the case of My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2's outing, we get a funny and touching scene as 'N Sync star Joey Fatone's character, cousin Angelo, nervously comes out to his family and introduces his partner. It's played low-key, but it does the job.
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caption="You've viewed the adventures of the Pfefferman family; now see some real-life young adults dealing with a parent's transition in a new episode of MTV's True Life, \"I Have a Trans Parent.\" Follow Kiara as she gets to know her \"Pops,\" the parent she previously knew as her mother, and Jeffrey as he accepts his father as a transgender woman and strives to help his brothers do the same. The episode airs Monday at 11:30 p.m./10:30 Central; watch a preview below.\n" photo_credit=""]
3. Neighbors 2
We know. We're as shocked as you are that this is our number 3. And we're not saying it was a good movie. But the boys who originated the idea of the bromance movie seem to be maturing when it comes to, as they might recently have put it, "gay stuff." The first Neighbors movie flirted with the idea of two dudes loving each other, as most of the movies starring the Apatow bunch have, while drawing the line at two dudes loving each other. Neighbors 2 tears down that retaining wall between bromance and romance in a scene that shows one man (played by gay comedian John Early) adorably propose to another man (Dave Franco, reprising his role from the first movie), enlisting their former frat buddies to help in the musical proposal. It ends in a kiss, the camera doesn't pull away, and it isn't played for laughs. It's played just as sweet as the tender moments between the straight couples in the series. The movie's star and cowriter, Seth Rogen, recently told The Guardian, "It's funny looking at some movies we've made in the last 10 years under the lenses of new eras, new social consciousness. There's for sure some stuff in our earlier movies -- and even in our more recent movies -- where even like a year later you're like, 'Eh, maybe that wasn't the greatest idea.'" It's nice to see these boys growing up.
2. Absolutely Fabulous
We couldn't leave this outrageous movie off the list. It's perhaps the gayest movie of the summer, but that should come as no surprise to anyone who's seen the hilarious and iconic British sitcom to which this movie is a sequel. This movie features Glee's Chris Colfer as a sassy hairstylist. It has a man come out as trans. It has a woman pretend to be a man in order to seduce and marry the world's richest woman, who herself comes out as a man in the end in a twist on the ending of Some Like It Hot. It has a blink-or-you'd-miss-her cameo by Dame Edna. It has Rebel Wilson deadpanning, "I hate that you have to be nice to trans people now," an apparent nod to the backlash against her trans joke at the 2016 BAFTA awards in February. There is an entire karaoke scene where Saffy has to sing Janis Ian's "At Seventeen" to quiet a room full of drag queens. Of course, mainstream audiences won't be seeing this film, which is why it's not number 1 on our list, but it is a gay old time nonetheless.
1. Star Trek Beyond
Star Trek boldly went there. True, it took 50 years, 13 movies, and five or six TV series to do so, but the franchise finally showed an LGBT main character. Regardless of the George Takei's feelings about the change in the character he created, we couldn't have been happier for Sulu and his husband and child. And while the couple's kiss didn't make it into the final cut of the movie, the fact that a major franchise featured a gay married couple who are raising a child is a big deal. This is a character audiences have loved for decades, and to see him continuing to be the badass fighter and space explorer we love while also having a husband and family makes us feel so much pride that it's almost sad how rare it is to feel this way. Meanwhile, gay actor Zachary Quinto continues to portray the stoic Mr. Spock. Star Trek was the first program to show an interracial kiss on television, and it feels only right that this series would go on to help lead the pack when it comes to LGBT inclusion in mainstream films.
