Okay you win we lose.
/thread
That’s too bad, I rather like the discussion. I really don’t consider this something to win.
And as I’ve thought about what the best classification for Star Wars as a film should be, I don’t think it is science fiction. I think Star Wars is an epic. It has more in common with all the great epic films - Gone With the Wind, Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, Spartacus, Cleopatra, and that type of film than it does with anything else. It should be a space epic. I realize that is making up a new sub-genre, but it fits in the overall genre. And I think that is where the similarity to LOTR comes in as well. It also is an epic type story. The historical epic was big in the 50’s and Star Wars has that same feel, but set in space. It even has its own chariot race. This is a uniquely movie genre. It isn’t in print. In print they are just historical fiction, epic fantasy, or space opera, but in movies, it fits better calling them all epics. Historical epics, space epics, and fantasy epics. Long movies with huge casts (modern ones use a lot of CG rather than extras) and grand stories of pivotal times.
I still maintain that Star Wars is science fiction, especially in book form. The novelizations read like science fiction and the old and new EU books have been written mostly by science fiction authors. But if the purpose of genres is to group films with like films, it fits better with the other epics. From wikipedia: Epic films are a style of filmmaking with large scale, sweeping scope, and spectacle. The usage of the term has shifted over time, sometimes designating a film genre and at other times simply synonymous with big budget filmmaking. Like epics in the classical literary sense it is often focused on a heroic character. An epic’s ambitious nature helps to set it apart from other types of film such as the period piece or adventure film. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_film