5 ms·

Seems disingenuous to lump a science fiction movie where the focus is future technologies to an action movie with exaggerated physics and lack of real damage. I

Seems disingenuous to lump a science fiction movie where the focus is future technologies to an action movie with exaggerated physics and lack of real damage. In action movies, bad guys die with one bullet while the hero finds his way to safety (and survives!) despite having 10 or more lethal bullet wounds. For the record, Star Wars is not science fiction nor has it ever been portrayed as such. It's very much an action adventure set in space.

ben_w 5y ago
> For the record, Star Wars is not science fiction nor has it ever been portrayed as such. FWIW this is literally the first time I’ve encountered someone claiming that it isn’t science fiction. (Soft SciFi, to be sure, but still: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScien...)
- gourlaysama 5y ago
  > FWIW this is literally the first time I’ve encountered someone claiming that it isn’t science fiction. Well, there's Science Fantasy [1]: Jedi and the Force are very much Wizards and Magic. I've heard it called Space Fantasy, too. [1]: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScienceFantasy https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScienceFantasy
  - snowwrestler 5y ago
    A bunch of classic “golden era” science fiction novels feature characters with unexplained mental powers, like Asimov’s Foundation series, Dune, Niven’s Known Space series, etc. Those seem like obvious fantasy now, but from about the 1950s through the 1970s, a lot of serious people believed that there were undiscovered powers of the human mind that science was on the verge of discovering or confirming. Mental powers are therefore a common anachronism of sci fi from that era. Most science fiction stories are going to feature some elements that are essentially unexplained and therefore act like magic in the story. I think most folks would consider 2001 to be science fiction but the powers of the monolith are at least as crazy and unexplained as what the Jedi can do.
  - krapp 5y ago
    >Jedi and the Force are very much Wizards and Magic Star Trek canonically has telepaths, telekinesis, and godlike beings that can alter reality with mere thought. Why don't people call Star Trek space fantasy as well, when its universe is even less grounded in realism than Star Wars?
- glitchc 5y ago
  Lucas himself has stated that although science fiction inspired him to create these stories, Star Wars is indeed not science fiction but rather science fantasy: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/46481/did-george-lucas-consider-star-wars-to-be-science-fiction https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/46481/did-george-l... Because all the stories are " a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," it's not even clear if Luke and the gang are humans or some other species. Of course it's easy to think of them as humans, and most people do, but it's not necessary. This ambiguity is also by design.
  - robbrown451 5y ago
    True but Lucas doesn't have final say on classifying his movies. People who make things have an incentive to claim that their work is somehow special. I'd just say Star Wars is science fiction with lots of fantasy elements, as well as lots of influence from different genres (Earth-based war films, adventure serials, etc.) I see the fact that humans in Star Wars seem to be the "same species" as Homo sapiens to be similar to the fact that movies that take place in ancient Greece have the characters speak modern English. We are expected to understand that humans in Star Wars evolved there, not in Africa on Earth. It would be more realistic to have the main characters look very different from us, but it probably wouldn't make for as enjoyable a movie.
    - lupire 5y ago
      Why isn't Lord of the Rings "science fiction" but Star Wars is? They both have technology unknown to us.
      - ben_w 5y ago
        LotR magic isn’t supposed to be technology, it’s literal-god (Eru Ilúvatar) created everything by singing, literal-devil (Morgoth) has a different and incompatible song, some legendary things happened (only in-universe they actually happened and aren’t mere tales like our myths, and the elves being immortal can remember them), and then the literal spirits of literal minor angels (Maiar) took human form and did magic as the wizards.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  And Vulcan are space elves, Klingon are space orcs and Borg are space undead. All of this stuff has inspiration from classical fantasy. That doesn't change whether or not something is SciFi or not. There is an intersection of SciFi and Fantasy for sure, and the line gets blurred. Artificial human stories can be cyborgs, androids, clones, golems, or chimera, or even explicit fantasy races like minotaurs. If it's an android, then it's SciFi. But if it was a clay golem made with magic (but otherwise the same story) it's fantasy. See golem stories for instance. They explore a lot of sci Fi themes but are basically a fantasy theme. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem
  - ben_w 5y ago
    Certainly many tropes are shared, but that is true beyond the scifi-fantasy intersection. (Although: I would say Klingons are the avatar of Russian-ness in the eyes of America at the time any given episode gets written. Beardy humans in TOS, impoverished but hard as nails in TNG, anarchic and self-destructive in ENT, sneaky and dangerous warmongers in DIS). I regard the superhero genre as a modern version of the old divine pantheons — heroes and villains, supposedly far beyond human, yet oddly well-balanced against each other (Hawkeye should not be in the same battleground as Thor in the same way and for the same reason that Choi Mi-sun should not be in a battle featuring an attack helicopter). Sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic and all that.
  - nearbuy 5y ago
    I see the similarities for Klingons and Borg, but I don't see much similarity between Vulcans and elves beyond the pointy ears. Vulcans are more like androids: logical and outwardly emotionless, but not necessarily wise. The human captain (e.g. Kirk) tends to figure out a winning solution despite the resident Vulcan often complaining it isn't logical. That doesn't detract from your point.
    - krapp 5y ago
      IIRC, Spock's appearance was intended to look vaguely demonic or Satanic, rather than like an elf. The original concept had him with red skin and deeply arched eyebrows as well, but they had to tone the makeup down a lot to avoid offending religious viewers.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  > FWIW this is literally the first time I’ve encountered someone claiming that it isn’t science fiction. This is HN, where pendantry is their job. Featured daily.
deleted 5y ago
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UncleMeat 5y ago
Three movies were referenced in the comment I responded to: Return of the Jedi, Star Trek: Into Darkness, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Two of those movies are definitely not focused on future technologies. Many people call Star Wars "science fantasy", but I'm extremely confident that this is used less frequently than "science fiction" to describe it and I am absolutely confident that I'd be able to find marketing copy by LucasFilm or distributors describing it as science fiction, even if that aggravates people who are really into more cerebral sci-fi.
- lupire 5y ago
  It's space fantasy or space western, not science fantasy.

ben_w 5y ago

> For the record, Star Wars is not science fiction nor has it ever been portrayed as such. FWIW this is literally the first time I’ve encountered someone claiming that it isn’t science fiction. (Soft SciFi, to be sure, but still: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScien...)

gourlaysama 5y ago
> FWIW this is literally the first time I’ve encountered someone claiming that it isn’t science fiction. Well, there's Science Fantasy [1]: Jedi and the Force are very much Wizards and Magic. I've heard it called Space Fantasy, too. [1]: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScienceFantasy https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScienceFantasy
- snowwrestler 5y ago
  A bunch of classic “golden era” science fiction novels feature characters with unexplained mental powers, like Asimov’s Foundation series, Dune, Niven’s Known Space series, etc. Those seem like obvious fantasy now, but from about the 1950s through the 1970s, a lot of serious people believed that there were undiscovered powers of the human mind that science was on the verge of discovering or confirming. Mental powers are therefore a common anachronism of sci fi from that era. Most science fiction stories are going to feature some elements that are essentially unexplained and therefore act like magic in the story. I think most folks would consider 2001 to be science fiction but the powers of the monolith are at least as crazy and unexplained as what the Jedi can do.
- krapp 5y ago
  >Jedi and the Force are very much Wizards and Magic Star Trek canonically has telepaths, telekinesis, and godlike beings that can alter reality with mere thought. Why don't people call Star Trek space fantasy as well, when its universe is even less grounded in realism than Star Wars?
glitchc 5y ago
Lucas himself has stated that although science fiction inspired him to create these stories, Star Wars is indeed not science fiction but rather science fantasy: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/46481/did-george-lucas-consider-star-wars-to-be-science-fiction https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/46481/did-george-l... Because all the stories are " a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," it's not even clear if Luke and the gang are humans or some other species. Of course it's easy to think of them as humans, and most people do, but it's not necessary. This ambiguity is also by design.
- robbrown451 5y ago
  True but Lucas doesn't have final say on classifying his movies. People who make things have an incentive to claim that their work is somehow special. I'd just say Star Wars is science fiction with lots of fantasy elements, as well as lots of influence from different genres (Earth-based war films, adventure serials, etc.) I see the fact that humans in Star Wars seem to be the "same species" as Homo sapiens to be similar to the fact that movies that take place in ancient Greece have the characters speak modern English. We are expected to understand that humans in Star Wars evolved there, not in Africa on Earth. It would be more realistic to have the main characters look very different from us, but it probably wouldn't make for as enjoyable a movie.
  - lupire 5y ago
    Why isn't Lord of the Rings "science fiction" but Star Wars is? They both have technology unknown to us.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      LotR magic isn’t supposed to be technology, it’s literal-god (Eru Ilúvatar) created everything by singing, literal-devil (Morgoth) has a different and incompatible song, some legendary things happened (only in-universe they actually happened and aren’t mere tales like our myths, and the elves being immortal can remember them), and then the literal spirits of literal minor angels (Maiar) took human form and did magic as the wizards.
dragontamer 5y ago
And Vulcan are space elves, Klingon are space orcs and Borg are space undead. All of this stuff has inspiration from classical fantasy. That doesn't change whether or not something is SciFi or not. There is an intersection of SciFi and Fantasy for sure, and the line gets blurred. Artificial human stories can be cyborgs, androids, clones, golems, or chimera, or even explicit fantasy races like minotaurs. If it's an android, then it's SciFi. But if it was a clay golem made with magic (but otherwise the same story) it's fantasy. See golem stories for instance. They explore a lot of sci Fi themes but are basically a fantasy theme. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem
- ben_w 5y ago
  Certainly many tropes are shared, but that is true beyond the scifi-fantasy intersection. (Although: I would say Klingons are the avatar of Russian-ness in the eyes of America at the time any given episode gets written. Beardy humans in TOS, impoverished but hard as nails in TNG, anarchic and self-destructive in ENT, sneaky and dangerous warmongers in DIS). I regard the superhero genre as a modern version of the old divine pantheons — heroes and villains, supposedly far beyond human, yet oddly well-balanced against each other (Hawkeye should not be in the same battleground as Thor in the same way and for the same reason that Choi Mi-sun should not be in a battle featuring an attack helicopter). Sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic and all that.
- nearbuy 5y ago
  I see the similarities for Klingons and Borg, but I don't see much similarity between Vulcans and elves beyond the pointy ears. Vulcans are more like androids: logical and outwardly emotionless, but not necessarily wise. The human captain (e.g. Kirk) tends to figure out a winning solution despite the resident Vulcan often complaining it isn't logical. That doesn't detract from your point.
  - krapp 5y ago
    IIRC, Spock's appearance was intended to look vaguely demonic or Satanic, rather than like an elf. The original concept had him with red skin and deeply arched eyebrows as well, but they had to tone the makeup down a lot to avoid offending religious viewers.
redis_mlc 5y ago
> FWIW this is literally the first time I’ve encountered someone claiming that it isn’t science fiction. This is HN, where pendantry is their job. Featured daily.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

UncleMeat 5y ago

Three movies were referenced in the comment I responded to: Return of the Jedi, Star Trek: Into Darkness, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Two of those movies are definitely not focused on future technologies. Many people call Star Wars "science fantasy", but I'm extremely confident that this is used less frequently than "science fiction" to describe it and I am absolutely confident that I'd be able to find marketing copy by LucasFilm or distributors describing it as science fiction, even if that aggravates people who are really into more cerebral sci-fi.

lupire 5y ago
It's space fantasy or space western, not science fantasy.