Choking people telepathically, mind control, sensing future events, and shooting lightning from your fingertips is science fiction? Light vs. Dark side?
The LOTR Trilogy is incredibly overrated. It's aged badly too. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RPl5MeXIM8E" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
On Star Wars, we've had this argument before and I suppose it'll never die. But, I consider sci-fi to be works that explore philosophical questions that arise because of plausible scientific advancement. Star Wars does none of that. It's just a story that takes place in space. The Chronicles of Narnia movies. 300? Fantasy tends to require more-than-average special effects and/or staging/costuming budgets. For what it costs to make one decent fantasy movie, Woody Allen can probably make a dozen talkie films. I think that's less of a problem now as Hollywood has gotten really good at special effects. But, especially historically I think that made a respectable fantasy movie hard to produce. Before the recent Narnia movies, there was a British version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe from 1979 that literally had actors in animal costumes and 'special effects' drawn onto the film. It doesn't matter how good the acting or writing is when you have to overcome that. But, more broadly I think it's because fantasy has been a niche interest in both the production and the consumption of fantasy -- and this goes for books and other media too, though with exceptions where it has broken to the mainstream. Some people like the genre and are not as picky as they should be in their consumption. And, some people are making fantasy media because they like it and have an audience that won't punish them for sucking at it. My brother-in-law had me read Wizard's First Rule once. It's a very successful book and series and I think I heard they were making it into a movie. Now, my bro-in-law tells me the guy became a better writer over the course of the series but I never found out. The book sucks, the prose sucks, the storytelling is terrible, the dude can't write, nobody for some reason dared to give him an editor to separate the wheat for the chaff, but they published anyway and he sold millions of copies. You can probably say the same about other niche genres -- why is there so many bad erotica stories, or cat fiction, or slapstick comedies. Because somehow they succeed anyway.
You'd have to say the same thing about Excalibur, then. GoT is fantasy , because it is a made-up would that includes all the supernatural things that you mention. (btw: you forgot to mention Bran's prime role as a warg, Melisandre's prime role as a 500 yr old witch, and Dany's prime role as a queen who can't burn by fire, the Zombie Mountain, etc.) All that is equal-to-more fantasy than Excalibur, for sure. The GoT Universe is not real. It's fantasy to the point of providing a prime example of the genre. Now if you're talking about budgets, and how GoT can go several shows without supernatural stuff, well, not if it was condensed into a movie it couldn't.
Probably true as well. I think it perpetuates itself when that happens. When Fantasy Films that suck make money, people are willing to produce more sucky fantasy films, which pushes the genre further into it's own niche and less palatable to the general public. It's definitely true that there is a large percentage of crappy Fantasy lit. as well. But a lot of literature has that same problem.
The fantasy elements only affect a small portion of the characters in the Star Wars universe. Granted, the story revolves around them, but there are tons of sci fi imbedded in the way non-force users live. To say Star Wars has none of that is hyperbole. It basically is a fantasy story set in a sci fi universe.
Does that commercial for the Neverending story contain the real kid and dragon from the original movie?
So you believe the vast majority of so called "sci-fi" films are in fact no sci-fi at all because almost every single one of them (that is set in futuristic space settings) use technology that is in fact not plausible. Correct? Star Wars is a blend of genres but it definitely has sci-fi elements at its core.
Another point in favor of Star Wars qualifying as a fantasy film: sci-fi movies are usually set in the future, whereas fantasy films are commonly associated with the past. When is Star Wars set in? I agree that it's both sci-fi and fantasy, which is why I said it's a fantasy film, because it qualifies as both, rather than neither, imo.
The 1979 version was a CBS cartoon movie. The 1988 version was quite popular in its day. The recent movies were boring like watching an overly long computer game cinematic. I've never seen the 60s version. 1967 Spoiler <iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/o3rMsmR3IPQ?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> 1979 Spoiler <iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/M7gFJReKMGE?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> 1988 Spoiler <iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LNOs4NV1LWo?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZKO6M8heGU0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Best Fantasy Movie EVER!
