How else can you explain the fact I actually like this awful movie, Thor. Then comes a commercial for Transformers, and I find it interesting too. I truly must be going crazy. Mind you I wouldn't have liked the Transformer movie commercial if it didn't have that creature with the octopus arm tongue.
In its current incarnation, I would say yes, very much Sci-Fi. The 'godliness' of Thor and his other adjacent characters has been technofied to the tune of Author C. Clarke's third law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
There were elements of both. Gods and kings, realms that sounded like Isengard, horses and suits of armor on the one hand, but then there were the freezer guys, totally sci-fi. No dragons, but there was a giant robot that threw explosives around, floating bridges in space, a hammer that the government treated like a spacecraft, including really stupid plastic enclosure around it with tunnels that looked like giant dryer vents. Thor had to run through the tunnels to get to the hammer even though it looked like he could have just gone around and broke through the plastic side of the enclosure. (I did say it was awful. ) Definitely sci-fi with some fantasy themed elements as opposed to fantasy with a bit of sci-fi like magic.
I thought it was pretty much pure fantasy. Not seeing any of the rationale for the things that appear science fiction on their surface. Kind of like Star Wars in fantasy in space, and not really science fiction (though many people call anything in space or with with space ships science fiction).
The distinction is inconsequential, I suppose. More academic than anything. I figure the word "science" in science fiction should mean something. So a science fiction work should at least be consistent with known principles of science, or, where it deviates from them, provide some plausible rationale for doing so. Fantasy, on the other hand, only has to be internally-consistent and no rationale is needed for how things are the way they are.
I liked the movie just fine. You have to accept that it is a movie based on a comic book character, and all that entails. If you can go with that (and enjoy such things) it's wasn't bad.
i started reading all the sci-fi i could get my hands on around age 9... schlepped as many novels and short story collections as i could carry back and forth between the local library and home, once or twice a week... have probably read everything ever written by the masters [heinlien, asimov, anderson, bova, bradbury, et al.] and seen every sci-fi movie and tv series ever made, up to through the 60s and all of what i'd consider the 'best' of the genre since then... i knew keir dullea [of 2001: a space odyssey fame] and while i loved his crowning film achievement, i wasn't as fond of the sequel and one 'alien' was enough for me, as well... but i'm not at all impressed by any of the 'thor'-type stuff... and while i have to admit i found the first 'transformers' a lot of fun, as i did the first 'iron man,' again, once was enough for me... but then, i am 75, so there is a bit of an age gap in re the targeted marketing demographic!
But there were science fiction elements in the movie. Either it's fantasy with some sci-fi or sci-fi with some fantasy. Tomato tomahto
OK, for the sake of turning everything into an argument, I'm going to say I don't think Thor and Transformers are anything like, say, Primer or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Maybe you just started liking summer blockbusters :O
I think this is an important point. Comics have always had a kindov' "aw, fuck it" attitude when it comes to the line between science fiction and fantasy. It's easily arguable as a genre unto itself, governed by its own rules. Many comic mythologies go to great lengths to start in laboratories of ultra high technology and super smart people, only to produce utterly implausible end results such as men with arachnid attributes or other men surviving blasts of gamma radiation the likes of which would in reality sterilize the entire planet and yet only serves to turn them into beings with the power to laugh at the law of conservation of mass.
I am disappoint. I'm getting a terrible feeling my sci-fi script will get shot down because there isn't enough explosions in it.
