What? I'm sure you can give a better argument than that.

I could'nt disagree more. The special effects at the time were simply ground breaking and the story was simply amazing. I just thought that I'd throw that out there. lol

Pan's Labyrinth is perhaps better as a movie than the LotR films, but the depth of the books is simply staggering. Tolkiens entire Middle Earth was just so complete, I can't think of anything comparable.

One thing we can definately agree on.  The films could never truly show the detail in the world Tolkein created.  He actually created the languages for Middle Earth such was his devotion.  The films did an excellent job at portraying the story in a way suitable to the media though as a more direct translation would have been hideously paced.

On the I-Robot debate, that's the beauty of opinions.  Like I said my taste in movies is weird.

I don't really understand why you seem to think Asimov is the absolute authority on deeming things as sci-fi. I assume you don't think Wells and Verne are sci-fi either then? Might as well exclude Dune and Gene Wolfe while we're at it. I'm not really sure who that leaves us with but Asimov though and maybe Phillip K. Dick, and if that's all sci-fi "really" is, then it gets a big meh from me, and I'll say fantasy is way more entertaining.

The problem with fantasy and sci fi novels (I read this argument on a literature forum, and I personally agree with it), is that the authors mostly focus on constructing the world (and in the case of sci fi authors also describing the science), and wind up with poorly constructed characters and plots. I've never read an Asimov novel, but most of the peopel on the forum I mentioned said that he was a bad author (bad author in general, but a good sci fi author, as they considered sci fi an "inferior" genre).

If you think about it the sci fi novels which are also considered to be amazing books in general are dystopian novels (like Ninetenn Eighty-Four, Brave New World or Fahrenheit 451) which certainly aren't "Hard sci fi", and deal more with society from political/philosophical/psychological aspects.

Same thing goes for fantasy: Goethe's Faust, is one of the most acclaimed works ever, while no literary expert would ever consider The Lord of the Rings to be even half as good.

The thing that I personally loved about Pan's Labyrinth was that the fantasy elements shouldn't be taken at face value. IT was more a story exploring the psychology of a little girl affected by the political conditions sorrounding her and her troubled family life. It was a very complex story, and didn't need the huge budged and fancy special effects of The Lord of the Rings movies to be told (not that there's anything wrong with fancy special effects, but they can often be a distraction to the shallowness of the story and characters which is the case of The Lord of the Rings movies, and their source material).

You're being a bit too harsh on Lord of the Rings in my opinion, it is actually taken seriously by scholars as one of the great works of literature. There is a journal 'Tolkien Studies' dedicated to his works.

I don't believe that you should consider Asimov a bad author without having read his works and I don't believe you should take people seriously who consider certain genres to be inferior. I mean the romance genre has a lot of trash in it but Jane Austen's work is beautiful.

I would prefer both Moon and District 9 above Avatar. 

Especially Moon. That film was wonderful. 

I know.  I know. 

The special effects are fantastic if you like things like Blade and the story is way too deep for me.  I've had this explained to me several times. 

I don't take thim as some absolute authority, but if we are going to have genre classifications then I don't see any point to accept lazy slipage.  Science Fiction.  Two words.  Fiction, so a fictional narrative.  Science... you get the idea.

Dune, as I pointed out earlier, is clearly SF dealing with a number of interesting explorations of the impact on a society (and individuals) on reactions to scientific advancement, evolution and ecology.

Wolfe stradles the line writing both fantasy and SF, but a fair bit of what he writes I'd argue is pure SF.  But Harry Potter isn't SF.  Star Wars, despite the space ships and robots, isn't really SF.  Science Fantasy at best, but really it's pure fantasy.

Fantasy is often way more entertaining because most fantasy I've ever read has clearly been written just to entertain or indulge in wish fufilment, coupled with standard morality tales.

SF doesn't have to be hard SF or about advanced physics though, but about how science impacts us, something that is only really becoming slowly clearer to us the more we see how it is affecting our society and ourselves.

I'd prefer no genres, but if we're going to have them then (the odd exception that proves the rule aside) let's keep 'em tidy and quit with all the slipage and turning of a clear genre into a bucket to dump a load of other stuff.