For me, Star Wars draws elements from both the Space Opera genre and the High Fantasy genre (and High Fantasy is what I meant to say when I said "epic fantasy" in my previous post). So that we're on the same page, let me define Space Opera and High Fantasy as I understand them:
Space Opera = a fictional work set in a setting that appears futuristic from our (the reader, the audience, etc.) point of view--so Star Wars, despite having taken place a long, long time ago, would still qualify because they have spaceships and lasers and whatnot--and focuses on exaggerated, romantic/melodramatic events and characters. If an event happens, then the nature of that event will lean towards being epic in scope, or otherwise designed to evoke strong emotions from the audience, even if the conditions for that event to unfold and/or how the event itself unfolds isn't terribly realistic.
Star Wars fits under this category in several ways. Instead of focusing on mundane things like minor guerilla attacks on Imperial supply depots, you have big, XBOXHUEG battles like the Battle of Yavin (against a space station the size of a small moon armed with a laser so powerful it can blow up whole planets) or the Battle of Hoth (where the rebels have to fight colossal walking tanks the size of buildings) or the Battle of Endor (Space Station the Size of a Moon 2: Electric Boogaloo). Instead of Han and Leia going through realistic angst in their relationship ("I told you to leave the toilet seat down after you use it, you scruffy nerf herder!"), their relationship is more about getting together in the midst of dashing rescues and a galactic struggle, culminating with Leia declaring her love in a moment of anguish to the man she thinks she very well may never see again. So you've got big, epic, romantic events designed to draw out strong emotions in the audience rather than giving them an intellectual or philosophical puzzle.
On the other hand, High Fantasy = a fictional work placed in a setting that is not our own, where the sequence and cause of events leans more towards "fantastic" than realistic, and there is usually both a clear line between good and evil and there is a struggle between them. The safety of the world is frequently at stake, and not only is there often magic and/or the supernatural, but they also work in a certain way. Prophecies, fate, and destiny aren't just words that people throw around, but are real things that profoundly influence the world.
Here is what I mean by the sequence and cause of events leaning more towards fantastic than realistic:
Let's say that you have a person who is skilled in combat and leads a group of people against another group of people who are perceived as being vile and evil. The (supposed) evildoers are driven off, and the leader of the first group of people takes the crown. In very loose terms, I have described both the end of the Lord of the Rings (Aragorn helps defeat Sauron and is crowned King of Gondor afterwards) and the backstory to the Game of Thrones series (Robert Baratheon leads a rebellion against the evil Aerys Targaryen II, and is crowned king of the Seven Kingdoms afterwards).
In LOTR, things play out in a more fantastic manner: Aragorn is the rightful king because he's the last descendant of a dynasty that apparently had died out almost a 1000 years ago (the last King of Gondor was Earnur, who died in 2050 Third Age: Aragorn took up the crown in 3019 Third Age), he's got the fancy Ring of Barahir to prove it, and no one objects. He takes up the crown, and despite having lived most of his life as a ranger and a swordsman rather than a politician, his long reign is said to have been quite good.
In the Game of Thrones, things play out in a more realistic manner: Robert is the rightful king because he's seen as being the face of the rebellion, despite him being mostly just charismatic and really good at killing people. Once he becomes king, while he doesn't go around committing atrocities the way Aerys Targaryen II did he isn't a very good ruler either. He even admits it--he would much, much rather have spent the rest of his days as a mercenary, killing and eating and whoring instead of having to deal with schemers and backstabbers wearing smiles. By the time the first book of the series rolls around, IIRC Robert's put his kingdom into debt with all his partying, and is simply not all that great of a ruler. Can't blame him--again, he became king not because he was a skilled politician and statesman, but because he happened to be the leader of a rebellion that happened to succeed.
Now let's switch things around; let's take LOTR's and GOT's premises and play their sequences out realistically and fantastically, respectively:
In LOTR, Aragorn maybe tries to take up the crown, but the guy's spent most of his life as a ranger living out in the wilderness and tracking stuff. He doesn't have any political acumen, he doesn't know how an economy works, he's not a diplomat; he's just unfit to be a politician. If things play out more optimistically, then perhaps he does take the throne, but it's up to his good Steward Faramir to do the political heavy lifting while Aragorn sits there looking wise and regal. If things play out more cynically, then perhaps the leaders of Gondor (and maybe even the leaders of Rohan, since they've got a bunch of horsemen right there at the broken-down gates of Minas Tirith...) decide to give the crown to Faramir, while Aragorn gets a nice retirement package with a noble title and a chunk of good land. If things play out badly, then maybe the Men of Gondor and Rohan outright reject being ruled by a mere ranger from the north, and quickly fall into fighting each other now that the elves are gone, the dwarves are reclusive, and Sauron is no more.
In GOT, Robert's rebellion is a resounding success, and it turns out that he's actually a very good king. He used to like wine, woman, and war more than running a country, but perhaps over the course of the rebellion he learned to put those things aside and become the King He Was Destined To Be. Maybe he even discovers that Aerys Targaryen was a usurper, and that Robert's lineage was supposed to have been kings all along. So he defeats the evil Targaryens, takes up the crown, and ushers in a new golden age for Westeros. No muss, no fuss, no web of intrigue that leads to his untimely death.
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So how does Star Wars fall into the genre of High Fantasy?
You've got magic in the form of the Force, and unlike magic in, say, Fate/Stay Night where it's governed by a system of rules, it just...kind of happens. The Force in the original trilogy is less a special form of energy that special people can manipulate to do whatever they like, and is more a way to give certain fated characters a more mystical and otherwordly quality. True, Luke does have to undergo a training regimen to learn how to use the Force better, but the process is more meditative, akin to achieving a sort of enlightenment, than like learning a set of rules and then figuring out how to use them to your advantage as an engineer or a scientist would. When the Emperor shoots lightning at Luke, it's less that the Emperor has figured out a way to move electrons in a certain way with his mind to shock people to death, and more that his mastery over the supernatural is so great that he can do cool stuff like shoot lightning out of his fingertips. Using the Force in Star Wars felt more like Gandalf emitting light out of his staff to drive away the Nazgul, rather than Emiya Shirou figuring out how to channel Prana through his Magic Circuits to cast Reinforcement on a rolled up poster.
You've got a clear line between good and evil. Rebellion vs the Empire: boom, you're done. Not a whole lot of room from grays--you're either a good guy fighting for the noble Rebellion or a bad guy fighting for the evil Empire. It's not like the Rebellion in the original trilogy is riven with internal strife, or secretly does evil things behind the heroes' backs, or whatever, nor is the Empire portrayed as being misguided or with good intentions: it's simply Rebellion = Good, Empire = Bad. Compare to the Lord of the Rings, where you have the Free Peoples of Middle Earth (Gondor, Rohan, the Ents, the Elves, etc.) vs Sauron and his minions (orcs, Saruman, Easterlings, Haradrim, etc.). You've got a bad egg or two on the good guy's side (thanks, Grima! And stop being a jerk, Denethor), but aside from that there's a very very clear line between good and evil.
You've got prophecies, fate, and destiny. No, not "bring balance to the Force", that's prequel trilogy nonsense. I mean the whole "last of the Jedi" bit. In a more realistic setting, being the Last of X largely just means that X is on the verge of extinction. You're the last speaker of an incredibly obscure language? Well, if you can record it or spread its use again to revive it then that's all well and good, but being the last speaker of, say, Nahuatl (the language of the Aztecs) doesn't give you any special powers. However, Luke being the Last of the Jedi, the last of a mystic order of knights from a lost age, IS of narrative importance--it's all up to him now, he's the last champion of good capable of facing up against the darkest of powers. Likewise in the Lord of the Rings, why is it that only Aragorn can wield the Sword of Elendil? Because he's the last of Isildur's dynasty, and only they can wield the sword.
You've got a threat to the safety of the world. Death Stars, anyone? Not to mention, it's implied that living under the Empire sucks--I believe in Episode 4 Grand Moff Tarkin explicitly says "rule through fear", and there's a scene near the beginning where either Darth Vader or Tarkin mentions that the Senate just got dissolved.
Finally, you've got the sequence of events unfolding in fantastic than realistic ways. The attack on the Death Star in Episode 4: if things played out more realistically, it was more likely that Red Leader would have scored the kill shot on the Death Star than Luke, or if Luke did get the kill shot on the Death Star it would have been out of sheer, one-in-a-million lucky shot that he managed to pull off because his enemies underestimated him. Instead, Luke blows up the Death Star because he's the hero, he's the fated one, he's the special guy with a connection to the mystical power called the Force. Alternatively, the Battle of Endor, where it's the smaller elements of the Rebel Fleet flying into the incomplete Death Star to blow it up. Why is it the Millennium Falcon that pulls it off? It's a big, fat ship that's not terribly suited for the dangerously cramped quarters of the Death Star superstructure--the movie even lampshades it when Lando accidentally scrapes the radar dish off the top of the Falcon. Yet, despite being in the biggest, fattest ship of them all--hell, according to supplemental sources the Falcon's a goddamn light freighter, they brought a freaking cargo plane to a place where jet fighters are feeling cramped--it's Lando (and Wedge) who blow up the Death Star and get out of there. Why? Because it's the Millennium F**king Falcon and don't you forget that damn it! All the other rebels? Redshirts, the lot of them. (Except Wedge, dude didn't get shot down at Yavin AND he blew up an AT AT.) Likewise in LOTR, most of the plot is built around getting a ring to a specific place in order to destroy it, causing a group of heroes to go on an epic journey to get there and pull it off. But why does it have to be in the fires of Mt. Doom? Because, well...that's how it's gotta be. Elrond said it, and I think Gandalf said it, that's just how the ring works--you can't destroy it unless you bring it to the fires of Mt. Doom. You could argue that they just needed temperatures as hot as the fires of Mt. Doom, but note that they say you need the fires of Mt. Doom specifically, not just 'fires as hot as those on Mt. Doom'. Combined with the fact that that's where the ring was made in the first place and you can see the necessity of the ring being brought to Mt. Doom specifically being quite symbolic, and through that more fantastic than realistic since real life rarely lends itself to such poetic coincidences.
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So that's how think Star Wars fits under both the categories of Space Opera AND High Fantasy. It's been a while since I read the Thrawn trilogy, but IIRC while they were certainly Space Opera (going on an adventure to find a long-lost fleet of ships that are remotely controlled by one specific ship in the fleet, and it's named after a type of ancient Japanese sword? Sounds like Space Opera to me), and very well written Space Opera, they weren't very High Fantasy. The Empire under Thrawn wasn't the same Eeeeevil Empire that it was under Palpatine, nor was Thrawn the sort of evil overlord that Palpatine was; the guy was pleasant enough that few would mind sitting down for a nice cup of tea with him, even if he did plot the destruction of the Rebel Alliance. The Force became less mystical when it was discovered that a bunch of random non-sentient space lizards could nullify it.
And so forth. I don't recall the Thrawn Trilogy and every other EU material I've ever encountered capturing that same High Fantasy feel that the original Star Wars trilogy did, and I both miss it and lament the fact that no one else misses it,, thereby leaving no chance for Episode 7 to mix Space Opera and High Fantasy the way Star Wars did.
Tl;dr: WHY CAN'T STAR WARS BE JUST THE WAY I LIKE IT :qq:
I'm not going to comment about High Fantasy and Space Opera, as they're not terms I'm overly familiar with. I do, however, agree with what Joveus Molai said here...interpreting it as simple "Fantasy and Science Fiction," at least. In that sense, I don't think complexity or moral ambiguity matter too much, genre-wise. The original trilogy is definitely Science Fiction, but I think it also includes lots of Fantasy elements. The Force, for one thing, and also the general dynamics of Obi-Wan and Yoda. The whole idea of the Jedi is a really strong Fantasy element. It's subtle, for the most part, and could have perhaps been left out altogether without changing the plot to a terrible extent. It's there however, and so amongst all the Sci-Fi you have things like destiny, sword fighting, some kind of apprentice/master relationship, the showdown(s) between Luke and Vader, etc. I think things like that have a distinct Fantasy feel to them, more so because they are kept somewhat separate from the rest of the plot. For me at least, that's part of what made the originals so good.
The prequels really corrupted that aspect of the series by making the Jedi overly "normal" and commonplace. Then with the duels being way too flashy and lots of extra lasers, bombs, and robots thrown in everywhere, they really lost the element of Fantasy that the original Trilogy had. Not that that's the only reason they're bad (and I'm a fan of -good- Sci-Fi anyway); there are all too many things wrong with the prequels, many of which have already been mentioned in the thread, but the loss of the Fantasy stuff contributed to making them that much more forgettable. I would even say that they have permanently damaged the idea of what a Jedi is, and I'm not sure an episode 7 could return to it style of the originals, even if it tried. I can most definitely see where Joveus Molai is coming from, unless there's such a big difference between Fantasy and "High Fantasy" that I'm missing here.
That's my two cents anyway.
That's pretty much what I was trying to getting at, yeah. If it wasn't clear, then that was probably because I've been stumbling over my own words. :fail:
(And did I read something about lizards "nullifying the Force"? What?)
Uh, I should probably have spoilered that...I forgot that the Thrawn trilogy isn't something everyone has already read...
"Nullifying the Force" = In the Thrawn trilogy, which is set about 5 years after the destruction of the Death Star, Grand Admiral Thrawn gets his hands on a species of lizards called Ysalmiri that project an anti-force bubble, an empty void in the Force. Jedi like Luke can't use the Force while he's in such a bubble, and anyone in the bubble can't be affected by Force powers, either.