I agree with you, but then I read that the director did not want the movie classified as Science Fiction: https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/god-forbid-you-call-time-travelers-wife-sci-fi-film

Do we listen to such requests? Maybe some other moderator can weigh in.

I mean... I believe in death of the author. A director can say what ever they want about their movie... they can say that it was produced by a production company that factually has no involvement with the film, that it starred Angelina Jolie when she actually may have never even heard of the film, that it was not an adult film- even if it clearly a porno, that it ran for 120 mins when it definitely has a runtime of 130 mins, that the main character is "Character X" when that character is clearly not the main character (and should not be placed ahead of the actual main characters in our cast credits order)....and that the film is not Science Fiction (or Horror/Romance/Music/Documentary, etc.) even though...it is?

I don't see how the director's wishes or opinions has any bearing on whether or not their film is of a certain genre. Genre is based on the moving pictures contained within the runtime of the film, not the wishes of the director? I would imagine a database should aim for fact and have standards rather than bend to the whim of opinions and be inconsistent.

But I dunno, maybe on a commercial/business level, TMDb prefers to take into consideration things like this.

(That probably came out harsher than intended- just my 2cents not meant to be harsh xD)

The second argument against Sci-Fi here is that usage on other sites is not conclusive. For example, Allmovie has it as a Drama with sub-genres Romantic Drama and Supernatural Drama (essentially matching our current selection).

(That probably came out harsher than intended- just my 2cents not meant to be harsh xD)

I haven't read the book nor seen the movie, but I know for other movies that if one part of the movie is related to a genre it doesn't mean that the full movie has to be about that. Sometimes a keyword can be a better fit. And to explain my lazy statement: I just mean that if a notable person - in this case the director of the movie - does not see the movie as science fiction then maybe there is at least something to it. Calling it a request was a bit provocative, but hopefully now you see what I meant. Still, I'll let another moderator weigh in before deciding.

I think I would personally chose Fantasy over Science Fiction. There's one little element of "science" in the film (weird genetic disorder). I think the film can be compared to The Age of Adaline (ridiculous scientific explanation) if that helps.

I will stay with fantasy here then. If another moderator has a different opinion, just re-open and we'll discuss again. Thanks all.

I disagree with the decision not to classify this as Science Fiction, and here's why:

1. At time of writing, the original novel is classified as science fiction by both Wikipedia and Goodreads. Wikipedia classifies both this film and the HBO adaptation as science fiction, and the HBO adaptation is classified on this very site as science fiction. Choosing not to classify this particular adaptation as science fiction flies against established consensus for arbitrary reasons.

2. Time travel is a staple of science fiction, and time travel stories in themselves are a sub-genre of science fiction. The fact that this film belongs to the canon of time travel stories is in itself sufficient to classify it as science fiction.

In response to Banana, it's the tropes and elements a piece of fiction makes use of that determine its genre, rather than an over-literal interpretation of the genre name. If you look at (especially classic) science fiction, you'll see that many stories don't provide any scientific justification at all. Making that a criterion would remove a lot of these classic stories from the category.

Take Star Wars as a prototypical example: there's not a single scientific element in the film, but people would overwhelmingly classify it as science fiction (and in fact it's film page lists science fiction as a genre). The criterion for inclusion is that the story includes space travel (again without any scientific discussion of how it works), which is a common element in science fiction stories. Aside from that, it's just "Wizards in Space".