Quoted By:
Ebert was an old-fashioned cinephile. He simply couldn't understand how people could be fans of franchises over medium. The idea that people were seeing Star Wars movies because they were Star Wars rather than because they heard they were good movies was baffling to him.
So he blamed the phenomenon on poor social skills. And to be sure, people like that do exist, but the average Marvel moviegoers aren't lining up because they're film buffs.
Disney may have damaged the Star Wars brand but it's arguably more mainstream than it's ever been, it's not just something nerds discuss in their mom's basement anymore, people of a sorts openly talk about it everywhere. And need I mention the meteoric rise of the whole video game industry in the last decades?
Ebert was a boomer seeing the slow rise of mainstream nerdshit and couldn't cope with it.
