Capitalism realized a while ago that a huge swath of young millennials and elder Gen Z are just broke enough to not comfortably start a family or buy a house but just flush with enough cash to fill the emotional holes left by shitty boomer parents with overpriced children’s toys.
https://bsky.app/profile/wapplehouse.bsky.social/post/3ly23expml22j
Eh, there's older franchises, by like A LOT. None quite as big as Star Wars but close. Heck one is quite popular here (technically)
I think if I lived in 1977 and was told the same thing I would just assume the movie turned into a SciFi TV show, not that it's become a sprawling slop empire of mid-overall-quality (with the very occasional banger). Though I think it would be hard for someone in the 70s to imagine modern media enshittification.
I would have been equally surprised that Star Trek was super-popular in 2025. How? In 1977 - I thought of the series as "really old". And it was in ~10 year old reruns after all. If I thought about "trekkies" at all - I surely thought of them as dumb dorks. Plus the first trek movie was two years away.