Gene Siskel passed away Saturday night at 53 from complications from his May brain surgery, leaving a legacy much larger than just his looming thumb. When Siskel (a critic for the Chicago Tribune since 1969) first squared off against rival reviewer Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times on a public-television show called "Opening Soon at a Theater Near You" in 1975, film criticism was looked upon as a stodgy and easily dismissed profession, best left to local papers. But as the pair's show expanded across the country, first on PBS and eventually on to a lucrative syndicated deal with Buena Vista, their influence began to grow until the bickering team -- helped along by appearances on late-night talk shows -- became as famous as the celebrities they critiqued.

"Siskel helped make the idea of film criticism seem more populist and less elitist to the American public than it had before," says EW Assistant Managing Editor Mark Harris. "The idea that suddenly a large chunk of the American audience would tune in every week to find out what two film critics had to say was pretty extraordinary." (This audience attraction helped Siskel and Ebert land in the Top 10 of EW's inaugural "Power 100" issue in 1990.) Studios soon began paying attention to their reviews, hoping for a "thumb way up" to plaster on their movie ads.

But can anyone fill Siskel's aisle seat? Ebert told the New York Post that the show would continue with rotating guest hosts (Washington Post critic Tom Shales sat in this week in a show taped before Siskel's death), although he added, "It's never going to be the same without him." Harris agrees that immediately replacing Siskel with a permanent host would be a critical mistake: "This requires a decent period of on-air mourning. It's okay for (Ebert) to date, it's just not okay for him to get married right away."