Sure, playing chess needs intelligence, dedication, and good chess players are smarter than an average person. But it’s waaaay exaggerated in movies. I’m a math researcher, and in any movie, my department will be full of chess geniuses. But in reality, only about 10% of them even play chess.
That checks out. I think I beat most of my friends simply because I remember a chess aficionado mentioning the center as being important to hold.
As a child I attended a chess club. There were no lessons. People simply played chess against each other.
I learned less in my entire years there than I did later in life in reading chess tips such as this page.
https://lichess.org/study/y14Z6s3N/A9uqbWxr
Looking back at those games I could recognize ways in which I was beaten by two moves in hindsight. But I had no idea about macro such as controlling the center or moving out the knights early were generally advantageous moves.