From space empire to decadence

Are superhero films and Star Wars modern-day myths?

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

So wrote St Paul in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, a passage it took me a long time to appreciate as I went through the standard modern extended adolescence (which in my case ended somewhere between 25 and my early 40s).

I think about that line a lot now, in particular whenever I read in popular culture about Star Wars, the space opera which first appeared in 1977 and which has become associated with May 4. The original film has spawned a dozen sequels and spin-offs, if you include the Ewok spin-offs, which I think no one does, and has earned nearly $70 billion in box office receipts, video and games sales, and most of all, toys.