While in college I read an influential book by Joseph Campbell called The Hero with a Thousand Faces.  It was his first and still his most popular and influential book.  In it he told of how we mythologize heroes in our daily lives, and these heros represent the cultural mass and mores.  One famous quote is as follows: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won, the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.  George Lucas, for instance, was influenced by Campbell’s “monomyths” in the making of Star Wars.  But I don’t think Campbell was thinking about our current crop of action films and the heroes they present to us.

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