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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/8181
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Maybe you are seeing it from the wrong point of view. More than mythology, **movies like Matrix and Prometheus deal with our current social values and believes**.

Neo, the technological messiah, is ready to die to save humanity but under a very actual agnostic - almost atheistic - point of view since he is more than human but not divine. He is machine made flesh. A lot of people can't see the Christianity here, and even more won't notice the detail of the agnostic point of view but it's all there. It's all very actual. We are an agnostic and new age society.

In the same proportion it's agnostic, Matrix has a great deal of New Age "spirituality," mixing everything in a way that, in the end, all is possible if somebody chooses to believe in it. That's too actual and everybody will recognize their daily lives concepts in that movie.

I'm not counting all the other small details - from occultism to role-playing games - the Wachowskis use to link the "mythology" in the movie to our current days and lives.

Prometheus was the titan that gave fire to the mortals, what also can be understood as the secret knowledge. The myth is related also to bible since, fire and the forbidden fruit symbolize knowledge that human kind should not have and divorced men from god.

That is esoteric and occult doctrines. Concepts known by everyone, and felt in the everyday, but not immediately recognized.

**It's not the use of mythology that makes the difference, but the ability to use mythology to tweak with the subconscious creating recognizable concepts and images** in the movies. The ability to make them believable.

Just, as example, I'll use the Vikings TV Series and Clash of Titans. Both are mythological and historical but they can't achieve the same effect because they stay in the mythological real and can't connect to our modern day reality. On the other hand, in a somewhat different perspective and degree, A Knight's Tale reaches that mythology that connects to us.

Original score: 3