Mythology is very similar to children's literature in that all literature seems to stem from it. All the basic storylines of any book or story or movie has roots in mythology or children's (or biblical) literature, and is such at its core wholly unoriginal. Even teeny bopper movies like She's All That is exactly the story plot of My Fair Lady, which is the story plot of ______________. According to Michael Sexson, "Every single story is a retelling of another story, so we have to read the story behind the story."
But I digress! Besides how thousands of stories stem from old children's literature, I was going to talk about how stories stem from mythology also, and often times, the two even intersect. For example, the Disney movie Hercules stems from mythology, but is made for children, and the real story of Hercules is changed to match the structure and content of children's literature, so they ignore the fact that Hercules' tale began with him killing his family. They also add in a romantic love interest, Meg, to make it like every other Disney movie. There are other fairly obvious mythological movies, like Clash of the Titans, Troy, 300, Pandora's Box, and The Odyssey. But there are many other stories and movies that one would not necessarily expect to have mythological roots, such as 2001: Space Odyssey (Prometheus), Silence of the Lambs (Theseus and the Minotaur), The Lion King (Oedipus), The Magnificent Seven (Aeschylus's The Seven Against Thebes), and Star Wars. The latter is more mythological in its characters than its plot. Luke Skywalker is like Orpheus. Hans Solo is like Odysseus. And Obi Wan Kenobi is the wise old man figure of Nestor.
This is a link to movies with mythological roots and elements.
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