🌌 Myths and legends: why ancient stories live on today

Ancient stories about gods, heroes, and monsters never retire. They simply change medium. What the Greeks told around the fire now earns billions at the box office and sells tens of millions of copies in video games. In 2025, the Chinese animated film Ne Zha 2, based on a myth from a 16th-century novel, grossed $2.2 billion worldwide and became the first animated film in history to cross the $2 billion mark (Variety, 2025). This is not nostalgia, but a working cultural mechanism. Below we will look at why myths live on, how they moved into pop culture, and what psychology says about them.

💡 Quick overview: myths remain relevant because they encode universal human scenarios, and the modern industry turns them into films, books and games with measurable commercial returns.

• Origins: myth explains the world, fears and morality, and people have not outgrown this function.
• The medium has changed: Hollywood, publishers and game studios monetize the same plots.
• Psychology: Carl Jung described myths as a map of archetypes shared by all cultures.
• Numbers: one mythological film grossed $2.2 billion, a game series about 230 million copies.

What a myth is and why it was needed

A myth is not fiction for entertainment, but a way to explain the inexplicable. Before science, people had no tools to describe a thunderstorm, the change of seasons or death, so they told a story: thunder is caused by a god, winter by an abducted goddess, death by a crossing over a river. The Britannica encyclopedia defines myth as a symbolic narrative, usually of unknown origin, that explains elements of the universe through the actions of gods and heroes.

A myth always works on several levels at once. It explains the origin of the world and customs, sets norms of behavior through the fates of characters, preserves the memory of a community and relieves anxiety in the face of chaos. The Greeks, Egyptians and Scandinavians created different pantheons, but solved the same problem: making a frightening reality understandable and bearable.

That is exactly why myth outlived the religions that produced it. The gods of Olympus have long received no sacrifices, but the story of Perseus, who looks at Medusa through the reflection in his shield, still teaches us to overcome fear not with force, but with cunning. The plot turned out to be more useful than the cult. When belief disappears, the structure remains: the setup, the trial, the price of victory. People recognize this structure without any preparation, because it describes their own lives.

Myths of different peoples: one task, different answers

Comparing traditions shows that humanity independently arrived at similar images. The Greeks populated Olympus with gods of human passions: Zeus, Athena and Apollo quarrel, fall in love and take revenge like ordinary people, only on a cosmic scale. The Egyptians built their mythology around death and rebirth. The story of Osiris, killed and reassembled piece by piece by Isis, explained the flooding of the Nile and promised an afterlife.

The Scandinavians viewed the world more grimly. Their gods, led by Odin and Thor, knew they were doomed to perish in Ragnarok, and still fought. This motif of dignity in the face of inevitable end proved so durable that it became the foundation of modern superhero stories. Compare the three traditions, and a common logic emerges.

The difference is not accidental: myth reflects the living conditions of a people. Egyptian farmers cared about the cycle of water and harvest, Viking warriors needed honor in a hopeless battle. But beneath the surface lies a common layer, an attempt to answer questions about death, love and betrayal that do not depend on geography. Anthropologists call such recurring plots, for example the flood or the hero who defeats a monster, wandering motifs: they appear on different continents among peoples who never had contact.

How myths moved into pop culture

Today ancient plots live not in temples, but in movie theaters, on streaming platforms and in game consoles, and this is a measurable industry. The fantasy genre, which largely grew out of mythology, accounts for about 18-22% of global box office revenue according to industry reviews, while occupying only 12-15% of releases (Screen Vibe Daily, 2025). Mythology is not a marginal niche, but the core of mainstream cinema.

Film remains the most visible channel. Marvel built a franchise around the Scandinavian Thor, and the aforementioned Ne Zha 2 proved that a non-Western myth can earn planetary-scale box office. Literature follows. Retellings of ancient plots such as The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, which had sold about 2 million copies by 2022 (WordsRated), brought mythology back to bestseller lists and spawned an entire publishing trend of retellings.

But the most interactive medium is video games. The global gaming market reached $197 billion in 2025, up 7.5% from the previous year (Game World Observer, 2025). The Assassin's Creed series, which sends players to Ancient Egypt and Greece, had sold about 230 million copies over its lifetime by August 2025, while God of War, built first on Greek and then on Scandinavian mythology, sold around 23 million copies (Statista).

A player going through Assassin's Creed: Origins is essentially learning Egyptian mythology from the inside. This is the same educational function as that of the ancient storyteller, only with a Hollywood-scale budget and the right to walk through the map of the myth yourself. Myth has not disappeared. It changed its audience from a tribe to billions of viewers and players, and its revenue is now counted in billions of dollars.

The psychology of myth: why plots repeat

The most interesting explanation for the durability of myths came from psychology. Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung noticed that the same images repeat in the myths of different peoples who had no contact. He called them archetypes, universal elements of the "collective unconscious" shared by all humanity (Britannica on archetypes).

This idea explains why Hollywood heroes seem familiar. Mythographer Joseph Campbell described the "hero's journey" in 1949, a recurring structure on which stories are built from Odysseus to Luke Skywalker. George Lucas openly admitted that he relied on Campbell when creating Star Wars. A short TED-Ed video clearly breaks down this scheme step by step.

Several archetypes appear especially often. The Shadow is the rejected dark sides of the personality, which in myth become a monster or antagonist. The Anima and Animus, the feminine and masculine principles within the psyche, manifest through images of lovers and mentors. The hero's journey, a symbol of growing up and integrating the personality through trial and returning home changed.

If archetypes are indeed built into the psyche, it is clear why myth does not become obsolete. We recognize in it not the ancient Greeks, but ourselves, which is why a story three thousand years old still sends a shiver down the spine. Hollywood screenwriters use this consciously: the hero's journey structure has long become a standard script framework on which blockbusters are written.

A real case: how one myth traveled through the centuries

Let us take a specific plot, the myth of Orpheus, who descended into the kingdom of the dead for his wife Eurydice and lost her because of a single glance back. This plot clearly shows how myth changes medium without changing its essence.

In antiquity it existed as an oral tradition and a cult text of the Orphics. In the 17th century, Claudio Monteverdi turned it into one of the first operas in history, L'Orfeo (1607). In the 20th century, Jean Cocteau made a film based on it, and Tennessee Williams wrote a play. In the 21st century, the musical Hadestown, which moves the story of Orpheus to the setting of the Great Depression, won eight Tony Awards in 2019 (Wikipedia: Hadestown).

The same plot skeleton, love, loss, the fatal glance back, has changed from oral tradition to opera, film and Broadway over four centuries. The form and language changed, but the core remained untouched, because it spoke about something everyone understands: grief and the fact that the past cannot be brought back by looking over your shoulder. This is the mechanism of myth's immortality in action, and the same mechanism works with dozens of other plots, from Prometheus to King Arthur.

⁉️🤔 Common questions about myths and legends

How does a myth differ from a legend and a fairy tale?

A myth explains the structure of the world and usually tells about gods and the creation of things. A legend is tied to a specific place, person or event and claims historicity, even if embellished. A fairy tale does not claim to be true and serves entertainment or morality. The boundaries are blurred, but the key difference lies in the claim to explain reality.

Why are myths of different peoples so similar?

There are two explanations. The Jungian approach speaks of archetypes, innate images of the collective unconscious shared by all people. The anthropological approach points to similar living conditions and cultural exchange between peoples. Most likely, both factors work simultaneously, which is why the flood, the hero and the trickster appear almost everywhere.

Can modern superhero films be considered myths?

Functionally, yes. They set moral models, use the hero's journey structure and offer the viewer figures to emulate, exactly what ancient myth did. The difference is that they have authors and rights holders, whereas classical myth was an anonymous asset of the community.

Why does a modern person need to know mythology?

Mythology is a key to world culture. Without it, half of painting, literature and film is incomprehensible, from Botticelli to Marvel. Beyond practical erudition, it provides a language for talking about eternal themes: fear, love, death, which people have used for thousands of years.

Is it true that myths are based on real events?

Sometimes a myth has a historical grain: behind the legend of Troy stood a real city, excavated by Heinrich Schliemann. But most myths are symbolic explanations of natural and psychological phenomena, not encrypted chronicles. Looking for a literal fact in every myth means missing its main, meaning-making function.

What this means for you

Myths remain relevant not despite progress, but because they speak about what is unchanging in humans. The numbers confirm this: a mythological film grosses billions, a game series sells hundreds of millions of copies, and psychologists a century later still rely on Jungian archetypes. The medium has changed, from the campfire to streaming, but not the function.

For an author, artist or simply a curious reader, a simple conclusion follows. Ancient plots are not museum exhibits, but a ready set of working tools for understanding yourself and your audience. Take any myth, find the universal scenario in it and try to tell it anew. This is exactly how culture has been renewing itself for three thousand years, and there is still room for your version in that line.

Share your modern take on myths and legends and get valuable feedback. Tell us which myth personally hooked you and why it still works.