I guess the key difference here is that movies are most often perfectly clear about whether their stories are true or not. Then again, there are often cases of “true stories” that are later learned to be more fabricated than we were led to believe. That being said, most of the stories that get used over and over again in some form or another, the hero’s journey being perhaps the most widely used, and date back to mythology that has been around for millennia.
Church offers the same close look at stories that are meant to teach us something. There’s disagreement on how literally to take the lessons and the historical details of said stories, but the idea that fantastical elements which seem farfetched to have taken place in reality can still have a profound effect on those who hear about them. This is something that predates movies and religion.
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