The essay examines the image of the hero in the contemporaryneo-mythological field of mass screen culture. The author identifies the mainfeatures of the ‘hero archetype’ and the core cultural meanings forming thisconcept and analyzes images of the neo-mythological heroes of our time,taking examples of mass cinema and authorial cinema and revealing differencesbetween these two categories. According to the author, mass culture createsthe hero model according to the principle of ‘bricolage’, remaining within theframework of the Christian eschatological paradigm and synthesizing it withscientific and technical progress or other elements but not reproducing thestructure of the archaic myth. When the stereotype of “happy ending” replacestragedy, it completely changes the true archetype of the hero more characteristicof art-house or authorial cinema. Examining the films of Jim Jarmusch andAlejandro González Iñárritu, the author analyzes the method of deconstructionin authorial cinema, a cinema which seeks to reveal the meanings of the archaichero archetype. If mass cinema acts within the simulacrum system withouttranscending its limits — endlessly repeating the same models and often usingonly superficial formal properties — authorial cinema tries to explode thestructure in such a way as to widen the boundaries of the senses or to discoverthem under the layers of simulacra. Thus, screen culture has the characteristicsof a neo-mythology, forming the neo-myth and developing its elements andstructures, producing a stream of neo-mythological images in the medialandscape. The conglomerate of various structural elements borrowed fromdifferent traditions fully reflects the postmodern situation that turns symbolsand archetypes into a set of simulacra. The era of postmodernism is a stage inthe development of culture characterized by the problem of the impossibilityof creating anything new. Postmodernism is a creative crisis which leads toexcessive visuality and, paradoxically, to visuality’s death.