Michael vs Jason: Breaking Down the Archetypes

Warning: If you came here for a Slam-Bang Gorefest between two Titans of the early Slasher genre, you are in the wrong place. This is a surprisingly, almost astonishingly dry and dull literary dissection of what, on paper would seem to be the Blood-Soaked Splatter Sensation of the Summer.
But if you came here for the Pulse-Pounding Power of Literary Critical Analysis, then brother, You Are In The Right Place! 

Recently, I read the following comment on Facebook: 

"Sorry but I don’t get the hype. What’s the difference between Michael Meyers and Jason? Aren’t they both basically the same thing? A guy who kills people and can’t be killed?"

And as usual, I ended up getting lost in the weeds and writing a bigger response than the question probably wanted, so now it's your problem.

    "Sorry, but I don't get the hype."

    You could easily have said the same ("Aren't they both basically the same thing?") about Gandalf and Merlin ("An old guy with a beard and pointy hat who does magic and helps the hero"), or Batman and Captain America ("A guy in a mask with incredible physical prowess who punches bad guys and rescues people").

    Your problem isn't in discerning the difference between two similar characters. The thing you REALLY "don't get the hype" about is the Slasher genre (or, if you are a fan, it might possibly even be just the most formulaic examples). 

    At their heart, Michael and Jason represent the same archetype - the Relentless Killer Who Can't Be Stopped. The Terminator in the first film is pretty much the same deal. Hell, so's the "Immortal Snail".

    The differences are largely in how the story is staged and presented. Sometimes, it's a cursed mummy that rises from its sarcophagus and strangles the archaeological team who uncovered it, and sometimes it's a doll possessed by the spirit of a serial killer trying to take possession of a new human body.

    To boil them down to their fundamental essence, Michael is about horrible things happening amidst the mundane, supposedly safe surroundings of suburbia, with a sprinkle of family secrets in there, while Jason, is about scary things in the forest (see also every second 'Brothers Grimm' story) and the legacy of a "cursed place" (Camp Crystal Lake).

    Naturally, over the course of multiple stories (which have been just as unnaturally extended as the lifetimes of their protagonists by sequels, follow-ons, adaptations, reboots and fan discussions) both characters have accumulated extensive mythologies, good, bad and ugly. For every spectacular John Carpenter Score, Doctor Loomis, Jason's Mother or Creative Kill, there's that time they got brought back to life by Druids, or that time they went to Space.

    But despite all this, one is the story of "that terrible thing that happened one night just near here" and the other is "they all went into the woods and none of them came back".