Both movies are about consciousness and how it affects the world of man. (aka the world of lies) Both movies posit a demiurge-like figure who is responsible for enslaving humanity. (cf Conan the Barbarian) In They Live, the demiurge is a hidden-hand race of satanic aliens rather than a single figure. In The Matrix, of course it's the Beardy Man.
The Matrix metaphor of the world of lies is the simulation. Within the simulation, Neo achieves superhuman abilities and is able to defeat it and escape, first to a Plato's cave like dreary solypsistic internal world, and finally into the light of day. Mastery of his own consciousness allows him to defeat the Matrix.
The usual interpretation of the Matrix focuses on the defeat of the architect and the destruction of the simulation, which is the same as the defeat of Thulsa Doom in Conan.
Thulsa Doom or the Architect (or number two in The Prisoner) externalize and physicalize an internal, individual struggle of the mind. A person balancing on a log, or meditating, and achieving the skill of deliberately associating modes of consciousness with their effect on the outside world, family, friends and even nature is getting out of the matrix, or an Amish community thinking about what technology to use and how it will affect their life is outside the matrix.
The physicality of The Matrix or Conan is necessary for a good action movie, but its dramatization obscures the teaching.
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