In addition to theories about the PIE language and it's impact on the narrative of the epics, I will say that both epics have culturally specific detail that make them uniquely Iolian Greek. In the Iliad Homer describes the Mycenaean Greeks in three different geographic groups: Achaeneans, Argives, and the Danaan, but ethnolinguistically united whereas the Trojans were multilingual with the many allies of Priam. The description of Bronze Age Golden Mycenaean armor and iron weapons all point to details that are of Homer's immediate past rather than a remote proto-culture. But it's true that Homer was quite possibly Asian Greek as evidenced by the dialect.

I'd point out that in Comparative Mythology, you will often find archetypal similarities across vast geographical differences. That doesn't necessarily mean they are connected directly or that protolinguistic assumptions prove a common mythology (but there might be).

An alternative could be that these separate cultures developed along agricultural and later iron age urban mythological narratives that point to narrative similarities due to similar circumstances. Like Frazer's Golden Bough finding the mytheme of the fisher king and the fertility goddess, or Jung and Kerenyi in The Science of Mythology arguing for similarities in the Kore maiden goddess archetype across cultures.

Karen Armstrong's A Short History of Myth describes how different archetypes evolved through different periods of human development, with Paleolithic hunter-forager stories, neolithic fertility cycles of abduction rape and rebirth, and urban or bronze age epics commemorating city builder heroes and their plights (often characterized by divine inspiration on man made architecture, think of Noah's Ark, and mortals sure of immortality through human creations and art and therefore standing as an affront to the gods. Achilles and Diomedes, Paris, and even Gilgamesh are all challengers and city heroes). All of this points to narratives that share common technological advances in common: Namely the emergence of cities in the bronze or iron ages. And secondly, the advent of the written language.

Much has been said about the oral-formulaic methods of Homers poetry, but we read them after they were written down and it's likely the Homeric composer himself was influenced and informed by linguistic forms that emerged only after the advent of written language.

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