12 Ways Comic Book Movies Totally Ripped Each Other Off

10. The Ballsy Investigator Who Knows The Secret

There's apparently always someone in a superhero movie who can ignore the conventions that turn everyone else into empty-headed morons incapable of recognising Superman with glasses on and a slightly different haircut. Daredevil had Joe Pantoliano's journalist Urich, Man Of Steel has Lois Lane, The Dark Knight had Coleman Reese, and The Dark Knight Rises of course had Blake... all curious little sprites who ignore the seemingly obvious threat of accosting a super-being about their secret identity.

Aside from Reese - who quickly learns a lesson - none of the secret finders even seem to acknowledge that uncovering the truth, and pretty much going directly to the source without safeguarding themselves is probably suicide, and yet none of them are even challenged by their respective supers.

In all honesty, the genre tends to deal with character archetypes in the same way that horror and action films do, and chiefly because the audience has similar expectations of all three - and defiance leads to a Tank Girl-oddity situation where nobody really knows what they're supposed to think. There's the absent father, the surrogate father, the sidekick, the love interest, the tender but strong matriarch... and the list goes on.