Were a good fifteen years or so into this wave of superhero mega-franchises which continue to batter the fair cliffs of cinemaland, and given the amount of universe expansions, origins stories, sequels and prequels in production currently it looks like were in this for the long haul. As such, there are a lot of conventions that have sprung up around the genre, all loudly proclaiming YOURE WATCHING A SUPERHERO MOVIE GUYS just in case you were worried that youd accidentally wandered into Alvin And The Chipmunks 2: The Squeakquel. These range from the basically harmless (capes, cowls, completely absurd pecs) to the vaguely irritating (Stan Lees cameos) to the ones which are actually limiting the scope and scale of superhero movies. The tropes on this list are in danger of hemming the superhero genre into a prison of its own making, endlessly referencing other films and watering itself down into a reductive shadow of what it could be. Apart from anything else, the one thing a superhero movie should never be is boring, and these tropes are in real danger of lulling the whole enterprise into a sleepwalking stupor, each film only differentiated by the design on the heros chest.
