The love interest is the superhero's primary link to a world that doesn't include beating up clown terrorists and aliens. They normalize the hero, without making the hero's feats seem any less shit-your-pants awe-inspiring. They need to be more self aware than the hero, and more equipped to handle the side of the world that the superhero's secret identity doesn't handle so well.

Our biggest problem with this trope is that when you have a giant dude thing in a cape, it's easy for screenwriters to focus on that and ignore the love interest entirely. So you get a ton of character development that stops with "Here she is. She's a scientist. That means she's smart. Okay, back to the falling buildings."

The Movie That Failed At This: Spider-Man 3

Sony Pictures

Gwen Stacy is introduced to give the story a little "Will they or won't they?", but it's hard to accomplish that when your character descriptors are "Has a face" and "Not Mary Jane Watson."

The Movie That Did It Best: Superman

There is no part of this movie that isn't adorable. Even Gene Hackman.

"You've got me? Who's got you?!?" says a lot of what you need to know about Lois Lane in this series. She's funny, energetic, inquisitive, and everything that Superman isn't. It flips over the old "Oh, MY HERO" trope of women getting saved by burly men in colorful fetish wear and makes it into something that isn't so 1934. Most importantly, it places them as equals. Sure, Superman can seemingly invent a new power whenever he wants to, but Lois Lane will call him on his (and everyone else's) shit for the rest of their lives.

They can be loud or quiet. They can explain their whole backstory in one long monologue or never even tell you their name. But they have to be a threat from the get-go. And they have to make audiences say "I'd be perfectly okay with watching a whole movie about this thing." If the supervillain isn't a threat, the movie will devolve into Powerful Person vs. Insane Halloween Shop Customer.

It's even worse if the supervillain isn't a character. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has done a lot of cool things, but its worst offense is its revolving door of villains that are there to claim that they've had what's rightfully theirs taken away, and die.

The Movie That Failed At This: X-Men: The Last Stand

20th Century Fox

The Juggernaut's second line is "Let me out of here. I gotta pee." It's heartbreaking.

The Movie That Did It Best: X-Men: First Class

Put this on my tombstone. I don't how, but just do it.

Thanks to his World War II origin story, and to the fact that Michael Fassbender could make me divorce my wife just by asking me to, you know that shit's about to go down from the moment Magneto enters the room. And then he does a scene that's half X-Men and half Casino Royale, and boom. You've got a villain that people will watch for the rest of a franchise. He's a villain that's definitely the Magneto we love, but still full of surprises, which is what you need when you're dealing with a beloved character that's been around for 50-plus years.

This sets up the world and the moving pieces in it. By the time the movie gets to its final stretch, it's mostly going to be shit blowing up, so this is the time that filmmakers use to actually make you care about whether or not the characters escape all the shit that's blowing up. If it fails here, the movie will be called "popcorn entertainment" and will be treated like a leprosy victim by critics everywhere. If it succeeds, it will be hailed as a "triumph of the genre," and you'll get to read thinkpieces about it from now until the end of time.

And oh, can it fail. You can throw in every comic book reference you have -- usually a guy saying to another guy "No, thank YOU, Mr... FREEZE" and still end up with a jumbled pile of name drops and disappointment. If it doesn't come together cohesively, you may as well not acknowledge the source material at all, because it's an affront to comics and movies alike when you think that people will be satisfied with your pandering attempt at reciting a Marvel encyclopedia and calling it world-building.

The Movie That Failed At This: Batman Forever

While Bruce Wayne thinks about getting in Nicole Kidman's pants, the Riddler teams up with a middle-aged man to make Gotham watch more TV. It's a plan that can literally be stopped with two punches, and it sets up Gotham as a miserable place to not only live in, but to watch as well.

The Movie That Did It Best: The Dark Knight

Warner Bros. Pictures

The Dark Knight puts its characters in a state of ease while putting the audience in a state of unease. Harvey Dent and Commissioner Gordon are toasting each other and fondling their own egos, thanks to the fact that Batman is helping them lock up some gangsters. Meanwhile, the Joker is preparing to dropkick Gotham in a way that the city could've never prepared for. So not only does it show off the rules of the world, it also shows that all of those rules can be broken at any time. Which is something that's said, like, 20 times in that film. We get it, Christopher Nolan. Ya' got THEMES.

The training montage shows the hero flexing a little bit. This bit usually comes after the initial "Wow, I've got powers!" thing wears off, and "Fuck, I've got these powers" sets in. It gives the hero a chance to not be as broody as they'll become later, but since we're dealing with a two-hour movie, it does need to show why exactly we're supposed to be so impressed with them.

It also gives the movie a chance to show us why we might regret paying for a ticket later. Because if a hero isn't interesting when they're bumbling around, they certainly won't be interesting when they're stoic later. If the "Watch What I Can Do" scene fails, there's a good chance that you're about to sustain one long yawn for the next 90 minutes.

The Movie That Failed At This: Suicide Squad

Suicide Squad tries to blend its "Look what I can do!" and "Hero introduction" scenes, and despite spending an agonizingly long time trudging to the point of the movie, you never quite get a hold on the characters. That guy's an asshole, that guy has fire, and Harley Quinn. I've never seen a film try to rip joy away from fantasy quite like Suicide Squad did. It has the sense of wonder of a dead clam.

The Movie That Did It Best: Deadpool

This scene wins the Oscar for Best All Of It.

It helps that Deadpool is so fully realized as a character that his montage of quipping and fighting could stand as a mini movie on its own. Having the hero cast comic-relief glances at the audience while they learn how to properly jump over buildings or whatever is good in its own right, but Deadpool ignores the idea that we need to see what the hero looks like as a clumsy moron and moves right to the need to see them at the height of their power.

The Mid-Movie Showdown establishes most of the prime dilemmas that have been hinted at until then. Whether or not they face their antagonist for the first time isn't the main issue here. The issue is that, even with all of these sweet-ass powers at their disposal, what important thing does this hero still have to overcome? They can shoot laser beams out of their laser dick. What's holding them back from being the LaserDickMan that they dream of being? This scene establishes that.

This scene can also establish the onscreen chemistry, or lack thereof, between a hero and villain. Like many things on this list, you imagine, for years, what it will look like when someone makes a movie out of your favorite fight scene between your favorite characters. And in a tragic number of superhero films, this amazing daydream is rendered into a boring stare off or a soulless backflip contest.

The Movie That Failed At This: Blade: Trinity

When this movie came out, I skipped my grandmother's birthday party to see it. Christ.

What should be a scene of Blade feeling the pressure of facing the greatest, most unstoppable vampire in history devolves into Blade and Dracula chasing each other across some rooftops. "When in doubt, have Blade run after someone." -- The motto of the Blade films.

The Movie That Did It Best: Spider-Man/Spider-Man 2

Sony Pictures

Sam Raimi's first two Spider-Man films did a great job of showing us a Peter Parker that didn't handle distraction very well. You're fighting an over-sized helmet and fucking Tevye, Spider-Man. Shouldn't you be able to get some more hits in? Not when he's constantly looking over his shoulder to make sure that Mary Jane and Aunt May are alright. These movies, in the span of two kickass action sequences, nail down one the biggest themes in Spider-Man: as long as the people that he loves are around, he's probably going to get his ass kicked a lot.

This trope can manifest itself in a variety of ways, usually in a masked version of "She doesn't want to go to prom with me." Showing that the protagonist has hit a wall in their efforts, the Sad Angsty Superhero Shit scene gives audiences time to reflect on such weighty issues as "It's hard to find love when even your cod piece is shaped like a little bat" and "The world doesn't accept you very easily when you're green."

Why we've tended to rebel against this is pretty easy to see: Though usually deemed as started by The Dark Knight, every once in a while, both superhero comics and movies fall into an inescapable pit of navel gazing and tears. I'm not going to claim that superhero things are supposed to be an orgy of WHIFF BAM pleasantries, but after a while of watching Batman sit with his head in his hands, I do start to wonder why fun has abandoned me so.

The Movie That Failed At This: The Dark Knight Rises

Bane is pretty cool, but all of the emotional notes of The Dark Knight Rises feel false and lackluster. What should be hard hitting, deeply impactful moments come off like the actors are desperately trying to improv their way out of their character arcs.

The Movie That Did It Best: X2

20th Century Fox

When William Stryker wheels out his mute, telepathic Boo Radley of a son, all of the themes of the X-Men series come crashing down on the audience. It's no longer about protecting humanity from other mutants. Don't get me wrong, you feel sorry for Magneto and all of the horrors that he's endured, but at the end of the day, it's Magneto's choice. X2 makes you question how exactly in control this anemic creature is of his own powers or even of his own bowel movements. And it raises the question: What's more horrifying? The thing that definitely hates you, or the thing that might hate you?

The big twist often comes with answering a question that has plagued the whole movie. After two hours of flying around and throwing tanks, it can invigorate the film and give the movie what it needs to push through to the end.

It can also be laughably manufactured. It's such an overused thing in not only the superhero genre but in all of cinema that we start to groan at the first hint of mustache twirling. We're so burned by bad twists now that they don't even have to be surprising to get a reaction from us. They just have to be organic. They just have to feel like they're things that should've happened, instead of things that were added to flip a dull story over.

The Movie That Failed At This: The Wolverine

Note to plot-twist makers everywhere: If you want to reveal that a guy has been evil the whole time, but you only have two guys overall and one of them is Hugh Jackman, maybe just hold off on that for a bit.

The Movie That Did It Best: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

"Hail Hydra" launched memes like rats escaping a flooding sewer. And for good reason. The revelation that Robert Redford, America's grandfather, is part of the super Nazi group is immensely satisfying. I mean, it sucks that the Sundance Kid is actually a giant asshole, but until John Wayne comes back from the dead to reveal that he's a Skrull, no other actor would've worked as well in that situation.

Never properly building anything, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 attempts to cobble together some motivation for the villains and for every other character in the film in the last half, resulting in a movie that simultaneously feels like a rush job and like it absorbed a tiny sequel in the womb.

The Movie That Did It Best: Captain America: Civil War

Eventually, the movie will underwhelmingly close with a conflict between Captain America, Winter Soldier, and Iron Man. However, the massive fight in the airport is the perfect way to set it all up. People are being taken out of commission, new powers are being shown, and future rivalries are being set up for later films. Add in the new wildcard character (Spider-Man) and you have a sequence that energizes what had started to become a pouty massacre of good intentions.

"Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice skate uphill." It's true, Blade! Some motherfuckers ARE always trying to ice skate uphill. Sadly, I've never been able to tell them. Usually, it comes out as "Mistakes are just chances for growth, Kaitlyn," or some shit like that.

Everyone's arcs come to a terrific close, as they're all treated as equally important and they're all intertwined. Christopher Walken's Max Shreck makes one final move that is totally fitting of his ego and pathetic standing as a human. Catwoman ignores Batman's attempt to mansplain happiness to her and kills Max Shreck. The Penguin tries desperately to take out the one freak he's jealous of (Batman) but ultimately fails. And Batman is the last one left, watching a penguin funeral procession, and acting as a vigil to the fact that sometimes lost souls are meant to stay lost.