Someone alluded to the ticking time bomb cliche, with the hero disarming it at the last possible second. That one's been around so long they can carbon date it -- yet it's still written into every other action movie, and by people who ought to know better!
Of course, in the modern version, the hero doesn't disarm the bomb. Instead, he carries it a safe distance away just before it detonates. We think he's dead, but he miraculously survives.
I couldn't believe it when I watched The Dark Knight Rises and saw that Christopher Nolan of all people went with that clunker! As soon as the bomb turned up with the stupid digital readout I thought, "Et tu, Nolan?" I figured he'd pull something out of left field and surprise me. Nope. Rode that idiotic cliche all the way to the finish line.
Afterward, I thought, haven't I seen that somewhere before? Oh, yeah. About a month earlier in a movie called The Avengers, written by Joss Whedon, whose previous work had been all about turning cliches on their heads.
Before that there was Angels and Demons, which added that stupid cliche into the movie, because it wasn't in Dan Brown's novel.
The list goes on and on and on...
