You see some of his favorite themes and settings: Christmas, L.A., Hollywood, and more specifically, ARTIFICE in relation to Hollywood (vanity, etc), all are prevalent and have been in previously-seen Shane Black work...

I was unaware that he did some punch-up work on the previous Iron Man movies, but now it makes sense

Lots of very funny, almost subversive shit in this movie. Downey is great, of course, as is Don Cheadle (when we saw him)...

Sir Ben knocked it out the park, B. And the youngster was very funny and not annoying, which I thought was crucial for that entire Tennessee sequence...

I liked Guy Pearce, and I'm always glad to see him pick up a check but would have liked to have gotten a more concrete explanation for his steez

Still not a big fan of Gwyneth but what can you do? And I needed to see more Rebecca Hall

Also, Jon Favreau, the Table for Five show has long been over, son, stop eating

A few of the pieces don't fit, and I can definitely see some people begging Marvel to keep the irony out of their comic book movies (and I'm sure comic heads will be HEATED about one huge detail), but the thing about it is, this trilogy has from the start always been about subversion and toying with comic book/movie convention. Hell, the very first movie ends with Tony Stark happily revealing his secret superhero identity to the public. So anyone hoping for or expecting convention at this point is barking up the wrong tree.

Nicely done, Shane.

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And at that moment, I realized some of you aren't doing this for the shits-n-giggles that you're claiming