8. Sending Up Cliches Is A Good Way To Include Them
Iron Man 3 manages to be a massive studio movie that (somewhat surprisingly) still allows the voice of its writer to come through unharmed. That's to say, you can hear Shane Black working his magic for the entire runtime of the movie. And one of the best things that Black does as a writer is defy overused cliches by having his characters confront them directly. Seriously. By referring to these cliches or pointing them out or comparing their situation to something "they saw in a movie once" (and often marking how dumb or ridiculous they are), you're alluding to these common elements that we've all become so familiar with, whilst also factoring them into your screenplay. Audiences recognise the tropes and how frequently we see them, understand that you're aware of that, and yet the point of the cliche still stands: it's employed and defied at once. These moments are scattered throughout Shane Black's entire filmography - his 2005 movie
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was practically made up entirely of these moments. In
Iron Man 3, his panache for cliche-defying is best realised during the "Tennessee" sequence, where Tony temporarily teams up with Harley, a precocious little kid who helps Tony when he's stranded in the middle of nowhere. Every time we think we're going to get a cutesy moment, Black pulls the rug out from under our feet. He employs a joke. Something happens we didn't expect etc. Amazingly, the "relationship" between these two characters is only strengthened because of this, which ultimately allows the audience to accept schmalzy moments like the one at the end of the movie, when Harley gets his shed made-over into a miniature Stark Industries. Given that the movies have seemingly worn themselves out with the same old cliches and tropes, it sometimes pays to confront these things face-on and try to find a clever way to show how aware you are that they exist.