MCU: 10 Things You Learn Rewatching Iron Man 3
8. It's Definitely Shane Black's Film
Shane Black's films are impossible to miss, and it's to the director's credit that his style emanates throughout the third Iron Man film.
The film, much like Black's earlier works, is set during the Holiday Season. Then there's the buddy-cop dynamic shared between Downey Jr.'s Stark and Don Cheadle's Rhodey, as well as the explicit nature of the violence; Iron Man straight-up kills people in this film, and while he did so in his 2008 debut, the violence just feels more impactful here, as does Stark's methods of waging war.
Most notable is the use of firearms, with both Stark and Rhodey utilising them to first escape from Killian's place and then in the climactic showdown at the docks. Guns are a fairly ubiquitous element of the superhero genre, but the manner in which they're used in Iron Man 3 derives from those classic action films Black himself helped define during the eighties. It's punchy, and the relationship between Stark and Rhodes is straight from the classic buddy playbook pioneered in films like Lethal Weapon.
Few directors, arguably, have been able to impart their own 'style' on the MCU. Those Avengers films are very Whedon-esque, but stylistically, narratively and visually, Black's fingerprints are all over Iron Man 3.