When Iron Man 3 ran into some problems with act 3, J.J. Abrams got a phone call

By the time all was said and done, a million things had changed, but the essential storyline and arc and what it was about and him kind of on the road and this kid and Pepper’s got her own thing. There were a couple times in Iron Man 3 where our lifeline was we’d call Jon Favreau. ‘What do we do?’ He’d be like, ‘Stick with this. Stick with the love story,’ or whatever. Then he’d say, ‘Wait, didn’t we used to do this same thing with Shane?’ Because we reached out to Shane a bunch, particularly in the first Iron Man, the scene where Tony comes back from captivity and readdresses his public and the press. Shane said it should all be about what his dad would think, and that’s why blah, blah, blah. So there was that. Then I think we reached out to J.J. Abrams at one point when we were really confused in Act III, and he helped us, too. It’s just interesting. Usually you think, in the legacy of filmmakers that come and go, there’s something so evocative about how strange it is that this particular strain of the Marvel universe was so successful, so what are the reasons for that and how do we keep that vital and just have fun?