I saw someone claiming recently that Steve Rogers was Marvel's favourite character, that the MCU loved him
And I would disagree, they loved the symbol of Captain America, they loved what he represented but they didn't care about him as a character
And to be fair it is a character writing issue, the MCU is not known for it's character writing, it gets away with it by casting great actors and having engaging plots, but there are two movies series, Guardians of the Galaxy and Iron Man, which have well written characters and only two other movies reach that level, Black Widow and Thor Ragnarok
The rest, you're lucky to get snippets of engaging characters, such as Hawkeye in Ultron
Steve has the First Avenger, where he is given the most personality out of any of the movies he is in, but because it's an Origin Story, you get very little character arc, sure he changes a lot by the end, but it's basically all physical, he goes from being a scrawny kid getting beat up to being a super soldier taking down Hydra and none of it changes who he is as a person, but even despite that you still get a sense of who he is, a brave kid willing to stand up for what's right, even at his own detriment, but also a kid whose not afraid of breaking rules to do what he believes is right
Very sadly, this is the best characterisation you will get in any of the movies, it only goes downhill from the first one, because he continues to not really have a character arc except they stripped away the spunk, where's the Steve who quipped back at Peggy when he got back from rescuing Bucky, he does the same actions but they took away his wit, I guess because they couldn't have both Tony and Steve being sassy, but it just sucks
So what you have is a character the movies don't care to explore, they'll use him to push forth the story's message and act as the paragon of goodness, but they don't care about him as a character and that sucks
In contrast, the movies love Tony's character, they can't get enough of him, my friend once made the point that you remember none of the plot of the Iron Man movies but you sure do remember his character arc, because the villain is just sorta there, what's important is his character arc
But they don't care about him as a symbol, so they can use his character to act as a foil to Steve, to do bad things, to mess, to be the antagonistic, all whilst still having him be a more compelling character than Steve because he's just better written
I may hate his character but at least he has a character, Steve's I had to watch being slowly sucked dry of any life, as the parts that made him enjoyable where sanded down and eroded
Not only do Steve and Tony act as literary foils, being used to highlight what the movie thinks makes a good person, but they're also meta foils, highlighting the disparity between the treatment of the characters' writing by the screenwriters
