Well I do think the first "Avengers" movie was successful in part due to the novelty of seeing a team up movie of super heroes from separate movies in one big movie. Centered around Iron Man's character who was of course already a big deal. While I do agree that the first Captain America movie is criminally underrated I do think he was already the second favorite Avenger In the first movie. They were bringing in a new Hulk and the first Thor movie was just Okay. Hawkeye was basically new. People did already love Black Widow even though she first showed up in "Iron Man 2" which was considered a bad movie.
I think the friendship between Iron Man and Captain America though is what really cemented them as the two main stars of the MCU. Then Winter Solider came out a blew people away and you could maybe even argue he was just as popular as Iron Man at that moment. If I had a list of the top 5 people/characters who I would give most credit for the MCU growing into what it did I think I would go with.
1 Downey Jr as Iron Man
2 Evans as Captain America
3 Kevin Feige
4 James Gunn
5 Joss Whedon.
If things had worked as planned I think the next big stars of the MCU would have been Spider-Man, Captain Marvel and Black Panther. That didn't work out because we sadly lost the main actor for Black Panther and Captain Marvel just didn't win people over.
I think the friendship between Iron Man and Captain America though is what really cemented them as the two main stars of the MCU. Then Winter Solider came out a blew people away and you could maybe even argue he was just as popular as Iron Man at that moment. If I had a list of the top 5 people/characters who I would give most credit for the MCU growing into what it did I think I would go with.
1 Downey Jr as Iron Man
2 Evans as Captain America
3 Kevin Feige
4 James Gunn
5 Joss Whedon.
If things had worked as planned I think the next big stars of the MCU would have been Spider-Man, Captain Marvel and Black Panther. That didn't work out because we sadly lost the main actor for Black Panther and Captain Marvel just didn't win people over.