I adore the Avengers movie. I love it to bits. I love the banter, the dynamics, the action sequences, the scope of things, the way it brought together all these separate movies and gave us this utterly massive universe.
I don't like Avengers!Steve. I hate him.
I love CATFA!Steve. I love his earnestness, his sincerity, his strength. I love how even after he becomes the perfect super-soldier he still maintains a sense of fragility and selflessness. Despite the transformation into an ideal he's still the physically-weak-but-determined-as-hell Steve.
I don't know who the fuck that star-bangled bloke on the Avengers is.
I think
gqgqqt said it best - "I knew movie steve would turn into RAWR I AM MANJAW ORDER-GIVING CAPTAIN comics steve eventually ugh".
I just didn't like his behavior during the first two acts of the movie. Maybe it's his PSTD, maybe it's that he's a man out of time, maybe it's just how he builds walls around himself, I don't know. I just don't like how Whedon & Co. took him and made him this... "I AM A MAN" soldier-person. One could argue that his talk about them being soldiers and strategizing and losing men and etc. is a response to his experiences finding HYDRA, but I'd like to see more of that. It's like something got lost between the ending of CATFA and the beginning of the Avengers. There's this huge chunk of character development that's missing so I'm left with this.... not-Steve going toe-to-toe with Tony, huffing and uber masculine and talking about how his god doesn't dress like Thor I mean what the actual fuck can we please leave Earth-based religion out because that moment just jarred me the fuck out of the movie/made me cringe. And each successful viewing didn't improve anything at all. Also that "ma'am" thing. I didn't mind CATFA!Steve using it. Avengers!Steve? No.
I just don't like him. I have nothing to go off of, nothing to tell me how he transformed from CATFA!Steve to Avengers!Steve. Even if he's now a hardened soldier I really don't think he'd act the way he did in two-thirds of the movie. I really miss his honesty and his humble earnestness. I miss his sensitivity. He's a far more sensitive character in CATFA than I'd ever seen him in the comics or the Avengers (or EMH). That's something I really appreciated. But here he is walking around with a giant neon sign that yells "I AM A MAN" and I just want him to go fuck off with Santa Superman at Earth's End.
I hope the next Captain America movie rectifies his characterization.