Brian Truitt

USA TODAY

The fans have spoken, Marvel: They want Black Widow to have her own superhero movie. And when it comes to existing solo films, they’re Team Cap all the way.

In a poll of more than 1,000 moviegoers who've already bought tickets for Captain America: Civil War (which previews in theaters Thursday night), conducted by ticket site Fandango.com for USA TODAY, 48% said Scarlett Johansson’s secret agent was the Avenger they'd most want to watch in a standalone feature. Paul Bettany’s android Vision received 15% of the vote, followed by Anthony Mackie’s winged Falcon (12%), Jeremy Renner’s ace archer Hawkeye (10%), Don Cheadle’s armored War Machine (8%) and Elizabeth Olsen’s magical heroine Scarlet Witch (7%).

Fans also weighed in on which A-list do-gooder has had the best solo films, with Chris Evans' Captain America taking down Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, 57% to 43%.

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The three Iron Man movies alone have tallied a whopping $1 billion domestically. But it doesn’t surprise Erik Davis, managing editor for Fandango.com and Movies.com, that fans prefer the Captain America series, even though its top earner — 2014's Captain America: Winter Soldier, which hauled in $259.8 million — made less than any of the Iron Man projects.

“Captain America is the boyfriend you bring home to meet your parents, and Tony Stark is the boyfriend you hide from your parents,” says Davis.

While the Iron Man films that started in 2008 set the course for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America: The First Avenger debuted in 2011, once “Marvel got their groove down a little bit,” Davis says.

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Plus, Cap resonates more emotionally with people because of his history as a World War II super-soldier iced in suspended animation for nearly 70 years: “Here’s this guy who’s a man out of time, and he has to find a way to belong in a world where he doesn’t belong," Davis says. "People like that outsider aspect and it helps them invest in him more.”

That said, Iron Man still did decently in the poll, due mostly to Downey’s performances and ever-changing armored ensemble, Davis adds. His 4-year-old son "likes Iron Man more than Captain America, and it’s because of the suit.”

With major roles for Black Widow in Avengers and other Marvel films since 2010's Iron Man 2, Davis figures that the Marvel faithful “know that (her) backstory is very interesting and they want to see her front and center.”

The fact that fans want to see a Black Widow movie sooner than later speaks to how much moviegoers are ready for a female-driven Marvel movie (a Captain Marvel film featuring fan-favorite character Carol Danvers has been pushed to 2019) and “that people love watching Scarlett Johansson kick (butt), especially as this character," says Davis.

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As for fans' interest in newcomer Vision, there's history: Bettany voiced Tony Stark’s helpful artificial intelligence J.A.R.V.I.S. in all of the Iron Man films, and that computer personality was uploaded into the powerful Vision in Avengers: Age of Ultron last summer.

“In their hearts,” Davis says, “fans want to see Vision because he’s been there all along, in some respects.”