blessedharlot:

It’s still really fresh and I’m very emotional so I don’t know if I have it in me to articulate it well yet. But I’ll try.

There’s two scenes – two moments really – that they put in the first trailer, the very first one.

They have Steve looking at the compound’s front door camera and seeing Scott – seeing one of the missing. Absorbing that one of them is alive, and if one is, maybe more are saveable. Maybe there’s something he can *do*. He’s already willing to believe that an impossible task is possible. No he doesn’t know all the details yet, he doesn’t know that Scott’s situation is different than the rest. But we don’t have all the facts either. Scott is awfully chipper considering who he supposedly lost, and I don’t yet know why.

The important part here is Steve’s face. That dawning realization of what Scott’s presence means. That look in his eyes that is the manifestation of Steve grabbing a shred of hope with both hands and never letting go again.

But then, perhaps even more important than that, was what Steve voiced on the Quinjet next to Nat. This time the important part is not just his facial expression, but what he says.

It’s his reply to, “This is gonna work, Steve.” (Nat verbally, unabashedly reassuring someone, oh my god.)

His reply is, “I know it is. Because I don’t know what I’m going to do if it doesn’t.”

I don’t know how to explain how important that line is. Both its meaning and that Steve said it out loud. That’s deep determination that comes simply from not knowing how you’ll survive without it. That’s the core of Steve, the reason he survived into adulthood. And it’s never been made so bare since.

Do you know how often we get both pieces of this in a story? Do you know how often we get desolation and hope? Truly bound together, with neither one missing?  

I know how often filmmakers have taken *me* to that place of utter despair, and been too ignorant to do anything of value with it, and left me there. Bc they didn’t understand that hope isn’t a luxury for some of us. Bc they were despair tourists who thought pointless grimdark was cool and insightful.

I know how often filmmakers have tried to sell me a silly hope with no true strength behind it. With no devastation or brokenness underneath it. It’s not full, deep hope if its not built on a fractured foundation. The deepest gratitude and the deepest trust in Something Bigger and Something Loving and Something of Value originates in suffering and emptiness. And you have to get to it yourself.

This movie clearly has critical things to say about hope, that haven’t even been said before in Steve’s very hope-driven arc. This is so important, this is so vitally important.

Chris Evans shared the trailer with his personal caption, “This one is special. You guys have no idea…” Watching the very first trailer, it’s easy to believe him.