To be honest, though, my reaction to rereading it recently wasn't about now knowing that LOTR was coming (also, IIRC, I read LOTR first, at age 9, and only then read The Hobbit... which yes, at the time, I didn't like that much because the early parts of it were sillier in tone than LOTR).

I don't mean this snarkily, but — have you reread The Hobbit recently? I was surprised upon rereading it that it felt darker to me than I'd remembered. I don't think you're wrong that friendship and wit, and some triumph, are a part of it... but so is greed, betrayal, and death. It got really heavy by the end. …

Oh my god, seriously? Gotta pull that out and listen for it now! Because I am totally in love with the Misty Mountains theme he's got going in this trailer, and to find he worked it out TEN YEARS AGO? *dies*

Good news: Beorn is very, very much in it. He's been cast, and there were set pics a while ago that seemed to be his house.

This io9 Flashback originally appeared on io9 in January 2011.

That too; although I basically skipped the one-too-many season, the movies, and the spin-off, so for me, it ended REALLY well. But part of what I thought made it great was that it had time to build its story. And when that story was done, it was done.

For that reason, though, I don't think I want to see a Bab5 movie. There are some things that play out better given the time to tell their story in a TV-show format. That was Bab5. I'm not sure I really want to see the Cliffs Notes version in a movie.

Haven't people been saying for years that you can take any two-hour film, and choose 120 seconds of it to create a trailer that will get across what you want?

Completely agreed, except — he was saying that MEN hate Princesses, so that's why that title had to go.

This was definitely a folk-legend thing when I was growing up outside of Philadelphia in the 70s.

I think that, from the original, it's also acceptable to use it in the sense of repairing something with whatever one has on hand or finds in the immediate vicinity. MacGyver was frequently also making old vehicles function again, or you know, repairing cracked whatevers, leaking acid, with chocolate bars.

Well, some would argue in return that it's not uncivil to speak in clear terms about sex. That not speaking in clear terms is what results in a lot of shame associated with sex, as well as ignorance.

His mouth and his fingers are parts of his anatomy, and dildos are perfectly mundane objects, no magic required.

That could be. It's just that the formula of it seemed more specific than it would "need" to be if you just wanted to distinguish this particular wolf. Meaning that I would have expected them to give the wolf both eyes of an unusual color ("the wolf with green eyes"), if that was the object.

If it was really an antler problem... surely it would have been just as easy to CGI antlers on a real deer. But yeah, watching that gives you a better appreciation for how difficult it is to animate real animal motion. (My hat's off to Pixar for the horse in the "Brave" trailer, even if I feel like it's not running…

Isn't the joke that "Snuffaluffagus" is not a muppet, because it's not the right name? The muppet is "Snuffleupagus".

I actually meant, "a real wolf, as opposed to a dog trying to pass as a wolf", but omg you are SO RIGHT. I was just astounded by the bad CGI of the stag. (Which, if memory serves, was a whitetail. Not a species they have in Europe.)

Have to say: props for using a real wolf. (I noticed that during the pilot, too.)

God help me, I'm with you there on the wishful thinking. I'm crossing my fingers that we find out next ep that Graham is in a "coma" rather than dead and buried. I don't care how trite it would be. My feelings about it are entirely selfish. Even if they have to whip out some kind of full-on "magic" to bring him…

I was kind of surprised that that little detail didn't seem to go anywhere. It's not really ringing a bell to me, but then I haven't really tried to look it up.