The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug trailer

Watch it here.

Oh. Oh Peter Jackson. Please step away from cinematic adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's work, and go straight to making the video games. Look at those CGI elves chasing the dwarves down the river, whipping out arrows in unnaturally pixelated displays of agility, just like you read it in no Tolkien book ever. Look at the King of the Woodland Elves telling Thorin all about his quest "to reclaim a homeland and slay a dragon", because how does he know about it because Thorin never told him, which was the point of them all being in the dungeons? I'm not going to quibble about Legolas showing up -- it would be almost odd if he didn't; he's the King's son -- but Evangeline Lilly playing a kick-ass lady elf named Tauriel manufactured from such whole cloth that the name appears neither in the indices of LOTR or the Silmarillion? Do we trust Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens to be making up elves now? And where in this section of the book would we be seeing goblins or trolls?

But maybe this time around we'll be spared the turbo-charged rabbits.