[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Spoiler:

When climbing the stairs up to Cirith Ungol, Sam turns back and leaves Frodo alone with Gollum, even though he knows that Gollum intends to harm Frodo. Only after having his nose rubbed in how Gollum has tricked Frodo does he reconsider, and start climbing again.

In the book, Sam only ever leaves Frodo when he's convinced that Frodo is dead, and even then it's to carry on the quest.

And then theres the Treebeard and the Ents. And Gimli's reduction to comic relief. And Theoden's reluctance to go to war. And Aragorn's doubts and uncertainties about just about everything. And... the list goes on of characters they've changed and (generally) diminished.

The films have some marvellous visuals. But the adaption is not a good one.

I can't argue with any of the points that you raise - they are all valid - but I still feel personally that the films (particularly the Extended Editions) are an extremely fine rendering of what would be an almost impossible book to precisely reproduce faithfully on film. One of the issues in particular is the highly non-linear time sequence of "The Two Towers" and "The Return of the King", with multiple plot-lines, and the reader reading one narrative, then switching to another viewpoint and jumping back in time, to eventually catch up with, or go forward from, the previous plotline. By necessity, time in the film versions had to be "linearised", and this removes a lot of the tension.

Spoiler:

A classic example of this is when "The Mouth of Sauron" rides out from the Black Gate of Mordor, and throws Bilbo's armour on the ground in front of Gandalf and Aragorn. In the book, we'd left Bilbo a captive of the Orcs, but in the film we already know that he escaped, thus entirely removing the tension of that scene in the film.

Criticisms aside, though, I think the films are wonderful, and perhaps unlikely to be surpassed in my lifetime.