The Last Movie You Watched

[Jackalope]

It is a children's book, and that is partially why it has garnered so much controversy. I'm a member of a Tolkien message board and the purists hate the films, but a chunk of them also hate the LotR movies for not following every thing to a"T". There is no pleasing them.

You are certainly right that there's no pleasing some people. The thing is, it's a pretty unreasonable expectation that a film adaptation of a novel is going to faithfully reproduce a novel in it's entirety. Even considering the extended trilogy, there's only so much material you can cram into 10 or so hours of film, when you're starting with the quantity and quality of material in LOTR.

Some of the changes are going to be to fulfill the screenwriter's and director's visions for the adaptation, and some are going to be simply to broaden the appeal of the film so the damn thing can make more money.

For example, Arwen's role was much greater in the film version, but it's there to broaden the film's appeal. I get why they left out Bombadil, even though that pretty much meant that the Barrow Downs weren't going to be featured either, nor the Great Forest. Bam, they're at the Brandywine ferry, bam, suddenly they're in Bree. It advanced the story, and allowed for more essential detail (or dwarf-tossing) elsewhere.

What really bugged me was the angsty way they portrayed Aragorn, and I thought the film version of Faramir was weak and far inferior to the book. I could go on. I won't, for which I'm sure all of you that haven't gone, "oh fuck Cthulhu's on another TL;DR rant" are eternally grateful. :p

I enjoyed LOTR the films for what they were. I enjoyed the first two Hobbit movies for what they were (I haven't seen the third, perhaps I'll take my boy tomorrow). Yeah, they're not the same as the books. Perhaps they're even inferior storytelling - but you know what? They're fun - and sometimes that's all cinema needs to be.