[Turin]

I agree that there was an over-reliance on battle scenes. Too many battles undermine our (the audience) appreciation of the peril that the characters are confronted with.

There seemed to me to be a lack of depth to the movies. They were too dumbed-down for a start, which shows glaringly in RoTK (Elrond giving the sword to Aragorn, Denethor etc etc etc).

I think movie producers are so arrogant and conceited. They lessen the mood and atmosphere of LoTR to appease the so called "majority" of people who would not have read the book. What they haven't realised is that they have prevented LoTR from becoming an all-time great movie, rather than a slightly-above-average one. My opinion, of course.

Hence, they put in ridiculous things as Legolas the rodeo star; Gimli - making him into a laughing stock (not to mention the appalling jokes), just so that PJ & Co could exploit most people's perceptions of dwarves as being something from Snow White; Gandalf the half-wise, half-blundering buffoon (at times) etc etc. I could go on.

That's not to detract from the good stuff, and there is plenty of it. Though overall the lack of character depth is detriment to the whole "feel" of the movie.