/Well, they were working on the scripts for years before production began, so they did have time to work out a proper storyline. But even if we assume they really didn't have much time why make so many changes & introduce so many new ideas? I would have thought not having much time would mean they'd lack the luxury of inventing new stuff & have to stick to what was on the page.../
Well, it's one thing to have something on a page, but it's another to go ahead and film it, when the studio is already breathing down your neck and expectations have been set so high. While I agree that the Faramir thing was ridiculous, I think it presents more of a lack of planning rather than a blatant "I can do this better than Tolkien" attitude. Faramir himself, if you have noticed, is a very stripped-down, unformed character in the films, particularly in the way they were originally shown. It's as if they ran out of room and time and decided to truncate everything in that particular episode;
truncate, rather than invent. Or, essentially, "dumb it down."
I think that constrained as they were by their time-table (and I can't imagine that they were unconstrained, not when three movies have to come out in rapid succession, not to mention the DVDs), they saw that sticking plainly to what was on the page would have been more difficult. The books are such a complex amalgamation of characters and themes, to present them in a somewhat
coherent manner, sacrifices were made where one idea was simplified in favour of another. Of course, this made the final product patchy and uneven. But when I think about filmmaking strictly in business terms, I can't see how they could have done it in any other way, and still made their schedule, budget, and returns all work. It's a shame, really, but large-scale productions more often than not suffer from this weird disease of simply becoming too big and unwieldy in the hands of even the most dedicated people.