[Galendor]

Any one I could mention has been mentioned before, even a newcomer like me can see the topic of "problems in the movies" has been well covered, and by people far more capable than me.

To me, it seems like Jackson felt that injection of crude or slapstick humor was needed every so often to appease certain audience members. I really took offense to that. Rather than a scene of Gimli falling off a horse, why not a close up of someone's face, perhaps showing some emotion such as sadness, or heck, even hunger. It IS possible to develop sympathetic characters without making them clowns. Why does the modern movie industry look down on their audience in this fashion, imagining that we need moments of silliness occasionally or we might get bored? As an example, take STW's "This is this" movie, the Deer Hunter. Its been a while since I saw it, but I don't think Deniro or Walken's characters ever had silly, out of charcter moments of base humor to lighten up he movie. And yet it is revered as a classic movie, and always will be. I know it didn't make a fraction of what LOTR made as a movie, but it will go down as a classic, and never resorted to silly pandering to the audience.

It might be argued that Tolkien had some humor in his books, but if so it was well timed and appropriate. Legolas and Gimli did have a "who can kill the most orcs" contest. And it did lighten the mood of that portion of the book. But it was not presented in a silly fashion, e.g. (that still only counts as one! Or, ...my axe imbedded in his nervous system!).

I don't mind many of the slight or not so slight character changes in the movies so much, I know a great deal of simplification and streamling was needed to fit it all into movie length. I did enjoy the movies (especially FOTR)!

Some things that spring to mind:

The killing of the cave troll in Moria could be cut down, it became cruel to hear him bellowing as he was slowly killed.

Any scene where a dwarf-tossing joke occurs, or Gimli is made clownish.

Legolas skateboarding on the shield.

Witch-King knocking scared old Gandalf on his butt.

Legolas killing the oiliphant and then sliding down its trunk. I mean sheesh, if he can do all that so nonchalantly, then why didn't he just take out several of them?

Green scrubbing bubbles of course - they even had a "sound" that went along with their scrubbing action (shudder).

Eye of Sauron turning to Mt. Doom when Ring is destroyed, stretching as it focuses on it, crying out (sort of), and then exploding.