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I guess its that handicap that prevents some from accepting the basic idea that a book is one thing and a film is another.
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Poppycock.
I've acknolwedged it many times. However, it's getting very tiresome to see this chestnut trotted out like a get-out-of-jail-free card for PJ: that translation to a different medium constitutes carte blanche for any and everything.
If you're going to keep making this argument, StW, try to make it relevant. Please explain why the different medium requires the substitution of cheesy dialogue for Tolkienie's erudite grandeur, or perhaps why slightly antique verbal style isn't allowed in cinema (all those Shakespeare films notwithstanding). Or why the process of adaptation requires that the elderly but proud Theoden be transformed into a half-senile wimp, or the shrewd and subtle Denethor into a dribbling lunatic. Come on, tell us: what is different about film qua film that mandates this sort of meddling?
I would suggest that there is nothing at all. The reasons PBW did it have nothing to do with the medium, and everything to to with (a) treating the audience like simpletons, and/or (b) not understanding their source to begin with.