Excellent answers to the original post. It's just that when I hear people complain about the movies being "boring" or whatever, I just wonder if maybe there could have been more mindless sword slashing to satiate the thrill seekers. Some of the battle scenes in the films appear to be very intense (from the clips that I've seen), but the action sequences aren't always describe so graphically in the books, so I wonder if moviegoers would enjoy the books. Maybe, maybe not. They are very different experiences anyway...
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Originally Posted by Inziladun
Also, as LOTR was written, it concerns mainly the four Hobbits, and was 'archived' as a history of that time written from their point of view. The things they personally did not witness that are detailed were taken from the accounts of their friends, the others of the Fellowship.
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You're right. I haven't read LOTR in about nine years (I guess), but I've read the Silmarillion several times in the past ten years, so I wasn't really considering the book as the Hobbit's documentation. Great point.
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Originally Posted by Mnemosyne
Fact of the matter is, LotR is not meant to be an "exciting" book. It's supposed to be intense, and unfortunately adding in superfluous battle scenes distracts from the intensity of, say, the battle over a hobbit's soul.
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Another good point. Frodo, Sam, and Gollum's internal struggles with the ring are the most important battles fought in the books. It doesn't help if fans don't like the characters in the movies, but I doubt people that read the books would complain about their depictions as much, especially if key material is left out of the films, like the choices of Samwise, which was already mentioned.
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Originally Posted by Nerwen
The Battle of the Fords of Isen, now– that, as you point out, does have a function, in that it gives the reader fairly important information; also you actually get to "see" Theodred in it. So I'd agree that it could well have been included. I think, though, that, to fit into the novel's structure, it would have had to be related through dialogue flashback (Eomer's?).
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Yeah, I suppose a few words from a scout that witnessed the battle would have been all that really could have been included. So I guess it would have disrupted the flow of the story after all. The chapter in Unfinished Tales documents the battle amazingly well, so I'm glad it's there.