[Lalaith]

Ok, here's my cod-psychological ha'porth.

I have a friend who suffered a series of horrible, random, life-shattering events. Her response ( she was already a careful, painstaking, disciplined kind of person) was to develop anorexia. It was, I believe, an attempt to find the one area of her life she *could* control, ie her weight and food intake, and then irrationally over-control it.
Similarly, I wonder if Christopher Tolkien, who had devoted so much of his life to a careful, painstaking and disciplined editing of his father's work, was not traumatised by the lack of control he had over the films and the liberties those films took - particularly as this 'bastardised' film version has became the 'definitive' one when it comes to most of the world's concept of Middle Earth.

The Estate's reaction - over-control to the point of absurdity over the areas it actually can control - therefore becomes more understandable.