My views about this issue have probably been expressed enough in the “Dumbing down the books” thread but I will add a little here.
Reading through this thread I found this comment
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To the reader who just quickly reads over it, not putting a lot of thought or effort into it, doesn't typically read much, or isn't old enough to understand fully, there may not seem to be much depth to the characters. But those of us who are older, or read a lot more, so can have a better grasp of it, I think there is great amount of depth to some characters.
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to be perhaps a little arrogant in its assumption that if you have a problem with the characterisation in LOTR then you simply aren’t intelligent enough to understand it.
As a more general observation though I would note that most of the people who have been posting their defence of the level of characterisation of Tolkien’s characters have been able to summarise their “deep” characters with the use of a single paragraph. And on occasion that paragraph has included some padding.
For me Pullman got it almost bang on. He should possibly have added Denethor to the list of deeper characters.
However in regards to the others he is spot on.
Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas are perhaps overused examples of paper-thin characters so let’s pick another example.
Faramir is occasionally portrayed as a complex character and evidence is sited of his attempts to gain his father’s good grace as a reason for this. In reality this is woefully thin. Faramir was a character that Tolkien idealised in many ways and as a result you have someone who is so “good” its painful.
Boromir too. In the film they attempt to give him some depth and portray the conflict within. After all from Boromir’s point of view he is a good character. He genuinely believes that using the Ring is the best course of action, he is not doing it because he is evil. But in the book he is portrayed as the “least noble” of the fellowship from the beginning. Reduced in many ways to the role of pantomime villain.
Comparing Tolkien’s characterisation with other famous novels is perhaps a way of spotlighting how lightweight Tolkien’s are.
Compare Boromir to Captain Ahab for example.
Take a look at Pip’s journey in Great Expectations.
Holden Caulfield in A Catcher in the Rye.
Pinkie in Brighton Rock.
The amazing characters in I, Claudius.
I think we can debate the “why’s” of Tolkien’s shallow characterisation. There may well have been reasons why he did it like he did. But it is hard to deny that in comparison to other “classic” works Tolkien just wasn’t interested in the characters.