What All Was Wrong with PJ's LOTR

[Wally]

Although the LOTR trilogy was pretty good, it was far from perfect and much of it strayed terribly from Tolkien, such as the Elves at Helm's Deep.

IMHO, what really kept the series from being a disaster was the strength of Tolkien's work, a work so powerful that even those two dopey women, Fran and Philippa, couldn't screw it up too badly. In contrast, compare LOTR to PJ's next effort, King Kong, to get a better feel for just how totally incompetent those two screenwriters were (and are).

My list of complaints include the dumb Arwen dream sequences, the 'dramatic' loss of Aragorn over the cliff during the fight en route to Helm's Deep, the aforementioned Elves, the numerous pointless changes to Tolkien's work (such as Frodo correctly guessing the password into Moria instead of Pippin [or was it Merry?]), and the omission of incredibly important plot points from these works (such as Denethor's use of the palantir). I am no PJ fanboy and do not hesitate to take him to task for these sins. For $300MM and 2 years of shooting, these films should have been perfect. Does anyone else have an opinion here?