I was happy to see Bombadill go, but yeah, we could have lost some elf vs. elephant CGI to hear

But no living man am I!  You look upon a woman.  Eowyn I am, Eomund’s daughter.  You stand between me and my lord and kin.  Begone, if you be not deathless!  For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.

But Matt, wouldn't they have had to change the way she spoke throughout the movies, and then how the rest of Rohan spoke, to make it seem like battle didn't make her break out into Shakespeare?

I didn't get the impression it was a time tradeoff.

I suppose I could talk about the changes to Merry and Pippin too, since they're much less agressively clueless in the books.

I think this is one of the things that seventeen years in the Shire could have mitigated. Their arc seemed perfectly natural in the books, but I had a much deeper idea of what was hobbit. This way round, you need to kinda set them behind the starting line, give them an extra handicap so their delta is notable.

In the books, it was fairly clear during the attempt to cross Caradhras thet it was the mountain itself opposing the Fellowship, while in the movie, they made it seem that it was Saruman's doing.

The Paths of the Dead sequence is different. In the book, Aragorn give the dead leave to go long before they reach Minas Tirith. In the movie, it is the dead who save the day.

This way round, you need to kinda set them behind the starting line, give them an extra handicap so their delta is notable.

And I'm guessing that it was also done so that you did have someone more innocent, so that Merry could have the moment with the Ents when he argues that they need to defend the Shire, and so that Pippin could come into his own in RoTK.

That's another thing, isn't it? The whole Merry and Theoden and Pippin and Denethor relationships. (Notice that I deliberately did not use the slashes there.)

In the books, it was fairly clear during the attempt to cross Caradhras thet it was the mountain itself opposing the Fellowship, while in the movie, they made it seem that it was Saruman's doing.

Yes -- this. This was my biggest problem with the first movie.

Hmm. I could talk about the depiction of magic. In the book, there's no big battle with Saruman at Orthanc. Gandalf just kinda gets thrown in jail. On the other hand, there is a bit where he fights off the Black Riders somewhere around Weathertop, and I suspect they sort of moved that to the Orthanc scene.

What about Theoden's possession? How is that covered in the book?

Really, the mountain and the CGI of Evil!Bilbo were the only things I didn't like about the first one. I think it's as nearly perfect a film adaptation as I've ever seen, even though it wasn't nearly the most accurate.

What about Theoden's possession? How is that covered in the book?

IIRC, it wasn't so much possession as Wormtongue having demoralized Theoden into helplessness at Saruman's command.

So again, simplified. They had to translate a lot of things into visual depictions rather than relying on the narration. The reason the Black Riders are scary in the book seems to be because of the effect they have on people. Otherwise, they're just big guys in robes wandering around and asking for directions.

Oh, someone else mentioned Helm's Deep, and that the battle wasn't nearly as big a deal in Two Towers?

I got the idea that if Helm's Deep fell, you could write off Rohan as any kind of useful--or even existing--entity.

Eowyn was dumbed down in the whole movie. When Theoden leaves Rohan in her hands--which she then abandons, the git!--she's in full armor, obviously ready to use whatever means necessary to defend her country. I think in the book that her stewardship ended once they got to Dunharrow (or wherever the encampment was at the Paths of the Dead), but my memory is faulty.

They wouldn't have had to change the speech patterns of all of Rohan to use "Begone if you be not deathless." And her fight against the Witch King was more competent in the book, not so much cringing and ducking. Plus the whole "Oh, silly me, I can't cook" scene. Gah.

What aspects of the book did the film convey most and least successfully

Best: the Balrog. It was the sort of translation that gave the book its due, but came up with something distinctively filmic. Perfect balance. In a different way, Gollum: he is a lot more of a character in the movie, with his own arc and sorrows, but all these are magnification of the book's text, in a way that suits a movie.

Worst: the pessimistic culture (specifically embodied in Eowyn) of the Rohirrim. By rewriting it to make the Eowyn/Theoden relationship receive a resolution, the film reduced the philosophy-of-despair to a couple of excellent references to poetry, and a lot of psychotherapy. Whereas, Tolkien was showcasing a decidedly foreign mindset, giving it its foreign, exciting, occasionally-off-putting glory. The movie version felt about three degrees away from Oprah, all mooshy and modern; the book version was raw and strange and unpleasant and in some ways completely unresolveable.

Actually, I think Dana is right: the complexity of relationships, both personal and cultural, tended to get lost in the movie adaptation. Denethor becomes a pale shadow of himself. Lacking that balcony scene in Book VI, there is no moment when the Rohirrim and Gondor ways of life are contrasted. Actually, all of Minas Tirith was portrayed in a schematic fashion, what with all of the secondary characters being cut from those sequences.

In the book, Theoden's "possession" is not explicitly magic; Gandalf tells him to throw off old age, and he sort of does a double-take, and pulls himself together. It's pretty well implied that nastiness is involved in Theoden feeling so old, but it's more of a "Wormtongue poisoned his mind with cruel words" than an explicit magic spell.