Well, Essex, while I can see that the justifications you give for those things are 'reasons' they certainly aren't 'excuses' for some of the pointless, illogical changes that were made. Also they seem to be reasons after the event - i.e. shoe-horned onto the changes
after they've been made, rather than changes being made to solve a particular problem of pace or story-telling. And even then, many of those problems have only occured because so many things have been changed in the first place...
I must admit I also get frustrated when people insist that something in the books 'wouldn't work on film'. How do they know?? 90% of the time the book version very probably
would have worked (IMHO), or might have needed only very small changes to do so.
Couldn't PJ just have had Sam getting lost once they got into Shelob's lair? Couldn't he have chased after Gollum in the caves and just appeared at the vital moment to rescue Frodo? To be perfectly honest, having Frodo send Sam home in this way makes me really doubt that PJ understands what the book is actually all about. I feel it totally undermines the central theme of loyalty, friendship and duty, which is bizarre as he gets so much of the adaptation right. That's why it seems so frustratingly inexplicable to alter it like this.
Ok, minor rant over.
