What, you mean the insipid plastic-faced personality-free marionette who seems to be an entirely different species from every other hobbit in the movie? The one who just wanders around being a big-eyed, shiny-skinned, emotion-free ambulatory haddock?
There are occasional moments that annoy me in the films, most of which have already been covered - the overhead bridge shot in Moria that looks like a cutscene from Baldurs Gate, the cavalry charge down a cliffside, the whole warg rider/falling in the river part, and a few other bits.
However those are individual scenes, minor rough spots that have to be expected in big films. Casting Elijah Woods, the least capable of all the main actors in the film, in the lead is truly unfortunate. It’s not a disaster of Binks proportions, but most scenes where he has to emote are like nails on a blackboard. Right from the start I was wondering what Merry, Pippin and Sam were doing hanging around with such a nonentity - in the opening carousing scene he comes across like a dweeb who hangs around with the cool kids in the desperate hope some personality will rub off on him.
The whole heart of the story is Frodo, but in the movie he’s just a placeholder, a waxwork caricature of the real characters who are helping him or trying to hinder him, and which the movie revolves around instead. Any of the other four ‘Hobbit’ actors could have done that role better.
I tell you, when I embark on my first quarter-billion dollar shoot I won’t be making such schoolboy errors in casting. 
I love these films, and am truly grateful they got made as they did.
Which is not to say they are perfect of course. My quibbles, as a fan of books & films:
- I agree heartily with Xenophon - Frodo is key to LOTR and he was not well served in the films. Not due to Elijah Wood - I think he did the best he could with the role as written. Frodo should have been shown standing up to the Nazgul at the Ford; should have shown more of his compassion to Gollum; and they should have explained a little bit more why he had to leave Middle Earth after sacrificing so much for it.
- Denethor’s connection with Palantir should have been shown. His death scene should have been done as in book.
- Expand Houses of Healing sequence!!
- Clarify Merry’s importance in killing Witch-King
- “Eye” of Sauron effect in last film was awful.
and of course the Scouring is vital thematically, but I understand why it was cut.
cactus waltz writes:
> I know Jackson is a great Tolkien fan and knows the source material like the
> back of his hand.
Cite? Seriously, I don’t want to argue about how good the movies are. I just want to know if anyone has seen any specific information about how much of a Tolkien fan Jackson was. It doesn’t seem to me that Jackson knew the books that well. I vaguely recall reading things that said that Jackson was not that great a fan. It certainly doesn’t look like Jackson was the sort of person that had read the books every year for the past twenty years. It looked like he had read the books a few times, but the last time was about five years before starting work on the script. It looks like while he (and his co-writers) were working on the script, they had a copy of the book in hand that they consulted occasionally for the timeline, but they didn’t bother to reread it. Again, I’m not interested in discussing how good the movie (or the book) is. I’m not interested in discussing in whether it’s important how well Jackson (and his co-writers) knew the book. I’m interested if anyone here has read anything that said how well Jackson knew the book beforehand.