I thought the biggest liberties were taken in TTT, not ROTK.

Who cares much whether the Dead were on the Pellenor fields
or not; the result is pretty much the same.

But in TTT, the Ents have to be tricked into attacking
Isengard by the hobbits. Not really fair to the quite
thoughtful (if not so hasty) Ents. Littler point is their
role in the victory at Helm's Deep (which could admittedly
be left out due to time considerations).

But my most serious problem with TTT is the portrayal of
Faramir. Faramir is far more insightful than Jackson
portrayed him, and does _not_ try to take the ring.
Admittedly, he contemplates it, but decides that doing
the right thing is more important than duty. That business
of hauling Frodo off to Osgiliath was completely bogus.
And then the business of Frodo about to hand over the
ring to the Nazgul: never happened. Why put these things
in there? They really twist what the book characters
were like. Then there's Arwen's marching off with the
elves. Wrong. Many elves were leaving (but they had
been for some while anyway), but the head elves did indeed
stick around through the final battle rather than cut and
run when the going was still good.

As for ROTK, they leave out Sam's use of the ring
(which will eventually gain Sam passage "into the West"
as well), (and as someone mentioned), the aftermath
in the Shire, not to mention Saruman's fate _and_
Frodo's continuing compassion WRT Grima/Wormtongue.
Sure, action is nice, but they could have cut a few
of those long still shots of Frodo's made-up eyes
a bit and squeezed a few more things in that _really_
developed these characters some more.

. . .

Was ROTK all that great? I don't think so. Very good,
but not so much as to trample everyone else in any
category they were nominated. I think part of it
was guilt for stiffing LOTR in previous years, much
to Clint's misfortune this year. Was some of it
lingering hangover from the Iraq war??? If so, they
ought to have gone to check out the picture walls
on the web of Iraq casualties, and maybe they wouldn't
have been so ga-ga-ga about "good-v.-bad" battle
epics in which the heroes kill hundreds of baddies
with nary a scratch ... and destroy all the evil WoMD
in the end so that every one lives happily ever after.

. . .

If the AMPAS gave ensemble awards for best cast acting,
I'd think of the LOTR folks as serious contenders (but
still pick the _entire_ "Mystic River" cast, personally).

. . .

As for "best song": Typical. Schmaltzy orchestrated
stuff breaks these people's hearts ... gimme a break,
how about a good song (either "Cold Mountain" song was
better).

Yeah, that's how I really feel.

Cheers,

                            -- Arne Langsetmo