Sure, the depiction of the Orcs in the films works...in the context of the films. But it makes them less interesting than Gollum...as characters...because they have no depth of character.

And that is basically my point.

"Were not the concentration camp guards who committed mass murder worse than any creature in a LOTR book?"

Actually, I think not. Various people among those guards were, in fact, stricken with a deep sense of guilt over what they were doing...or had done...because they were given orders to do it and they were deeply afraid to disobey those orders...in fear of losing their own lives in front of a firing squad. This was also true of many German soldiers in the field who were ordered to summarily execute prisoners (It happend a lot in Russia, specially. And the Russians were doing that to the Germans too, of course...hard to say who started doing it first, and it probably doesn't matter.). Many of those German soldiers and guards who had committed atrocities ordered by their commanders suffered great remorse over what they had done, and some committed suicide because of it.

I think this makes them considerably better and more human individuals than various of the evil creatures in LOTR. If someone is capable of repentance and regret over his own misdeeds, he is clearly not entirely evil. He's more likely someone who wasn't quite strong enough to stand up and say "No, I won't do that."...and face the consequences.

I've never seen the slightest reluctance in a Tolkien Orc or other monster to commit atrocities. This makes them quite different from we humans, who must usually be persuaded to do so over a period of time by gradually being numbed to what we are really doing by political propaganda, coercion, prejudice, and fear. In our case, that's tragic...and tragedy makes for very interesting drama.

There's nothing tragic about the demise of a crowd of Middle Earth Orcs, is there?

But the fall of Berlin in WWII was an astoundingly tragic event in terms of what happened to the people and the city...an event that resulted in death, misery, and despair falling on a vast number of innocent, ordinary people (and a group of tragically flawed idealogues and a few outright fanatics in the command structure) most of whom were just unlucky enough to have been born German, in the wrong place, at the absolute wrong time. They came under bad political leadership. It could happen to us someday, just like that.

We don't see anything tragic in the fall of Mordor, however. There isn't one shred of goodness in Mordor to feel sorry about. This makes it good for a fictional story, but completely unreal at the same time. In this world, there are always a lot of good people on the opposing side in any war...people you'd have been glad to have as friends under a different circumstance.

I can't imagine having a Tolkien Orc as a friend! ;-) Nope. That wouldn't work too well at all.