From time to time I am inclined to believe that the subject of the discourse becomes confused. One poster was very much put out at criticisms of Jackson on this particular site (Tv.J) and wanted to know why were were always "comparing" the Director to the Author! Others seem to believe that
any criticism of the films however instructive, constructive or warranted, is somehow heretical and therefore out of place! Then there are those who continually demand that the films be accepted as Jackson's version (which, of course, they are and therefore must be accepted as such) but still demand that there be no criticisms of whatever failures they may contain quite apart from the matter of the book. This latter is somewhat silly since no film, however good, is without its faults and any really good critic will point them out no matter how much he or she enjoyed the film as a whole!
To my mind, the combatants break down to the following categories:
1. Those who absolutely
love the films, think that they "rock" and will hear no criticism of them or Jackson. To these people, whatever changes Jackson made have improved the films over the book and his departure from
Tolkien was at all times and in all instances not only necessary but infinitely superior to whatever would have happened had he remained faithful to his source.
2. Those who agree that Jackson has deviated from the book and regret that he has done so even though many of his "inventions" made the films more interesting than they otherwise might have been. These people admit to the superiority of the book as story, but do not believe that faithfulness to it would necessarily have resulted in superior films. They are willing to accept the films as somewhat flawed but nonetheless excellent translations of Tolkien's LOTR to film and that they represent probably the best that could have been done under the present circumstances.
3. Those who have separated the films from the book believing that Jackson virtually from the beginning was only using the book as a framework for his own story. They like the films - although they accept criticisms of their lapses - and the book, but they don't confuse the two. They also find no problem with Jackson's deviations since they do not believe that it matters.
4. Those who separate the films from the book but whose disappointment is such that their enjoyment of the films is lessened. Furthermore, the geometrically progressive nature of Jackson's changes (more in each succeeding film) make enjoyment of the films problematic; that is, they like the first one best, the second one considerably less and they are very much anxious about the third. These people believe that Jackson has not only changed the story and for the worse, but that the quality of the films is decreasing as they go along in the main because Jackson is not dealing successfully with the changes that he himself has made.
5. Those for whom the films are an anathema because they appear to be a poor conterfeit and mockery of the story on which they are ostensibly based. These folks love the book, looked forward (with trepidation, it's true) to the films, believing because of all the pre-release hoopla that they would on the whole be faithful to the book. They were expecting a "definitive" film version of LOTR and were badly disappointed. In fact, they are now of the opinion that they have "been had" and are not about to forgive Jackson for a golden opportunity wasted. They went to FOTR and most probably TTT even though they were discouraged by the first film. However the second was too much for many of them and they will probably not wish to be further disappointed by seeing the third.
So you can see that rather than "two camps" we have a considerable range of folks and probably many fall somewhere in between the above five categories. Still, it will be interesting to see where we all wind up after the release of ROTK (and then, probably, after the release of the EE of that film and the compilation of the trilogy).
