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Originally Posted by troutman
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To me (and I get it's just my view) the whole point of LoTR and the Hobbit (but mostly LoTR) was is was an ode to the simple and yet profound strength of ordinary basically rural working class English folk, the point of the book to me was always that in the end none of the 'heroes' matter, Sauron is ultimately defeated by Sam, a gardeners son, not even Frodo, in much the same way the Lord of the Nazgul was ultimately brought low by Merry.
The last act of the book is the liberation of the Shire, again I have no problem with them cutting this for time's sack, but the liberation essentially is Tolkien showing us that when (or if in the real world) these plain simple folk knew their own strength they would become unstoppable.
The films though, in true Hollywood style, are driven by 'the heroes' Aragorn and Gandalf, the films emphasize the great battles and heroic charges while playing the hobbits as mostly comic foils, again the major bad guy in the film outside of Sauron and Saruman is the Lord of the Nazgul, a great king of men brought low by the power of a secondary ring, not the one ring but a lesser ring, in the book Gandulf explains that Gollum was a hobbit like creature before he was warped by the ring, but even he retained some measure of self that the great wring wraiths, Boromir and the like could not maintain.
The book comes back to the theme that these humble simple folk are ultimately far far more powerful than the great figures who they are compared to constantly
My issue with the films was I just didn't think Jackson ever understood this, he made a great fantasy film about heroic battles and shinning knights in armor with a bit of light comic buddy relief from the hobbits