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I'm with Rimbaud and tar-ancalime on the growth issue. Tar-ancalime, the movie changes you mention were precisely the ones that riled me most, and for exactly the reasons you mention. It's also all about this modern conviction that 'weak morals and purpose are interesting, strong morals and purpose are boring.' (Dear me, I sound like my own grandmother...)
So because weak = interesting, Frodo spends half the films rolling around in psychological agony or trying to give the ring to passing Nazgul, Faramir is tempted by the ring, Theoden sulks in his tent and Aragorn just wants to stay plain ol' Strider.
Ironically, when there really *is* character growth in the text (Merry and Pippin, Eowyn) it was disappointingly portrayed in the film: by confusing a carefree nature with plain stupidity (in the case of M&P); or by failing to show either the extent of the initial psychological problem or the happy final transformation (in the case of Eowyn).
(By the by, a friend who is a writer recently sent me the blurb for her new book which had a sentence something along the lines of "along the way X's journey becomes a personal voyage of discovery". I told her to take it out because it was cheesy and pedestrian, and she did. I feel I have struck a blow for the 'anti-growth' brigade.)
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