As much as I love the books, I am also a
huge fan of the films. Perhaps because I do not expect every word of the page to be literally translated to the screen.
As to charges that certain characters would never say 'such and such', perhaps this is true of some, but I fail to see why Galadriel would not try to make a humble, doubting little Hobbit feel better about himself and his appointed task, by speaking to him in plainer and kinder terms.
In the interview with Bernard Hill on the ee TT, he says that he himself asked PJ if he could say the line; "No parent should have to bury their child." The line had a personal resonance for someone he knew and he was pleased when PJ agreed. As a parent myself, I found the line (and his acting) very moving and was certainly not about to leap on his lapse of grammar.
The films may indeed have been 'dumbed down' but in my opinion only slightly. Peter Jackson and his team did a wonderful job in filming what many had said were unfilmable books, far better than I had ever imagined.
Give that man an Oscar...oh, they did
