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On the subject of 'mercy' I wonder if that's why Faramir's character was changed. My own feeling is that Faramir's decision to release Frodo was based as much as anything on compassion, pity & mercy. Jackson & the writers seem to have missed this completely. The result is that they have had to 'rationalise' the character, & ended up tying themselves up in knots in the process. The movie Faramir simply doesn't work. He comes across as brutal & cowardly in the Henneth Annun scenes - holding a sword to the throat of an unarmed, frightened, confused & deeply distressed prisoner, & standing by (but refusing to look), while his men brutally torture Gollum. In later scenes he comes across as weak & despairing, throwing his life away for no other reason than he wants daddy to love him.
Faramir can only work at all as Tolkien wrote him, & with his primary motivations his idealism, compassion & high ideals. If these things are removed in a desire to make him more 'believable' he actually becomes unnecessary to the plot, & to an extent drags it down to a more mundane, even a more sordid place.
Still, it is, as I said, a movie for our times - more cynical & brutal times perhaps. Jackson wants to end his story with a 'happy ever after' but he seems to believe that that can be achieved simply by force of arms & a willingness on the part of individuals to sacrifice themselves. What he leaves out of the equation is the selfless compassion & mercy for the undeserving which are so central to the book & to Tolkien's overall message.
These movies don't teach us anything, they just confirm our predjudices about the 'enemy'. What they fail to convey is idea of the Long Defeat. This is one of Tolkien's most important ideas in LotR. Its actually a morally liberating idea - if one cannot achieve ultimate victory in this world by one's own actions, one is freed up to behave in a morally right way, through the knowledge that ultimate victory is not dependent on one's own actions but on something greater. Without that knowledge there can be no trust, & without trust there can be no mercy.
Hence, like Saruman, the writers ended up caught in a cleft stick of their own cutting, & cannot tell Tolkien's tale - they must tell their own. I just don't think its as good....
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