[Nerwen]

The first thing I'd like to say is that Lawrence of Arabia, as a film about real people, may involve more ethical problems than exist in the case of an adaptation of a work of fiction.

Still, if you want to see it as analogous to LotR–

I think (and I believe I've said this before) there are two separate questions here:

1. Is the quality of a film dependent on its faithfulness to its source material? My answer would be no.

2. Is there any obligation (moral, I'm talking about, not artistic) for someone making a film to respect the source material? I should say yes, though how much is certainly something you can argue about.

As a reductio ad absurdum, StW, wouldn't you be screaming if someone produced The Lord of the Rings as a romantic comedy set in New York?

I say this, not because I'm in the anti-movie camp, but because it seems to me that your way of thinking is just as rigid, if not more so, than that of the book purists. Maybe you should accept that some people just don't like the films?