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However I thought it was very wrong to have him kill the Mouth of Sauron.~Mith
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Oh definitely, that was completely inexcusable in my opinion. I can't even chalk this one up to "trying to reach a more modern audience" defense, or the "modern audience wouldn't understand the era Tolkien was writing in" defense.
There are many many current movies where the evil, bad ambassador is granted parley, and even though you know the guy is as rotten as his teeth usually is, are granted parley. Look at Troy, Gladiator, King Arthur, Braveheart, The Patriot, Kingdom of Heaven all these movies have "Rules of War" and treating with the enemies' ambassador/leader. I saw
Prince Caspian about a week ago (absolutely loved it by the way!) and the evil Telmarine King dude is treated with dignity and respect when he is bartering a deal with the good King Edmund. So, I don't by the "modern audience won't understand" excuse for this one. Beheading the MoS is just inexcusable.
Sometimes it seems like Jackson thought we viewers were stupid and wouldn't "understand," so he had to dumb it down. That's possibly the most aggravating thing about the movies. What is it that the dwarf says in Narnia "You start treating animals like they're dumb and they become dumb?"
Lalaith, which is why when Theoden perks up and is all gun-ho about aiding Gondor, it doesn't make any sense. Quite literally 10 minutes ago Theoden was going on about how he would never help Gondor because what had Gondor done for him!
Gimli definitely seems to be one of the characters that takes a back seat to the talk about what characters were "ruined." Certainly he doesn't get as much mentioning as Faramir. I actually tend to forget about Gimli because I thought his portrayal in FOTR was pretty good. He was used for comic relief, and in Moria I admit that "no one tosses a dwarf" thing was pretty funny, but the 2nd and 3rd time it got old. Anyway, in FOTR Gimli had some comic relief but I don't think he ever lost his dignity. By TTT and ROTK that's changed and Jackson took the comic relief thing way too far with Gimli.