Leaf, that's an excellent analysis- for the first part. But for the latter part I doubt seriously that it was a matter of studio-driven bottom line thinking- Jackson could make anything with the Tolkien brand on it and it would sell like hotcakes. He's like the Beatles, nobody is going to tell him what to do, and if he had filmed a vertbatim rendition of the book T/W would have rubber-stamped its release.
No, the problem I think is that neither Jackson nor Boyens has the vision or sensitivity to let Tolkien take them out of their very narrow comfort zone of cliches and hackneyed tropes; PJ's idol after all is Harryhausen not Fellini. This is the guy who filmed and almost kept a RotK finale featuring Aragorn dueling Sauron mano a mano......
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The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.
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