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I just don't think there's only one way to "mass marketability". Adaptation is an art, not a mathematical proof.
And you're right that there are obviously future implications to be thought through for any particular approach. Maybe by going down some roads, we will see why the filmmakers ultimately didn't take them. In the case of my hypothetical, you trade the exposition up front for a more mysterious build-up of the Ring. Why does Gandalf seem so unnerved by it? Why does Bilbo have such a hard time giving it up? And who are these dudes in the black cloaks who are sniffing around? Eventually you get the whole story. This is how it works in the book, and it doesn't seem to have hurt Tolkien's mass-appeal.
I think we can stipulate that Jackson's adaptation demonstrably has mass-appeal because his movies made a boatload of money. And naturally there were constraints governing some of the choices he made, and these are worth discussing. But just remember that every time you defend one of Jackson's choices based solely on mass-appeal or cite his box office returns as argument-ending proof of his genius, a skwerl dies. Don't be a skwerl-killer.
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