Is all the "magic" gone?

[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

I second those thoughts, Vanya. Films allow a much smaller degree of imagination than books. Also, there are limits to what you can show on film. Case in point; Galadriel. With all due respect to Cate Blanchett (who I think is very attractive) there is no-one alive who can come close to the beauty of Tolkien's Galadriel. Its just a trivial consequence of fantasy.

That's not to say I don't think the films could have been better; I actually think they could have been considerably better, and they could have come closer to Tolkien's magic if some things had been done differently (Pellenor for example, )

So its a bit of both. The magic had limits on film anyway, but I think the limits were higher than what the end result of the movies sugggest.