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Excellent series of films, absolutely. Faithful to the book, absolutely not. They made serious changes to the source material in the LOTR movies, ones which I think made the movies worse off.
Yes and no. There were core elements that were dropped. But many core elements remained. For Hollywood standards, it was a pretty faithful adoption.
I wish they had kept the scouring of the shire and made Aragorn less unsure of himself.
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Is it leaving the Shire un-scoured?
That's bad, yeah. The hobbit characters lost the final part of their arcs as a result. But the worst thing IMO was discarding Tolkien's story themes because they weren't the story he wanted to tell, like the changes to Faramir or the "go home, Sam" scene in ROTK. The movies are great movies, but when you discard core themes of the original story you aren't making a very faithful adaptation.
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In the spectrum of movie adaptations, the Jackson movies (while I have my problems with them) were fairly faithful. You cannot set the standard at "nothing whatsoever is changed."
Certainly as a Tolkien überfan I wish that certain things had been done better, but there are some elements that one would never hope in a million years for that got included.
The fact the films (even if just the extended editions) made the time for Sam's little monologue about seeing a star through the reeking smoke of Mordor, my single favorite passage from the entire story, will forever give them a pass in my book. It didn't need to be there. Nobody would have noticed or cared if it was absent. But it's there, and that tells me all I need to know about Jackson's appreciation for what Tolkein was doing.
For reference, my nomination for best passage from the Lord of the Rings, taking place at the absolute low point for Frodo and Sam in Mordor (I would share the film scene as well, but I'm having trouble finding a clip"):
"Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo’s side, and putting away all fear he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep."
Or that Aragorn sings Elendil's words when he came to Middle Earth at his coronation. IIRC that's even in the theatrical cut, and without subtitles. It's a baffling inclusion from the perspective of a studio exec that no fan would ever dream of making space for, but it's there.
I love that scene. The inclusion of stuff that's just objectively a bad idea from the perspective of anyone who doesn't havr an unreasonable love for the original. Same thing with the way they include, and play conpletely straight, Galadriel's gift to Gimli, which is an awkward scene that makes no sense without deeper context in both Tolkein lore and chivalric romance, but with that context becomes the absolute core of Gimli's character. Or when Frodo says a prayer to Elbereth (also untranslated) in Shelob's lair. The way they used Tolkein's own words whenever possible is amazing. The lyrics of every bit of background chorus are actual, thematically appropriate Tolkein poems. Same thing with the production/costume design. They snuck Gil Galad's star sigil (a design they didn't even have the rights to) onto all the elven armor in the prologue.
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My standard is not "nothing whatsoever is changed", but I do expect an adaptation to uphold the core themes of the original work. The LOTR movies do not: one of the most important themes of the book is that the One Ring is a powerful temptation, but that there are stronger things still. Friendship, like between Frodo and Sam, is stronger than the pull of the Ring. Faramir is so dedicated to right action that he says "even if I found it by the highway I would not pick it up", and lives up to that claim. Jackson chose to discard those moments (per the movie commentary) because they didn't fit with the story he wanted to tell of the corrupting power of the One Ring, and felt they diminished that aspect. But in so doing, he eliminated one of the core themes of LOTR. That makes them not particularly faithful adaptations.
Faramir did in the movie but there was an interlude.
In my opinion, "there was an interlude" makes it not really the same thing at all. In the movies, Faramir tries to take the One Ring by force (something book Faramir declines to do). The fact that he later comes to his senses and lets the hobbits go does not change the first fact. Faramir in the movies isn't much different from Boromir when you get down to it. Both of them saw a way the Ring could be used to achieve their goals, both of them use force (or attempt to use force) to take it, and both later repent of their sin and do their best to make amends. Which isn't a bad story to tell, but it discards the wonderful example of book Faramir rising above temptation, showing that the seductive voice of evil can indeed be resisted. And worse still, the reason that it was changed wasn't because of the constraints of film as a medium (that would be understandable), but because Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh decided they knew better than Tolkien and just had to have some cheap drama. Which is such a lamentable choice.
No there is still a difference. Boromir repents when the ring has eluded his grasp. Yes he fought valiantly to protect the hobbits but if he had taken the ring I don’t think he gives it back.
Faramir still has the ring basically on his possession yet lets Frodo and the ring go.
The added Faramir subplot also does two things that are important for the film medium: they introduce Osgiliath and also subtly rejig the timelines of the two plots so they are aligned
It also makes Faramir rejecting the ring meaningful. There can be a worf problem where we are told the ring is seductive but Gandalf, Aragorn, Galadriel, and Faramir all pretty easily reject the ring.
Making it harder for Faramir gives it depth.
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