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When Hama demanded their weapons when first arriving at Meduseld, nobody was willing to comply. It was the fact that Aragorn surrendered Anduril, begrudging as it was, that convinced the others to disarm as well. They all knew how important Anduril was, and if Aragorn would be separated from it they had no standing to hold on to their weapons.

The whole palantir plot point is really important in the books. Gandalf explicitly says that Sauron will be confused for the next day or so as to what has happened to the ring and the hafling he presumed Saruman caught and advised them all to try 5o make the best of these hours. After Aragorn showed himself and was able to wrest control of it from Sauron, Sauron went into panic mode. He thought that Aragorn now had the ring and decided to attack Minas Tirith much sooner than he originally planned, before the king could return. It plays well into his belief that they would use the ring to challenge him and after his defeat at the pelennor fields, he is convinced that Aragorn has the ring.
So basically, Gandalf and then Aragorn tricked him to get his attention focused on themselves instead of Frodo and sam

People often criticise the movies for their character changes, citing characters like Faramir, Denethor and Aragorn, and that is a valid criticism. But another character who I rarely see mentioned is Elrond, and that ticks me off because I think the changes made to Elrond are as bad or worse than any of the more commonly criticised ones

Arwen, as a half elf, has the exceptional privilege, given by Iluvatar, to be allowed to choose her place amongst the Children of Iluvatar, and she decides her place is amongst Men because of Aragorn. Elrond is naturally upset by this, but as one of the wisest people on Middle Earth he understands she has the right to make that decision (if God himself tells your daughter to make a choice you don't just go "nope! I make this choice instead) and accepts it as long as he knows she will be left in good hand (hence the demand Aragorn becomes king first)

Film Elrond, on the other hand, denies Arwen her choice (i.e. tries to seize a divine gift from his daughter), then manipulates her ("gaslights" her, using words like "don't I deserve your love") as well as Aragorn to try and break up the two, and refuses to reforge Narsil even though he knows it would help Aragorn in his quest (i.e. he sabotages the efforts against Sauron for his own desires).

He is redeemed in the end, and normally I wouldn't oppose a character like that - a foolish man doing foolish things for selfish reasons has a revelation of how wrong he is and changes course, pretty typical redemption arc - but this is Elrond, one of the wisest beings in the story. Elrond shouldn't be redeemed, he shouldn't be this viceful in the first place!

The only benefit of the doubt I can give Jackson on this is that he didn't actually understand how despicable his Elrond's actions are and/or that Elrond was supposed to be wise and morally good character, instead of intentionally wanting to ruin his character (who is possibly my favorite in the books, hence I'm so serious about this). We need more debunkings of movie-Elrond!

What I think is a very important plot change is that in the movie, the Videocall of Sauron-Pippin through the Palantir ends violently with Aragorn taking the stone. This must have made Sauron understand that the Palantir was not in Isengard and Pippin was not imprisoned by Saruman.
The fact that Aragorn held the stone for 1 second, probably though was not enough for Sauron to see him as he truly was. When Pippin describes (in the book) his dialogue with Sauron, Sauron asked him who he was, he at first did not answer until it was impossible not to answer and he then said: a Hobbit. And then it seemed to him that Sauron saw him and he laughed. So, probably, the way Palantiri worked (or at least how they worked in the hands of Sauron), they needed some time until he could really see the other person using it.

"On second thought, let's not go to Edoras. 'Tis but is a silly place."

I really wished that they had included Halbarad, the Dunedain, Elrohir and Elladan.  They were missed out on, much like Imrahil of Dol Amroth, and I think that they would have been well received by fans who had only seen the movies.  I remember that as a kid, reading even just their names in the books sparked my imagination-

Yes, we have A LOT of changes this week. And answering your question - the craziest one for me is that we didn't even start The Return of the King book yet. All of that is still happening in The Two Towers, and some things (for Aragorn and Arwen especially) were established in The Fellowship of the Ring.

Speaking of Aragorn carrying Narsil around since they left Rivendell, he also carried the shards (or at least the broken hilt) around with him before that. They weren't just on display

In the movie Sauron doesn’t recognize Aragorn as the heir. Sauron realizes who he is when he reveals the sword.

I thought the most egregious change in the movie was the scene in which Gandalf returned as Gandalf the White and Haggrid kicked in the door and told him "your a wizard Gandalf."

Aragorns and Arwens sons name is Eldarion

In the Actors Commentary, Billy Boyd revealed, origincally, there was going to a be shot of Pippin inside of the Palantír when an asteral projection of himself is surrounded by flames, being psychically and magically tortured by Sauron. Though his part was filmed in front of a bluescreen, the effects were never done as this bit was cut from the movie.

I am I the only one who finds it hilarious that Gimli is still in full armor. It's like he is expecting a fight no matter where he is.

As far as movie Aragorn goes… Saruman didn’t believe that Aragorn was anything other than a Ranger and even said something about Gandalf thinking he found the heir and how that was ridiculous since “that line was broken”.
So why would Sauron think differently? The initial touch would have just been some rando. And I think actually sets up really well for Aragorn later to be like “hey b*tch. It’s actually me.”
As for the rest of this video, I appreciate hearing the differences between the two and it makes it interesting knowing how the movies were pieced together

I would like to gently remind everyone that adaptations from books to movies aren’t easy.
It’s absolutely valid to be disappointed when a movie doesn’t match the book. But please remember that you can’t put the experience of reading a book into a visual media like that. Especially with the detail of Tolkien.
“Adaptation” is an important description. I understand wanting to see everything you imagined on the big screen. But it just doesn’t work like that… even if it were a tv series instead.

I've ... struggled with these movies since about the second viewing. I grew up on the old cartoon version of The Hobbit, which I loved so much that I read the whole series in elementary school ... and probably reread it at least a dozen times before these movies came out. In the first LOTR movie there were small irritating changes, which by movie 3 had grown so huge that I could no longer enjoy the experience. And by the time of the hobbit movie, the first movie was almost physically painful to see, so I have never watched the rest.

I don't recall that you have done an analysis of all the deep lore Peter Jackson changed for the films, but just one of the small but irritating changes he made was claiming that dwarves weren't good at covering distance, during the uruk-hai hunting sequence. Not only could they cover vast distances at speed, they could do so bearing heavy burdens, and their ability to do so was actually critical to the plot of the Hobbit. The wording in the book implied that Gimli wasn't as fast as the others, but could keep going just as long if not longer. Having all of that lore not merely ignored but actually reversed, all for a quick one-line joke that didn't even land properly, has always been a point of extreme irritation for me. And the movies are FULL of such misquotes, bad references, and utterly nonsensical lore-inaccuracies. No matter how I try, I can't stop criticizing these movies all the way through. If I were to do a movie commentary on them, it would be twice as long as the extended editions with very few positives. So I'm really glad you're doing this series to show everyone just how much they miss if they've only seen the movies.

13:24 - best rationalisation I can think of is that just seeing him isn't enough to tip off Sauron.  When he reveals himself later, he's specifically looking back into the Palantir and matching wills against Sauron, whereas here he just grabs it briefly, so all Sauron would've seen is some guy.  Later on, Aragorn specifically declares himself as Isildur's heir (iirc, he even shows off Anduriel as proof he is who he says he is).

I feel like the removal of the Grey Company is one of the "cleanest" cuts from the movie, in that it lifts out without much effect, just a little bit of reassigning of some actions/lines to others, but their absence alone doesn't require any significant plot rearrangement. I'm a big fan of both the books (read long before the movies existed) and the movies, and I really don't mind all the changes. There's so much that HAD to be cut for time and for adaptation (IE- stuff that works in a  book that doesn't work in a movie well, like loooots of internal dialogue), and once you cut things, you have to alter other things to make the narrative glue together. Nothing's perfect, but I still enjoy the movies greatly, and rewatch them maybe 2-5 times a year.

The cutting of the grey company is a huge shame, I think.
But seeing as Jackson cut any reference to Anarion, to the reason for the contested lineage of Gondor, to The kingdom of Arnor at all, - I understand why he wouldn't bother with all these extra people, just to show that Aragorn was already a chief of the remnants of the Northern Dunedain.

But, if they hadn't added in all that 45 minutes of non canon filler in the previous film, they definitely could have fit them in.

Really, most of the biggest changes in the trilogy came down to where they wanted the second film to end.

Your opening paragraph is absolutely on point