Without the books you wouldn't have any of the movies so I suppose that's the simple answer.

However, I also think that the books were written from a wonderfully fleshed out "World-Building" point but as for overall storytelling and such, they are dense, slow and sometimes hard to stay engaged in.

A quick, obvious defense about movie changes: They are made for time, budget and also, for interpretation. To me, complaining about a movie that makes changes to a storyline, be it to cut time or to make it simpler, is the same logic that people have when they hear a band play a song live and expect it to be exactly like a studio recording. The spirit and overall feel of the song may still be the same but it has to change because it is being created anew and in a slightly different medium or setting.

For the LOTR movies, what is spot in is the feel and spirit. To me, it feels EPIC, it feels magical, the stakes feel real and earned. It's the music certainly and the costumes, the settings, all of it help create a Middle Earth that is alive with possibility.

So, will some characters be cut, even ones that might be somewhat pivotal and their storylines added in to other characters' backstories? Of course, otherwise the movies would each have been 7 or 8 hours long. Rather than introduce a whole other slew of characters, they just use already existing characters (The Dead Army for example) to help get to the next point in the story.

As a filmmaker myself, that's where some of the fun comes in actually and what helps make it an art form. How do we interpret this story for the screen? What makes the most sense thematically, which is much more important in a film than a book which can take chapters and tangents to prove a point since you usually read it in chunks and not all at once, as opposed to a movie?

Movies can overwhelm us with emotions and themes since we can get swept up in the storyline all at once without a break. With a story as overreaching as LOTR, to even get close to some of these feelings is a miracle. To actually follow through and arrive at a conclusion to this journey that feels deep, rich with adventure and romance all in less than 10 hours is nothing less than remarkable.

I think it also helps to look at the LOTR's movies as one long movie as opposed to three films, since they were shot all at once and essentially are meant to be viewed like a long winding journey. The books sometimes, with its strange pacing and structure of splitting the characters up for entire books rather than intertwining the plots, just don't feel nearly as epic. The world that was created and the story WERE, but the execution of it wasn't.

So I guess I'd say, the books were more important, but I enjoyed the movies more.

Take care all.