Did y'all read the same books I did?
I started reading the Lord of the Rings when I was 13. EVERY year for the next ten, I'd reread it... Fellowship of the Ring would be the first book I'd pick up at the start of the new year. And I think I've read almost every bit of extra info on Middle Earth available before the movies came out...
My feelings on the movies differ from those mentioned. While I thought Jackson did a wonderful epic fantasy, it just wasn't LOTR to me. The first issue was Arwen: she was NOT a major character in the books. Beloved of Aragorn, yes. Daughter of Elrond, yep. Major fighter? Nope... don't recall anything about her ever touching a weapon in the books. Although I didn't mind so much the scene with Elrond trying to talk her into leaving Middle Earth: Arwen was considered the reincarnation of Luthien Tenuvial, who also made the choice to remain in Middle Earth with her human husband. Beyond that, the amount of screen time Arwen had bothered me...
Next issue: the Two Towers. There were more issues there for me than I really WANT to think about. The Two Towers (movie) is where I decided to treat the movies as just an epic fantasy, not LOTR. WAY too much time spent on Helm's Deep, which meant less time for other things. Oh... the elves helping at Helm's Deep? Didn't happen: the only elves there were Legolas and Elrond's sons. The battle shown at the begining of the movie where sauron fell and Isildur claimed the One Ring was called the Last Alliance of Elves and Men for a reason...
Now, the biggest issue I had: the dropping of the Scouring of the Shire from Return of the King. Some here have said it was anticlimatic. You missed the point. The genesis of LOTR came about during WWI, where many British men (including Tolkien) went away to fight the Great Enemy and won... just to return home to major problems. This, to me, was THE biggest break from traditional fantasy: there really was no "and they lived happily ever after": they came home to a country that was ruined, the major "hero" was a wreck (Frodo had to sail to the Undying Lands with Bilbo to find any comfort), and LOTS of hard work was ahead of those who remained...
And those were just the biggest problems I had...
BTW: it wasn't Sauron who created the Uruk Hai, it was Saruman. Really, when you get right down to it, Sauron never really created anything BUT the One Ring: orcs were preversions of elves "created" by Sauron's old master Morgoth (and there was a suggestion that trolls might be preverted versions of ents), the Ringwraiths were (at least in part) created with the help of the elves (who taught Sauron how to make the Rings of Power). And there were a couple times where it was pointed out that the Uruk Hai of Isengard were superior to the orcs of Mordor...
Oh... before I forget... the Silmarillion. Great chunk of backstory for the War of the Ring. However... go grab a bible, and start reading right at the begining. If you start to get bored, you want to skip through all the creation of the world and it's peoples in the Silmarillion: about half the book...
Ok... i'll get off my soapbox now...