"[3] Thompson immediately continued by saying that "the condescension and dismissal that the film has sometimes met in scholarly circles reminds me somewhat of the disdain many of Tolkien's colleagues felt for his fiction", as to them the point was not whether his books were any good, but that "they were broadly popular and hence frivolous.

She finds Wiggins and Timmons just as "disapproving" as Bratman and Croft, stating that all of them suppose that Jackson was trying to be as faithful as possible to Tolkien's "story, tone, and meaning", but "largely failed".

"[2] James Davis praises Thum for seeking to show that the films can help people understand the book, in contrast to taking one side or the other on Jackson's merits.

He notes Thum's well-argued case that Arwen is following in the footsteps of Lúthien, "who was indeed a 'Warrior Princess'", and that Jackson brings out her place in Middle-earth better than Tolkien does in The Lord of the Rings.

Kisor contrasts Croft here with Cara Lane's "less outwardly negative ... assessment ... [but] perhaps more significant losses to the core meaning of the novel", namely that interlace "allows plot threads to dangle for prolonged periods and forces readers to make connections between events on their own", whereas intercutting "substantially alter[s] the structure and tone of the story."

[6][7] Tobias Hock and Frank Weinreich note that Bratman finds the films' emphasis on violence excessive, largely replacing "Tolkien's moral sense".

They dispute the excessiveness, while agreeing that some instances of the loss of Tolkien's moral attitude, like Aragorn's "Show them no mercy" before the Battle of Helm's Deep are "serious" because these "go completely against the religious and ethical worldview" of the book.