Well, that's the difference between writing a good book and making a watchable movie. If you'll recall... The main story is about a ring and the ring bearers and the mission to rid middle Earth of its evil. Side story was the restoration of the King to his rightful place. As a movie it was already plenty long and the main story was already told. The scouring would have been small in scope by comparison... But a lot of screen time. It was enough movie already. And Jackson didn't ignore it completely... He gave space to the scouring when Frodo was using Galadriel's mirror.
Oh yeah "the evil" like "the evil" that moved right into the Hobbits' home and took over in the guise of one of Sauron's minion's Saruman A.K.A Sharkey...
yeah just minor little bits of the story... [/sarc]
I never thought that the Scouring of the Shire was as central a portion to the story as some apparently did. For me, the most inexcusable variation from the book was having Frodo push Gollum into the Crack of Doom instead of Gollum having his own obsession with the Ring cause him to become off balance in his infatuation with evil and topple over to meet his death.
The whole point of the “scouring if the shire” is that it IS world as it exists in the forth age compared to the third age. The last of the elves are leaving middle earth, the last of the ancient good and evil that have been around since the first age - the world is VERY different now. The point is that man and man-kind are on their own. They have to do things for themselves. The scouring of the shire was the first crisis that the returning hobbits had to handle completely on their own.
It sets the bridge between the magical world of old, and a world that will transition to one like our own. The events will fade away to legend, myth, and eventually become simply unbelievability.
The movie was a complete rip off and a bastardized “Americanized” sickeningly sweet ending that ruins the movie, IMHO.