Absolutely. Peter Jackson does such great violence to the characters that the films are a pale shadow of the books. I truly believe PJ is incapable of subtlety of any kind. Game of Thrones was made to be adapted. LOTR was not.
And a gazillion hours of "extra material" without Old Tom? Please be serious.
While I enjoyed the LOTR movies and think PJ did about as good a job anyone could have, I agree he had real difficulty with characterization.
The problem is that it was just a really, really difficult story to film.