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...And I can accept all those things to make a good adaptation of LOTR. Mr. Jackson doesn't radically change the story that's being told, or recast the characters to make a fit, and he isn't inventing something out of thin air. He is using material already supplied by Tolkien to create a tailor-made fit for film.

In other words, I can accept: "That happened, or will happen, but not quite that way." Much tougher to accept is: "That didn't happen. At all."

True enough, but Arwen replacing Glorfindel was something that did not happen in the books, and it worked. Granted, the Aragorn "death" was a total change, but it was used to work in material from the Arwen relationship, which is in the books. And the warg attack was something that could have happened in the books, but been ommitted for editing reasons. Likewise, the trip to Osgiliath was not in the books, but it works in material and dialogue that were in the books, and ties it together thematically with what is going on in Gondor, which the viewer would otherwise be unaware of. I suspect that PJ's changes will make a lot more sense once we have seen ROTK and can judge the series of movies as a whole.