Well, I'm not sure I agree about the character development. The changes to the characters from the books are almost all to give them an internal journey: Aragorn being wishy-washy about the Kingship, Arwen being wishy-washy about cleaving to Aragorn, Treebeard being wishy-washy about going to war, Faramir being wishy-washy taking the goddamn Ring!!!--sorry, that one really annoys me. I don't like most of these changes, but there they are.