Originally posted by -ammo-:
Evidently Tom Bombadil is completely ommited due to film making stuff.
If you think about how many different characters there are in the books, and how confusing it can be just when reading them, it makes sense that they would need to remove characters that don't play directly into the main story to prevent the movie from becoming twice as confusing. For each of us who has read the books, there will be 15 people going to see the movie who haven't, and without knowing who the characters are, I could see how it would turn people off to have that kind of confusion... especially across 3 films in two years.
Think of what happened to Dune... Lynch tried to include everything, and it ended up being 4 and a half hours long... so then the studio chopped it up, and essentially ruined it.