The movies were great. They weren't an exact retelling of the books. Any movie that has been an exact retelling has been hard for me to watch - boring.
I like to think of it as a story told by a human some decades later (not a hobbit or the scouring of the shire would be in it) who never read the Red Book but had the story passed down from his father and his father's father, etc., (Beregond of the guard, say).
Yeh, characters were different. Scenes were different. I'd rather have the movie different than not at all.