From a lengthy discussion on why "Edit-The-Hobbit efforts are doomed to failure"

After explaining why the Hobbit movies can't be edited into a good product:

IMO the craziest thing about the Hobbit movies is that if you think about them critically you start to realize that the same flaws nearly took down the LOTR trilogy. Did you guys know that Peter Jackson originally shot a final showdown battle in Return Of The King between Aragorn and Sauron? I shit you not, it's in the behind the scenes DVD, and the huge CGI troll Aragorn fights was originally intended to be a badass Walking-Around Sauron like in the Fellowship prologue. It's a fucking miracle that they slapped themselves and said "We Better Not."

...

I think that Peter shot the Aragorn half of TTT+ROTK in a very Aragorn-centric way just as a desperate backup in case this weird story of

"two homoerotic leprechauns being led through a swamp by a CGI skeleton-man on a quest to throw away magic jewelry"

didn't test well with audiences and he had to fall back on telling a more intelligible Disney-fantasy story of

"a prince and his cool comic-relief sidekicks returning to the prince's kingdom, fighting awesome battles against a demon king and winning a princess's hand."

I mean which of these is the easier movie pitch? It's not really a contest, huh? If the entire Fellowship had gone to Mordor together, I think poor Sam might not have even made it into the script. But Tolkien gave PJ no choice. It was all because Tolkien divided the story threads that Peter even gave the Hobbits a fighting chance. In the new movies everyone's in the same group so Peter naturally gravitates towards the Aragorniest character.