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Are you still here? I think the orcs are meant to be a corrupted form of life, as Sauron corrupts whatever he touches. They look ugly to signify the corruption visited upon them by Sauron and I felt like it's implied that it's not their fault, it's just the nature he imposed on them. I thought their scariness is meant to spring from their numbers and their brutality. They outnumber the "good guys" greatly.

I loved the trees. The March of the Ents is one of my favorite parts of the books. I loved the whole idea that nature itself would rise up to fight Sauron and I thought it had a nice symmetry with the way the Orcs were corrupted in their nature by Sauron.

Like you, the eagles were not one of my favorite parts. I guess Tolkien just really liked eagles but personally I found them a bit twee.

The Ghost Army, wasn't that about the completion of their promise to fight Sauron? Once they had fulfilled their promise, they died properly and were released from their debt. For the Ghost Army, their goal was to go to a peaceful death, and they could only do it by fulfilling their oath. So again I felt like that was about nature making things whole.

Pippen annoyed me too but Pippen and Merry are essentially teenagers (the hobbits have a longer lifespan than humans and I think one of the books laid out how hobbit-years would correspond to human-years). I think Sam is meant to be in his twenties (hobbit-wise). In the books, Bilbo leaves when Frodo comes of age, which would be about our 21 but was their, maybe 33? And then years pass before Frodo leaves with the ring, so by the time of the main action he is I think about 50. In the movies, that interval is removed to create a sense of urgency, so Frodo is still a young man in the movies. As a result, it is a bit jarring that Merry and Pippin, who look his age, act a lot sillier than Frodo.