Watch this (LOTR):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?src_vid=l8yOdAqBFcQ&feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_788493&v=8Tgi-j56ueU

Now this (TES):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuB7magUmjg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKqk2Jq61M8

Bethesda shouldn't even try to make epic battles in a TES game.

I enjoyed the battle for Whiterun. It was never going to be on a massive scale, but it was still fun to be a part of, in my opinion.

Well of course a battle in a movie is going to be a lot cooler, you can't have that many people on screen at once in a video game. Personally I think Bethesda did a pretty good job with the battles in Skyrim. I'll admit the battle for Bruma was a kind of a dissapointment, but I enjoyed most of Skyrim's battles.

The Battle of Whiterun was fantastic. It was big enough to were it was believable.

My mid-high range PC can support 30 vs 30 on the same screen without FPS hits.
A top range gamer PC can likely support 80 vs 80.
The same workstation that made the CGI for the movie can easily support 300 soldiers on each side in the battle for whiterun.

It's a matter of computing power available, not how much Bethesda should "try".