I'll quote a comment from @Eldy Dunami that prompted the idea for this thread:
Tolkien drew a ton of inspiration from historical literary and mythological works, of course, but his treatment of industrialism (most things related to Sauron and Saruman), degradation of nature, colonialism (Númenor), the horrors of industrial warfare (the original version of the Fall of Gondolin), and other themes clearly mark his work as the product of a modern—specifically, 20th century—author. That's not a criticism; I think all art reflects the context its creator(s) lived in. Adaptations are no exception, so I'm not bothered by ROP being recognizably the product of 21st century writers. (bolding my emphasis)
That got me thinking (beyond the initial thought of "that's a good point") "all art reflects the context its creator(s) lived in." I agree that it's no different for adaptations, so I'm not surprised creators of adaptations and writers of fanfiction, inspired by Tolkien, will also have other influences when creating art. Yes, if you create Tolkien fanfiction, Tolkien is probably your largest influence, but like Tolkien, you are influenced by many factors. Readers, fans, critics of the art also bring their own experiences that color their opinions when reading any adaptation. I guess the questions I want to ask are really loaded, but perhaps we can put our brains together and get a few theories going.
What makes a "good" adaptation? What makes an adaptation "bad"? All adaptations change parts of the canon of what they're adapting. What makes one change to the canon more "acceptable" than others? How many "changes" to the canon are acceptable before you wonder can this even be called an adaptation? Is there some sort of scale? Like are some changes worse than others? And I'm just predicting there will be a variety of answers to these questions.
One final thing, that also prompted my thoughts. I enjoyed the Bakshi Lord of the Rings adaptation, even pantsless Aragorn and Viking Boromir never really bothered me. In Jackson's Lord of the Rings, I accepted a waffly Aragorn and a softer (plus strawberry-blonde wigged!) Boromir, because it made sense for the story Jackson was telling. Those characters wouldn't have worked in Tolkien's books, but the changes worked in the films, because it was consistent to their own setting. This is of course, all my opinion and I expect others will disagree. I had not seen the Rankin/Bass Hobbit adaptation and when I watched it recently, I really did not like it. I was quite bothered by the changes to the canon. I'll give it credit for wanting to make the story about Bilbo, but I particularly didn't like the conclusion. It was quite a poor conclusion (basically Gandalf says 8 of the dwarves died at the battle, but the only ones we know are Thorin and Bombur. We are left with no idea which dwarves died, because there's no scene of Bilbo with the surviving dwarves at the end. It's just Gandalf tells us 8 dwarves died, that's it. Bilbo goes home.) And it got me thinking why did that change bother me more than say a waffly-Aragorn did? I think it just comes down to good storytelling vs. bad storytelling (in my opinion). It's not the changes that bother me, it's wanting to have an explanation for why an adaptation changed something. And if you are going to change something, explain it better so it's consistent with the story you're trying to tell.
This is something I used to have extremely strong opinions on, as those unfortunate enough to have shared the OG Plaza's Movies forum with me in 2009–11 may recall, but my views have shifted over the years. I try to avoid the terms "good adaptation" and "bad adaptation" these days in favor of "faithful adaptation" and "unfaithful adaptation." That's usually what people mean by good or bad, but I think the unexamined assumption that faithfulness is inherently good and unfaithfulness is inherently bad impedes people's ability to think critically about adaptations, much less have meaningful conversations about them. I emphasize that it's unexamined assumptions I object to. If people have sincere, considered convictions about why—and, just as importantly, how—adaptations should be faithful, that's great! But I think one of the main reasons the purist debates of yore involved so much talking past each other is that most people were only marginally aware of their preconceptions about adaptations.
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). I'll point out and, perhaps, grumble about changes when I recognize them, but if the resulting story succeeds at what it's trying to do—if it's a good movie or show—that's the most important thing in my mind. The exception would be if I think what it's trying to do is inherently bad (either in general or for something connected to Middle-earth), but that's a very high bar. Even with the Hobbit films, I think one of the many problems there was Jackson going for an untenable waffle, trying to include all the epic fantasy stuff that interested in him and all the parts of the book that people would get up in arms about if they were excised (even more than they'd object to changes). If the films had had a clearer, more consistent vision of what they wanted to be, I think they might have been better, even if my enjoyment would still have been hampered by me not wanting to see The Hobbit turned into a typical fantasy epic.
Some other things I want to toss out for discussion...
