I loved the books, and still read them every five years ago or so; for the past 40 years...
Still, I also liked the movies. Their stories were all a twist from the books, but were good by themselves.
Too many critics around here at times.
When the ROTK movie came out, all sorts of people were upset about the absence of the Scouring of the Shire; and they were even more upset when it didn’t appear in the Extended Edition either, saying stuff such as Jackson having more than enough revenue from the previous two LOTR movies to have included it. I do remember those days as if they were yesterday.