TheBoost said:

So... JRR Tolkien. Pretty good writer from all reports.

He made a classic work "The Hobbit," and then went and wrote some sequals, perhaps you've heard of them, "The Lord of the Rings."

But, when he made LOTR, "The Hobbit" no longer fit his vision. He went back and made, for lack of a better word, a "Special Edition" of it, where he changed a major scene involving his hero, a ring, and a little dude named Gollum.

Because of these changes, the original work that made him famous and allowed him to write LOTR was forever altered, and The Original Uncut Hobbit (The OUH) is available only to a small market of rabid collectors.

And yet I've never heard anyone complain about Tokien's actions (and I'm not complainig here). But what is the fundamental difference between what the Professor did, and what that one dude with the beard and the flannels did to his work?

Films are different from books. They work differently and thus it's ok to apply different standards to them. I allow authors of on-paper fiction a lot more leeway with their work than I allow tv/film creators, who after all are only one among the many people involved in making "their" works. Middle Earth was all JRRT (except his son's posthumous edits in the Simarillion). The OOT is way more than just Mr Lucas.