ROP is clearly just using the Tolkien universe as wrapping paper. No one seems very serious about the lore anymore (or much of anything, really). The barest of efforts will still drive massive revenue so why bother trying very hard?

You will find those that trip over themselves to defend ROP (and new Star Trek, et. al.). This is the target audience. I am not sure what convinced this audience that the new content is good - Part of me suspects it's mostly Stockholm syndrome. Those without the courage to adopt a more stoic attitude towards life.

I feel like if more people would quit consuming pointless shit all the time, we might wind up with better pointless shit. As it stands, anything will generate some amount of revenue when you launch it on Netflix. This is really bad game theory for high quality content producers and the risk/reward tradeoff they have to negotiate with publishers.

"We need 2 years to run the traps on lore" and "casting will be an on-going and convoluted process" == you are kicked out of the Netflix green light meeting without any additional courtesy.