I believe that very few people knowledgeable about drama would agree with such an opinion. Arguing that any writer of an adaptation is inferior to Tolkien and hence that any change or addition whatsoever is automatically "negative" elevates the author to a godlike status, and the creators of an an adaptation thus commit the crime of Lèse-majesté. This logic implies that there is no real need for a screenwriter, and certainly no need for creativity: all that a writer of an adaptation need do is copy passages from a book, making sure that the adaptation follows the book word for word.


There was a discussion about this back in the day concerning The Hobbit movies. Someone asked whether it would be better to film the book completely as written, page by page, with no additions or changes. My opinion was no: what would be the point of watching the resulting movie? You would know everything about the movie in advance, with no chance for surprises or appreciation of creative thought.


In the case of The Rings of Power, as many have pointed out, there is no "story" to follow, in that the source material comprises a few short paragraphs and a timeline of major events: no plots, no drama, and no dialog. Therefore, the worth of the adaptation lies in whether the writers can "breathe life" into this outline in a way that is both creative and that follows the themes and major events of the original material. The additions should add something that enhances the story. In ROP, an example would be Galadriel's reaction to her beloved brother being killed "in a dark place by agents of Sauron". The source material has nothing whatsoever to say about this; the showrunners used this gap as a foundation for her character arc, where her brother's death led to an obsession with finding Sauron.


The additions to the story should also show some literary sophistication, not simply use the common cliches that often dominate television screenwriting. For the Sauron story, for example, the writers have drawn on themes from Milton's Paradise Lost and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Some may again interpret this as Lèse-majesté, but the story that they presented is an interesting take on the character and his history. Is this "fanfic"? Yes, in the sense that Paradise Lost is, as someone recently pointed out, fanfic based on the Bible.

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