I can understand. If I like an author I don’t mind extra stuff like that and that is much more tolerable than some showrunner injecting their crap into someone else’s story like diversity, lgbt, refugee allegory, etc.

But from an editors view there is plenty you could cut

I'd cut out the 4 chapters of gandalf and pippin riding across the plains and talking about rohan and grass while we just left frodo and same on a cliffhanger, frodo possibly dead from Shelob. Oh and bombadil. Put that over in the Hobbit and have the sword just be a gift from Bilbo.

Terrible pacing all round actually.

The one thing the movies shouldn't have cut was the mouth of sauron. That changes everything.