With respect, have you looked at fantasy media of the last half-century? The reception of Tolkein's work became one of the greatest magnifications of the problems in "genre writing" in the entire history of the concept, with endless, endless imitation that has so over-saturated the genre that it is legitimately difficult to imagine "fantasy" that doesn't use recycled Tolkein-esque tropes. Ironically, you can even see some of those issues in GoT, though it mainly has the issue of being directionless, misogynistic smut.
I strongly encourage you to read literally any pre-Tolkein fantasy to see what a difference it has.
Honestly I wish we could go back to fantasy about giant hunky dudes killing evil pointy bearded sorcerers with the help of scantily clad warrior ladies.
I think you are wildly underrating the creativity of pre-Tolkien fantasy. I personally have great affection for the writing of Lord Dunsany and there are some people who really like the elements of awe in Lovecraft (to paraphrase Ramsey Campbell), but it's a wide field that I'm not really an expert on.
With respect, have you looked at fantasy media of the last half-century? The reception of Tolkein's work became one of the greatest magnifications of the problems in "genre writing" in the entire history of the concept, with endless, endless imitation that has so over-saturated the genre that it is legitimately difficult to imagine "fantasy" that doesn't use recycled Tolkein-esque tropes. Ironically, you can even see some of those issues in GoT, though it mainly has the issue of being directionless, misogynistic smut.
I strongly encourage you to read literally any pre-Tolkein fantasy to see what a difference it has.
Pre-tolkien fantasy is like, wizard of Oz and stuff
Conan is a big one, and its DNA can still be seen in modern Tolkienien fantasy
Honestly I wish we could go back to fantasy about giant hunky dudes killing evil pointy bearded sorcerers with the help of scantily clad warrior ladies.
"And stuff" doing a lot of heavy lifting
I think you are wildly underrating the creativity of pre-Tolkien fantasy. I personally have great affection for the writing of Lord Dunsany and there are some people who really like the elements of awe in Lovecraft (to paraphrase Ramsey Campbell), but it's a wide field that I'm not really an expert on.