There's a distinction between creative -license and -arrogance.

there is always an inherent bit of arrogance anytime someone reworks the works of the original creator, so i'm still not sure what you're distinction is. just by attempting to update/modify the story signals you think your version is better. arrogance.

If someone is rolling into a Tolkien IP believing they're better at high fantasy than Tolkien, it goes from "arrogance" to "megalomania".

Sometimes it really is best to minimize the artistic license and let the masters work shine through.

There's a difference in several orders of magnitude, to me, in adapting an unknown stage play into a movie (for example) vs adapting Tolkien.

In the former, you could argue your own creative vision might be "better" (in the loose sense), given the lack of popular success of the source.

In the later, it'd be a fair amount of hubris to assume you can make something more beloved than Tolkien's works.

Hubris the size and shape of someone named Jackson? The BBC for making an animated Hobbit? No written tome is ever going to come out unscathed in a TV/film adaptation. Have you seen the Amazon Jack Ryan series, the Without Remorse movie?

Hubris, arragance, etc. You're coming back to words that mean the same thing. Just because it's a work you personally are not familiar does not make it more/less egregious that someone has taken the material in their own direction from the original. It's just that you have a personal connection to the orginal and may or may not like the reworked version.

It's not a subjective but rather objective evaluation -- millions of more people are aware of Tolkien lore than... something off-Broadway.

That's why Amazon paid $$$$ for the rights.

It's unreasonable to ignore that and claim that taking the same amount of artistic license with Tolkien is the same as taking it with something else.

It is objectively different to adapt a more popular and well-known work.