Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Amber, The Black Company , Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series, all of these I eagerly devoured and to this day reread every so often. But it seems that the same profit lusting impulse that leads to Scream 3 in the theaters drives the fantasy book trade. After that it gets redundant. Sanity just gives you the same old crap. It's worse than that.
Sanity is the mark of stability.
Stability is the mark of stasis. Stasis is death. People want to have a little fun once in a while, and not just the sort of fun our mothers approve of. The Lord of The Rings isn't going to be great, no matter what they do. By that I mean it may be a great series, one of the best ever done - but it's never going to live up to our expectations.