I have a lot of criticism for some of the plot changes that jackson made but I'll credit him for this: his films are the first dramatic sword & sorcery type movies that got the tone right and aren't cringe worthy. The previous attempts at LOTR are awful.
The LotR movies were a high water mark, even if they aren't perfect. I wish Peter Jackson made a movie for Children of Húrin, though that's probably not happening for many reasons.
There was Conan the Barbarian before them. But pretty much everything else in the genre was mediocre or cringe-worthy.
On the other hand, I remember fondly the movie nights a local sci-fi club used to run until the mid-2000s. There were so many terrible Conan clones that were enormously entertaining. And there were some brilliant moments in the early LOTR movies. Such as "Where There's a Whip".