from WilliamCH
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Tolkien's original surge of popularity hit during the late 60's precisely among the same folks who were protesting American 'imperialism' in Vietnam and the like: yet the hippies didn't seem to mind the Returning King as written. And this was a generation raised on Hemingway and Salinger and Faulkner.
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You are correct in that statement. However, we are discussing the change of things as they happened in the movies. For that it is important to remember two things: 1) the time the books were written by JRRT and the mores and values that he subsribed to as a man of his time, and 2) the films were released in the 21st century - a good two generations removed from the hippie era you refer to. The vast majority of the movie crowd came of age long after the Sixties were dead and gone.
I really do not want to get into a huge sidebar here, but being 58 years old and having lived through this period, the idea that everyone between ages 16 and 29 was running around for several years with shoulder length hair, beads, fringe jackets and smoking dope is a gross misreprentation of the period. It is no more accurate than saying all young male African-Americans today are rappers or gangsta's.
But that is a topic for some other forum.