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My usual reaction to this question used to be, "Damage the book? How could it? It's right there on my shelf, same as it ever was."
I think that mindset comes from the pre-internet days. As a young Tolkien fan I read and re-read TH and LotR, but I didn't really have anybody to talk about them with. Whatever I thought of a particular movie adaptation really only affected me. Fandom was a much more personal experience.
Along comes the internet, suddenly there's a virtual community -- well, actually more like a number of (sometimes) overlapping communities. And I think really the question now is about how movie adaptations affect the conversation about a particular story, and along what kind of timeline. Right now, today, if you are talking to someone and you both declare that you are fans of The Hobbit, some clarification is in order. You might be fans of two fairly radically different things.
Probably at some point there were (still are?) Hobbit fans who despaired over revisions that altered their favorite story, and for whom the Lord of the Rings sequels were unwanted and unnecessary. "Middle-earth is so dark and depressing and mundane now!" Some of us original Star Wars fans have undergone such a sea-change within our lifetimes.
The real questions, for me, are, "How are the movies affecting the conversations I am having about Tolkien right now?" and with thoughts of my son in mind, "How will they affect those conversations going forward?"
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