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I think that Tolkien covered the major themes so well that the LOTR books are almost impossible to better.
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It's so hard to be original when Tolkiens done almost everything already.
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Wow. You guys make it sound as if Tolkien and LotR was the ultimate fantasy, that it was fantasy, that it is the end all of fantasy, and that is the king of fantasy. I feel really sorry for those pitiful authors out there, trying to scrape together a fantasy story for people who seem to think that there is
nothing after Tolkien.
You two seem to be operating under the thinking that there are only a few major themes and that Tolkien incorporated them all. I almost seem to be getting the impression that there is only one way to write those themes. Well...hate to break it to you, but there are a zillion ways to write those themes. Tolkien did a theme in a very basic way that had never been done in quite that way before. That's why it's popular. He took the theme of a dark lord and hero trying to take over the world and how a nobody peon defeated him (he even put quite a twist on that) and another theme that is called the Cinderella Theme and he wrote the story from there. Sure, Aragorn isn't a girl but he's still a nobody. A ranger. A ranger who is frowned upon. And then he becomes king. It's so brilliant its hardly recognizable.
What I'm trying to say is that there are only a few handfuls of themes in this world (the Cinderella theme and the peon defeats big bad lord theme are two of the major ones) and they are everywhere, even in history (Joan of Arc). What makes a story is how you wrote the theme, the spins and twists you put on the theme, the reality of the setting, and many more factors. To say that Tolkien's way is the only way to write fantasy or that he already did it is like saying there is only one method to do math, and we all know that that is a lie.
Saying that Tolkien did all there was to do, or that there is only one way to write fantasy is denying the genius, the intricacy, the creativity, and the imagination of the human mind.