Literature The bedrock of the modern fantasy genre
The influence of Tolkien's epic high fantasy saga has had on the fantasy genre, and Anglo-European culture in general, has been very great indeed. There is no aspect of culture that it has not affected, and no middle class household seems to be complete without a dog-eared copy on a shelf somewhere.
The books themselves are long-winded and verbose, but every seemingly superfluous adjective and apparently throw-away reference conceals an almost obsessive degree of thought and care. A lifetime was poured into fleshing out Middle-Earth, and the result is a fictional 'world', the detail of which is perhaps unrivalled outside of real life.
The trilogy of films has by most accounts done the novels justice, and 'may' be Ur Example of Adaptation Distillation at its best. The writings of the man himself have proven a hard act to follow, with many 'successors' and fan-writers struggling to produce material of a comparable style and/or standard.
Literature A modern day Pilgrim's Progress
I never thought I'd be comparing J.R.R. Tolkien's legendary fantasy book with a previous (and obvious) Christian fantasy story, John Bunyon's Pilgrim's Progress, but that's basically what I came away with as an overall impression, that Frodo's quest to destroy the One Ring would become both an internal and external struggle of the soul for the main character to remain steadfast in his journey, all the while war wages across Middle-earth among the various races. I can see why Frodo would be considered a Christ figure in this story, as he struggles to rid the land of the overbearing evil contained in the One Ring and only he could accomplish this task...which he fails near the end, though circumstances (and quite possibly a higher power) would take the Ring to its final destruction.