the movies were shit. is you were a fan of the books growing up you were a nerd, but the movies made that shit mainstream.
The movies were fantastic dude. The books are a boring slog because Tolkein was a sperg obsessed with minutiae and language. He was also an unrepentant racist.
Jackson made an epic trilogy more in the vein of Lawrence of Arabia then anything. Sweeping landscapes, giant battles, one of the best soundtracks by Howard Shore I've ever heard.
Game of Thrones series is as just of high quality. Its not about making nerds mainstream. Its just telling a story that is honestly pretty fucking awesome, the first three books are some of the best drama filled with epic set pieces I've read. Much like LOTR when it was made cinematic, which improved it tenfold. Hopefully the writers can adapt and fix many of the flaws in GRRM's later work because he kind of sucks now.