(Random, confused, blurry train of thoughts here - so don't except a well-worked structured essay)
I have made a few posts about what I call "Tolkienesque fantasy". You know "Tolkien homages", "Lord of the Rings rip-off", "Middle-Earth copies", however you want to call it. Formulaic, "stereotyped", "generic" high/epic fantasy that many call cliche or stale. Shannara, Belgariad, Wheel of Time, Memory Sorrow & Thorn, Fionavar, Thomas Covenant, The First Law, series of the sort.
And I am actually lured into Tolkienesque fantasy and "Lord of the Rings rip-off", and they will always be a type of fantasy I will be interested in reading. Sometimes the books are garbage and they made some of my personal hated fantasy stories ; other times they become my all time favorite fantasy worlds. But the thing with these specific fantasies, and the reason they are one of my go-to fantasy setting, is because of how easily I can see the effort of the author in there (the same way I can easily decide if I like it or not).
You see, everybody complains and comments or enjoy how it is a "formulaic" fantasy. And that's precisely what makes it good for me. Not good as in "that's a good book" but good as in "That's a stuff I am ready to try out". Because The Lord of the Rings is basically a modern literary myth. And thus "Tolkienesque fantasies" are, for me, on the same rank as other myth-retellings, from novels about Greek legends to Shakespeare rewrites. You know what setting it will be in, you know the goals of the story, you know the character-types and the literal "common places" that will be used, you basically know all of the story beforehand... And this is where Tolkienesque fantasy gets interesting, at least for me: because what is important here is what the author has to bring to the table, and given the story is formulaic, whetever is brought up is what will be the jarring, important, influent part.
I enjoy Tolkienesque fantasy because I enjoy variations and twists and - some might not enjoy it but that's how I do it - I don't read these books at first so much so for themselves, for as how clever or funny or twisted of a Lord of the Rings "fanfic" they are. A common criticism for people who enjoy Tolkienesque fantasy is that they stay in a "comfort zone" and just want copy-pastes of the same story over and over again without anything new or any big change (that's how The Sword of Shannara became such a best-seller back in the days). I understand this criticism and people like that do exist - but for me, it is about looking at this "comfort zone" and this "pre-mache setting" precisely so that you can more easily analyze and dissecate the character and worldbuilding, and thus can dig into what the author is subtly (or not) saying right as you are reading.
The First Law's decision to turn everything upside down in term of morality, gathering traditional fantasy villains as protagonists, subverting or inverting the traditional fantasy heroes, switching gods/angels for demons. The Belgariad's decision to make all the "orcs and dwarves and elves" just human ethnicities treated the way traditional fantasy handles non-human species - which is a decision that definitively sparked a LOT of debate over whether it is racist or not. The Wheel of Time's decision of making magic about women first. Memory, Sorrow and Thorn's replacement of orcs by evil elves. Fionavar's play on what happens to the Elves when they go West Beyond the Sea. Shannara's decision to make Middle-Earth an explicitely post-apocalyptic setting.
For good or bad, I find those interesting and worthy of discussion. Of course people will criticize a "lack of effort" in going for a "traditional", "seen before", "cliche" route instead of building a crazy new separate fantasy world (and myself I do regret how a lot of the early days impulse of creating absolutely bonkers fantasy worls has died out a bit - though it does come back today...). But I see this rather as a very easy way to prove if you are good at fantasy or not - because doing a Tolkienesque fantasy is a double-edged sword. You can either do something really bad that will fall into "garbage literature" in a second, or you can do a beloved classic remembered by generations. Because your personal touch, style, approach and additions will be far more jarring and obvious. And it is the paradox: because when an author doesn't have a lot of personal additions, or bring nothing new to the table, it will just show like a big hole in the cake. For a long time they expected fantasy fans to be dumb and thirsty enough to just focus on "Oh, look at the return of our favorite tropes and archetypes" instead of on the "We're just copying this and not even adding sprinkles". But we are here for the sprinkles that weren't here yesterday. We are here for the different shapes of the slices. We are here for the different flavors of the cake. We are here for when the chocolate-chip cookies suddenly have white or pink chocolate instead of black or milk.