I always thought both were highly commercial and accessible.

The fact that The Lord of the Rings is Earth helps, I think. Hobbiton and Bag End are geographically Oxford in the UK, for instance, with Mordor being somewhere in Eastern Europe, probably Romania (according to Tolkien's maps). As for Star Wars, it's in a galaxy far, far, away, true, but everything about it is so lived in and familiar, I don't think it's difficult to grasp at all. Both feature highly commercial archplots with familiar fantasy archetypes.

Still, if you've met people who struggle with that, I'm not going to argue. :)