Some good stories break Chekhov's Gun, but only in the same way that a good story would break any rule of storytelling, which is to say, the author knowingly br

Some good stories break Chekhov's Gun, but only in the same way that a good story would break any rule of storytelling, which is to say, the author knowingly breaks it in a calculated way that compensates for the known deficiencies that would otherwise exist as a result of not following the rule. It in no way follows, as you're suggesting, that Chekhov's Gun is some arbitrary inconvenience, or that you can gleefully ignore the amount of detail you introduce relative to the interesting bits, which is what a real rejection of Chekhov's Gun would entail. Your purported counterexample recognizes as much: that yes, it's detail that doesn't have a shocking payoff, but which was still accomplishing something and which Tolkien certainly weighed against the "cost" of continuing said detail arbitrarily deep. It really is an anti-pattern to equate, "oh yeah in some circumstances it's okay to break this rule" with "you will write a better story by completely ignoring all constraints of this rule".