It's about familiarity and recognition.
People are very familiar with the (now) cheesy and cheap (fictional) look of TOS.
If people would see a design aesthetic in the new movie that is similar to TOS, they would laugh the movie out of the cinemas.
This was true in the late 1970s and it is even more so now.
Except that your comment, made as though it's somehow "factual" is nothing of the sort.
There is nothing "cheesy" or "cheap" about the design of the original Enterprise exterior. And while there are some elements (cast-resin "gumdrops", overuse of color gels in lighting and the use of "winky-blinkies" and vacuum-formed shapes to represent displays and mechanical hardware) in the interior design which is, perhaps, a bit "cheesy," those elements alone could be removed without eliminating other elements which are by NO MEANS "cheesy."
You have a predisposition for a particular style. Fine. Just don't pretend that your PERSONAL TASTE is the same thing as an objective, fact-based evaluation.
It certainly wasn't "cheap." The initial budgets for Trek were very high, in real dollars. The budgets fell through the floor later, granted, but the sets were really quite well done, well-conceived, and well-realized. Yes, we could see them "tweaked" to make them more real today. But there's a difference between "tweaking" them and "throwing them away entirely" which is, effectively, what's been done.
And as for "cheesy," the biggest complaint many folks have over the "new Trek" designs (interior and exterior) is that they... not the TOS ones... are "cheesy." You may not agree... and that's fine.
I, personally, think that the corridor sets look stupid and VERY "cheesy." They make no sense, either practically, or mechanically. I, personally, think that the changes to the exterior of the ship look "cheesy"... expecially the nacelle and nacelle-pylon areas. I think that the all-chrome, spinning-barrel phaser looks "cheesy." I think that the bar-code-scanners on the bridge look "cheesy." I think the plexiglass panels with "circuit board traces" all over the bridge look "cheesy." And I think that the "chevrons all over the fabric" thing looks "cheesy.
Does this mean that the flick will suck? No. But it sure isn't an IMPROVEMENT over what we had before. Adding nonsensical clutter just to look ... and I'm waiting for "the gang" to simultaneously have a hissy fit over my use of this term... to look "kewl" is just CHEESY.
Using higher-quality versions of the original sets... a higher-quality model of the original ship design... higher-quality versions of the original props... would have helped this flick, not hurt it. That's MY opinion. I think that the "new" stuff is uniformly "cheesy" and generally HURTS the new show.
But that, by itself, won't KILL it. The acting, writing, and direction are what will ultimately make or break the film. All of what we're talking about here is set-dressing... literally in some cases.
You get my point... WWII-era movies don't have to be 100% accurate historical accounts of real events... they can be entirely fictional, just SET in WWII.
. So the question is, if the "2009" supergroovy version looks just like the "1966" old-and-cheesy version to most people, then even making the "2009" version is pretty much a waste of time and effort, because to their eyes, the new one is the "1966" version. Given that we have no sound argument against the original design - albeit superdetailed for the big screen and the 'modern audience' - then it seems that they would satisfy a larger audience by adapting the original design. Yes, the fans are a smaller group, but let's face it, we're a much more vocal group than the mainstream audience, so 'word of mouth' of the two groups is probably comparable.
