In any case, it was primarily the movies (especially TSFS) that created the stereotype of Kirk as an orders-defying renegade, and the movie audience and the broader public mainly know Trek from the movies, so the more recent movies are following the precedent set by the earlier ones. As for Spock, he was also more emotional in the movies, starting with his "This simple feeling" epiphany in TMP. When he was brought back to life, TVH had him quickly recapitulate the same journey to accepting that emotions matter, accomplishing in mere days what had taken him decades the first time around; and that continued through to TUC, where he taught Valeris that logic was merely the beginning of wisdom. The Abrams movies, again, are following the precedent of the earlier movies, quickly getting Spock to a position where his emotions were closer to the surface than they were on TV. So this is not about Abrams and his collaborators' personal tastes or talent; this is about movies following the precedent of movies, because their audience does not completely overlap with the television fanbase and thus has different expectations and preferences. I think it likely that if someone other than Abrams had been given the job of rebooting TOS, they would still have given us a more hotheaded Kirk and a more emotional Spock, because those are the established feature-film versions of the characters and what the general public wants and expects. At least Abrams and his team have come up with legitimate explanations for why the characters are different -- Kirk had a rougher upbringing and Spock lost his mother and his planet.
