But the Enterprise wasn't radically changed.
I think you're on the losing end of that debate.
They could have made the Enterprise look like the one on Trek Remastered or the Defiant episode of Enterprise. Just the same with some subtle plating. And it would have rocked.
Umm…no. I enjoyed the nostalgic kick on
Enterprise but it would hardly have been appropriate for a big-budget blockbuster. It worked on TV because the vast majority of displays in homes at the time were 40" diagonal or less (16x9). On a PJ screen like in my HT, it was less impressive (and mine is small for a projector screen, at 64"). On a movie screen the size of even "faux" IMAX, it would look seriously out of place.
And the uniforms aren't nearly as day-glo as the 60s originals. The uniforms are a modern superhero costume treatment, where all the colors are intentionally made duller so as not to look so cartoonish. So if some people still think they look silly, well, I guess it's a generational thing. The 60s aesthetic is what made Trek Trek,
If that were true, then no Trek made after that time would have worked at all. I know some people feel that way, but that is hardly a consensus position.
and part of the reason Enterprise failed as a series (IMHO) is they didn't have the courage to make it intentionally retro. It takes guts to do that, and play it seriously. They chose not to go there, but they could have, and I don't think it would have hurt the box office to do so.
It would never have gotten past the internal pilot screening before broadcast, if it even got that far. People buy "retro" for series set in a particular time period (
Mad Men, BBC's
The Hour,
Boardwalk Empire, etc.). They would NOT buy (apart from a few hardcore Trek devotees) a sci-fi series set over 100 years into the future that looked less advanced than the 1960s TV production values of the original. Some would point to
Firefly as contrary proof, but that one lasted a lot less long than
Enterprise (regardless of the relative merits of each, the fact remains one made more money for its producers than the other and neither is viewed as a "success" in absolute terms). And even in
Firefly, the premise was sufficiently different to make its approach more plausible (and its production values, while set in a "retro" world, were still miles ahead of 60s Trek). "Retro" Trek would have had to approximate
Forbidden Planet-like aesthetics to be internally consistent with the expectation of purists. And that was NOT going to happen.