I think that movies are dang expensive and people try to cater to as many people as possible to sell as many tickets as possible so they dumb it down...the original series and even the Next Generation was Shakespeare in comparison, even if the fight scenes, miniskirts, and FX were corny.
Think about all the issues that Kirk (and later Picard) had to deal with, around the prime detective, human (sentient being's rights), cultural relativism...this was "action movie masturbation"