Shatner got it right when he said that no matter what they do, Kirk is so ingrained in the lore that no matter what they do, people will still know who the Kirk character is.
Coincidently though, in the stupid reddit suggestions email I get every day, there was a post asking why people diss on TOS so much. I was like, "WTH?" and read it, and apparently there's a large ST fanbase that don't consider TOS (THE ORIGINAL SERIES!) as part of the trek universe. It seems for a lot of people, TNG is the "original series".