It can be trivial or it can be a rational rethink. You seem to be assuming that I'm supporting Batman being turned into the last survivor of Batworld because I feel like doing that. 

If you're dealing with a company that is serious about their properties, then they're going to identify which characters are working and protect them. That's just good business. 

But Aquaman. 

Aquaman has been an also ran for as long as Aquaman has been a character. Now, from a fan perspective, I can understand why you might want to keep him as is. He works well enough and he's a part of a greater universe. 

But let's say someone comes up with a killer idea for the character, something which transforms him in a major way (let's say, he's no longer from Atlantis), but opens up story possibilities which could make him a mainstream A-list character. Not a short-term stunt, something with true long-range potential. 

Only in the fan sphere would there be a discussion over whether or not this was a good thing. And that's what I'm talking about when I mean the "essential core" is a fan conceit. If the audience accepts a change, no matter how dramatic, then the world keeps on turning. The "essential core" can be swapped out for something better.

It's when they don't have any idea how to follow up on an idea is when they get into trouble. Superman is in trouble... quick, make Clark a professional snow-boarder, because snow-boarding is cool. 

I throw quotation marks around "essential core" for a reason, as in I think it's being misnamed. 

The "essential core" is a collection of tried-and-true attributes which are part of the current success of the character.  

If the character is a proper success, you don't want to mess with it too much. Just a bit a bit of tuning up to make it work better. 

If the character is not a success, then you might want to think about lifting the hood and doing some serious tinkering.

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I don't think anyone but you is arguing for preserving the lameness in lame characters for the sake of keeping them lame.

I could have used better language on this. 

The "current" success might be absolutely none whatsoever. A "proper" success is something which is actually successful. 

Batman is a huge success, don't mess with it. Aquaman has a certain measure of success and you shouldn't be too quick to throw it away for just any old idea (but keep an eye out for ways to improve it), but let's say you're tasked to revive Chain Gang War, which probably has the distinction of being the worst comic I ever read. Tear that thing apart and rebuild it. 

The problem is fans are often blind to the lameness of things they happen to like. 

Witness the number of people who will say, "I can't understand why people didn't like..." followed by the name of any number of summer action movie bombs. 

The "current" success might be absolutely none whatsoever. A "proper" success is something which is actually successful. 

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If the "current" success is not really successful, then how is it a "success"?

Hence my statement that I could have used better language. 

I'm kind of at a loss for what word to use instead of success for the context I'm going for. I almost suggested "popularity", but then that would also run into the problem of suggesting it is popular. 

Think of it as a Success Scale from 1-10 with 1 being failure and 10 being a massive hit. That's what I mean by current success. 

No, that just means they have different tastes. Instead of pissing all over a character that some people like, why not just create something new?

I'll point out that many of those summer action movie bombs were adaptations that did not preserve the essential core of the characters.

And that's a wonderful fan attitude. I don't want to attack that point of view. There's a wonderful passion that fans bring to the table, which is why there's many great fan-turned-pro writers. They can zero in on the things they like and communicate it successfully to a mainstream audience. 

But we are dealing with businesses. If there aren't enough fans to support the property, then they're going to start thinking along different lines. 

I'm a big Who fan, so I'll use an example near and dear to my heart. When they were trying to revive Doctor Who in the mid-90s, most of the pitches were reboots. Two-and-a-half decades of the character's history they were willing to sacrifice.

And they were absolutely right to consider it. Had they a really good pitch, they would have been absolutely right to go forward with it. 

Prior to 2005, one of the pitches they received was the Doctor being this strange old man who lived on a street, who was always at the heart of some strangeness or other. I'm not even sure time travel was involved with. The core conceit of the series completely discarded. Good thing that Russel T. Davies wasn't allowed to get his hands on Doctor Who. He later recycled the idea for the Sarah Jane Adventures after he got his hands on Doctor Who. 

Again, absolutely right to put that on the table. 

I'm overjoyed that none of these things came to be, and even grumble at some of the stuff that did come to be... but look at it from a business viewpoint. Doctor Who was a niche property aimed at an aging fanbase which would cease being profitable before too long. Getting it back on the air in any form was better than what they had. 

And it was because Russell T. Davies was able to take a step back from what he thought Doctor Who should be and thought long and hard about what would make Doctor Who successful that it's a worldwide hit. 

I'm a big ol' fanboy. I want you to have your characters in a form you enjoy. I don't want to take them away from you... but a successful pro needs to be able to seriously consider doing exactly that.