The reason for the reboot is that the canon of Trek is a giant albatross. Heck just look at all the complaints Enterprise got because they scratched canon once in a while. Nobody wants to drag that crap around. Also if it failed they could have just said “never mind” and gone back into the mud pit. There’s rumors coming out of Paramount about them putting a new show into the old canon universe for the six whiners that can’t handle a reboot.
The canon of Kirk and the Gang would be the “giant albatross.” With that being the case, why even bother with a reboot of an aspect of the Trek universe that has been fleshed out in the original series and several movies? There are so many other stories within the Trek Universe that have little canon and would have provided a fresh, rich field of storytelling - ya know, something entirely new and not something sorta kinda different. Hell, a movie based on the Mirror universe would provide a helluva lot of leeway for writers if not provide a virtually blank slate. The reboot comes off as a cinematic equivalent of Obama comparing himself to Reagan.