It is simply the other side of the same coin. The actual intellectual dishonesty on display is the suggestion that an identifiable “core audience” exists, and can be alienated at all.
Emotionally invested fans of these stories clearly exist and describing them as the core audience isn’t a dishonest claim. Neither is it dishonest to claim that some of these fans feel alienated by the new versions of these stories.
You can debate both claims, and my views don’t align perfectly with OP’s either but there is no intellectually dishonesty on the the part of the OP in making the claims.
If someone self-appoints themselves as a “core audience” and then complain when the creative output doesn’t meet their self-appointed in-group demands, they are not fans, they are over-entitled whingers.
