When does a story/franchise become outdated?

An excellent example of this in particular is, unfortunately, the first line of Neuromancer: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." Awesomely evocative... if you know about the grey-black static of an untuned TV. Before digital input turned it into, well, a stark blue. The modern tech can end up being part of the appeal sometimes, but it often results in rather strange little digressions that meant something before, but don't now.

More broadly, whenever a story can't be recontextualised, I think. A lot of stories last by being open to reinterpretation to fit the current zeitgeist, usually by developing a unique style that relies on its own context rather than whatever's going on in the real world. Reality is a retrofitted bolt-on, rather than a prerequisite.

Synthwave is a good instance, it's a music genre that's popped up in the last couple years that emulates 1980s electronica (the kind of stuff you'd see in a John Carpenter film or something like Ladyhawke). The difference? It's a rose-tinted (sometimes literally), more polished version of what that decade's aesthetic actually was. The clumsiness is smoothed over in purple-blue colour pallettes and trapezoidal cars, creating a sense of style that ends up having little to do with Iran-Contra, glasnost, Skylab vaporising in atmo or Wall Street billionaires. It becomes a fantasy all of its own.

Why, then, did The Lord Of The Rings become so successful as a film series when it can be argued that it has been even more influential than John Carter? Why do we still get retellings of Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes and Dracula? Why is Shakespeare still being produced? These are stories and characters that still speak to us and still have something to say.