My personal opinion is that marketing is to blame for this new trend of things needing to be "groundbreaking". Our media is currently overly saturated with spin-offs, sequels, prequels, remakes and what not, so they can't exactly sell the product by selling the story. People most likely know the story already, so they have to come up with new ways to grab attention and overshadow their competitors. This type of media hype seems to be created to cover up a lack of good writing or actually good representation. Disney is a good example with their supposed LGBTQ+ representation. Then again, I also think a lot of people these days don't actually consume a lot of older media (mainly due to lack of availability, I think), so things that are not actually groundbreaking may seem groundbreaking to them. And it seems marketing departments kinda rely on this.
Personally I am very tired of things needing to be groundbreaking or subverting tropes or shocking... I just want good stories and good characters first and foremost. If it ends up being groundbreaking or anything else, then hey, why not!