I've got perl web apps that haven't been touched for 15 years (aside from a single change from a flash <object> to <video> in the template) that still perform their function perfectly well
Sure - if you don't need rich UI interactivity, you can get by with a lot less. Plenty of sites don't and should.
What I like about Node, though, is frameworks like Next.js that are the best of both worlds. You can do traditional server-side rendering using React components, so you can easily add as much/as little client-side JS as you need.
With Next you use the same package manager for the front end and back end. And you get code sharing and access to that huge ecosystem of libraries.
But needs and skillsets change the equation, definitely.
