>The research that has been conducted and neglected over time, is there a reasonable basis for why it isn't used, or does it simply not fit the more exciting narrative as some of the points you brought up later?

(1) Much of this research has been published in edited books and journals that are expensive, difficult to find, and often rather dry to read. Recent examples include Collapse and Transformation: The Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age in the Aegean and Anatolia Between the 13th and the 12th Century BCE.

(2) This is a rapidly evolving area of study, with new finds constantly providing more information or overturning previous theories. For example, our understanding of the Hittite (or "Neo-Hittite") kingdoms of the Iron Age has advanced enormously since David Hawkins' publication of the Iron Age Luwian texts in the early 2000s due to the excavation of more Syro-Anatolian sites and the discovery of many more Luwian inscriptions. There is a list of new inscriptions here, itself now incomplete and outdated.

(3) There is, as you mentioned, also an element of pop history works wanting to exaggerate the Bronze-Iron Age transition for entertainment value. ("And then all of the societies collapsed, writing totally disappeared, and people lived in villages for 200 years!" – A wildly inaccurate description, to say the least.)

>When you speak of the collapse and how it was not a uniform effect across the entire Mediterranean region, do you mean there is no correlation and it was individual events suffered in these regions that appear to us in the modern day more like a chain reaction since they happened so closely relatively from our perspective? Basically there is minimal relation between what occurred in these seperate regions, one factor being the time periods they occurred in?

I wouldn't say minimal relation. Rather, we should be careful not to focus on external factors (e.g. migrations) at the expense of internal factors that made kingdoms vulnerable to this sort of chain reaction.

It is tempting to blame the collapse of the Hittite empire on invading groups – the "Sea Peoples," Aramaeans, and the like – and indeed many scholars have done so. That by itself is quite dissatisfactory, however, as it fails to explain why the empire fell to these groups when it had survived so many other invasions over the centuries.

For example, the Hittite empire experienced a series of invasions during the 14th century BCE, known today as the "concentric attacks." By the end of the century, most of the Hittite kingdom had fallen to attacks from the Kaška in the north and from Arzawa in the west. Even the capital city of Ḫattuša had been captured and burned, with the kingdom consisting of little more than the besieged territory of the city of Šamuḫa. The events were remembered dramatically in a decree of king Hattušili III, who reigned in the 13th century BCE.

>In earlier days the Ḫatti lands were sacked by its enemies. The Kaškan enemy came and sacked the Ḫatti lands, and he made Nenašša his frontier. From the Lower Land came the Arzawan enemy, and he too sacked the Ḫatti lands, and he made Tuwanuwa and Uda his frontier...

The king of Egypt was so convinced of the imminent demise of the weakened Hittite kingdom that he opened diplomatic relations with the kingdom of Arzawa in western Anatolia, expecting it to become the next great power in the Middle East.

>I have heard everything [is done]. The land of Ḫattuša (i.e. the Hittite empire) has been frozen/paralyzed.

As it turned out, however, the Hittites saw a reversal of fortunes under Šuppiluliuma I and his son Muršili II. Not only did the empire survive, it expanded to its maximum extent, encompassing western and central Anatolia as well as much of the Levantine coast.

So why was the Hittite empire vulnerable at the end of the Late Bronze Age when it had survived far more devastating invasions in the past? Here one has to look at the internal factors unique to the Hittite empire, such as the civil war that created multiple centers of power and a devastating pandemic that wiped out much of the Hittite population.

>According to the information you have given, the disappearance of many settlements would be due more to local issues conflicts, rather than an external force (excluding things like the changing climate) and as such outside intervention would not serve as a catalyst to the diminishing civilizations of the Mediterranean which would answer my question generally that there was no event in Central Europe that contributed to the collapse(s) of the Bronze age civilizations

It's a bit of both. To again take the Hittite empire as an example, the Hittites experienced a grain shortage toward the end of the LBA and imported grain from Egypt to supplement their reserves. Pirates based on Cyprus and the Levantine coast, however, interfered with these shipments.

This sort of piracy would've been a mere nuisance in more stable periods – pirates and bandits are well attested in earlier periods – but it greatly affected an empire already strained by other factors (internal warfare, pandemic, drought, etc.) and had an outsized effect on long distance trade and the political stability of the Hittite empire.