https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/12/17/21024439/monoculture-algorithm-netflix-spotify > The past year has felt like a peak in mega-budget world-spanning media spectacles that command our attention, one outrageous finale after another. On April 26, 2019, the film Avengers: Endgame was released in the United States. Less an original narrative than an accretion of capital, technology, and celebrity, it had a budget of $356 million. > By July, the movie — the closing of a phase in the vast Marvel Cinematic Universe — was the highest-grossing movie in the history of Hollywood; it has so far achieved a global box office of around $2.8 billion. A month later, on May 19, the final episode of Game of Thrones aired on HBO, the end of an eight-season run that began in 2011. 19.3 million people watched the episode, a record for the series. The latest Star Wars film will cap off the franchise’s third trilogy on December 20 and attract millions more viewers. But it’s not just the stories that are ending.