To cast it to 'hacker' terms, it's much like design patterns. Prior to GoF and subsequent pattern library books (meta-patterns), engineers followed certain patterns when building systems.
Once it was written down and the patterns were explicitly named, developers, especially less experienced developers, coded to the patterns as if they were software construction blueprints.
I'd say from 2000(ish) to 2005(ish), many conversations with developers approaching a new project would inevitably involve "we need an abstract factory here and a chain of responsibility there..." type discussions.
At the time, it drove me mad because I saw it as a failure in factorization of the development environment or the language. If a million people are writing "façades" and "singletons", then it's a bloody waste of humanity.
Now, of course, there are frameworks to make building-to-patterns easier. Instead of being a vocabulary for describing conventions, it has become difficult to leverage these frameworks without coding to whichever pattern libraries it has adopted.
Back to film, blockbusters have to follow the 'safe' path. Teal/orange, the hero of 1,000,000,000 faces, etc. have been shown to appeal to the human senses of visual attraction and folklore. There's still a lot of innovation if you hit the indie circuit, but if a director/producer/etc. want a $200m check from a studio, they have to come close to guaranteeing a "hit".
If I cared about CMM and that sort of thing, I'd swing back into systems engineering and certification, but you've read enough of my drivel for now.