Mean Girls is a definitive comedy of a generation, so much so that we even have it in the top five of our 100 best movies of the 2000s. As Mean Girls gets ready to turn 20 this spring, Paramount Pictures is getting ready for its remake to be among the first batch of upcoming 2024 movies. The first trailer for the next Mean Girls movie is here (on a Wednesday, of course), but there’s one thing about it that has fans of the original resisting the urge to start a Burn Book of their own.
Although there’s not a single melody from the Broadway musical itself, the new Mean Girls movie is set to be an adaptation of the stage version of the comedy Tina Fey wrote ahead of the new version making its premiere back in 2017. The first look at the movie, which has been in development since 2020, featured a look at the 2024 Mean Girls cast, including the return of Tina Fey and Tim Meadows, as well as Renée Rapp’s Regina George, but one line of text in the trailer went especially viral. In between a preview of scenes from the movie, “This Isn’t Your Mother’s Mean Girls” had people talking.
“This isn’t your mothers Mean Girls” pic.twitter.com/aj0OZCRxftNovember 8, 2023
Mean Girls went positively viral on Wednesday with over 63,000 tweets on the subject already at the time of this article’s publication. Many of the comments had to do with the single line in the trailer. Check out this Twitter response that sums up the feelings it gave fans:
Me after reading the sentence “This isn’t your Mother’s Mean Girls” pic.twitter.com/GQTmRtpmrCNovember 8, 2023
The mental math here made by the marketing department of the Mean Girls musical seems to be that since the original movie came out almost 20 years ago, that many fans are old enough to be mothers of teenagers of their own. The moment in the trailer had one fan commenting that it was calling original fans “old with a straight face.”
“Not your mother’s Mean Girls” is crazy. They called us old with a straight face 😭November 8, 2023
Sure, there are some Mean Girls fans who are mothers now, but we're also talking about a generation of first-time mothers generally getting older, per Deseret. It feels like a giant call out to those who grew up with the movie that they should technically be mothers now that this new generation of Mean Girls is coming out. Oof, here comes the collective existential crisis!
“Not your mother’s Mean Girls" pic.twitter.com/LS5HDJYX9CNovember 8, 2023
Of course the movie is called Mean Girls, so perhaps that’s the whole point of the moment in the trailer. The text is capturing the bite of being personally victimized by Regina George! Of course, fans are also just making fun of the line too:
Going to see my mom later, so I'll be sure to let her know this isn't her Mean Girls.November 8, 2023
Here’s one more. One fan of the new Regina George actress, Renée Rapp, called her “mother” in her own right with this post:
um wrong. reneé rapp is mother. this is LITERALLY mother’s mean girls pic.twitter.com/FohMHVyF34November 8, 2023
The new Mean Girls movie is set to hit theaters on January 12, 2024!
