The limit does indeed exist in the “Mean Girls” remake, thus proving its inferiority to the original

20 years ago today, "Mean Girls" premiered and math problems were never the same again.

This year's Mean Girls remake did okay. Reviews were okay, the box office was okay. The general feeling was, "It's okay." But when competing with a film that looms so large in the cultural imagination, there's bound to be some disappointment with a new, arguably fresh take.

However, one glaring (for the mathematically-inclined) error in the remake offers proof, sorta, that it is inferior to the 2004 film, which celebrates its 20th anniversary today.

For fans of the Mean Girls universe, "The limit does not exist" is one of many iconic lines from the OG film. Spoken by Lindsay Lohan's Cady Heron, the quote refers to a math problem she and her fellow Mathletes are tasked with solving at the big climactic state finals. In the scene, Cady accepts that she's become that which she hated and feared most, a mean girl, and begins her redemptoion arc.

In the 2024 film, Angourie Rice's Cady Heron has the same realization, but the math problem she answers is slightly different than the one Lohan's Cady had. The limit does exist.

This video by YouTuber Oblivious Ben goes into depth about why and how the remake gets the problem wrong, but the basic explanation is that there's a plus sign after the zero (below), thus changing the equation altogether.

While not a life-changing error, Oblivious Ben argues that this is actually endemic with what's wrong with the remake — and by extension, reboots and remakes in general — in the first place.

"This juxtaposition shows just how much care went into the 2004 version of the movie versus how little care went into the 2024 version of the movie," he explains. "This new Mean Girls is more concerned with regurgitating lines and references from the original that it forgets what makes the original so special."

Citing the remake's problem as one of "reiteration," he continues, "The original version had been iterated and reiterated on so many times, that it's more important to reference the original than to focus on the version you're currently making."

And this is how math got to the core of what's wrong with Hollywood today. The limit does exist and that limit is apparently the third generation adaptation of a beloved pre-existing intellectual property.

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