Did Mean Girls "kill" the teen movie?

https://www.reddit.com/r/nirvanakilledmycareer/comments/xr1hk1/mean_girls_2004_killed_the_teen_movie/

Back in the 80's and 90's, "teen" movies were extremely popular. Obviously, there's always going to be a market for movies for and about teenagers. Up until today. But back then, they followed weirdly specific themes, tropes, and character motivations.

Whether these movies were directed toward girls or boys, 80's-90's teen movies always had this "normal" main character in high school (a girl or guy) and their quest to become more popular / more beautiful / more assertive and manly / to get the romantic lead / to have sex. And along the way, there would be some pretty tired stereotypes like, the "hot jock", the "bitchy popular girl", the "best friend", etc. Also, none of these actually reflected how high school life was actually like for normal people.

These were movies like Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, 10 Things I Hate About You, Varsity Blues, She's All That, The Breakfast Club, Never Been Kissed, American Pie, and many many more.

Actually, the first movie to really "ruin" this genre was actually Not Another Teen Movie (2001). Similar to Airplane! or Scary Movie, it took these tired tropes used in so many movies, and just made fun of them without digging that much deeper. Still, it showed that audiences were privy to this specific "genre" of movie.

But then, Mean Girls (2004) came around. The first half of the movie actually does resemble a typical "teen" movie (albeit a very funny one). The main girl character becomes "hot", gets the guy, becomes popular, "defeats" the cruel mean bitchy girl leaving her unpopular best friends in the process. But the 2nd half comes around, and she has to face the consequences. The best friends she left resent her. The popularity comes into question. And the main "mean" girl plans something far more diabolical. And by the end, we're left wondering why there needs to even be "popular" girls in the first place, and how much of a stupid superficial hierarchal structure this all was.

After Mean Girls solidified its status as an iconic masterpiece of cinema for teenagers, the idea of having "popular" kids and wanting to be part of the "popular group" suddenly became really tired and passé. The huge teen movies in the next few decades were these teenage dystopias rebelling against an oppressive system (Hunger Games, Divergent) or heartbreakingly realistic portrayals of growing up as a loner / outcast and navigating that world (Perks of Being a Wallflower, Edge of Seventeen). "Popularity", "romance" or "sex" was no longer the focus of these new batch of teen movies.