It always looked so cringey and lame to me. Like they thought it was so clever because they discovered homonyms. Sad it's back again. And who will pay money in 2021 to see a sequel to a 30 year old relatively obscure Eddie Murphy film? Eddie's been out of it for decades.
shareEye Don't NO.
shareObscure? This was the third highest-grossing film of 1988. It was massive (maybe his biggest movie ever) and Eddie was on top of the world for about a decade.
Why they are remaking it is simple - another one of Eddie's dozen kids is going to college and he's running out of money. He's tried to do comebacks with original stuff and it's not working so he's tapping into his old stuff. I think Beverly Hills Cop 4 is coming next year and, if that doesn't work, don't be surprised if he digs up what's left of Nick Nolte for 48x3=144 Hours.
I don't understand the substituting letters, but it certainly isn't just an 80s thing, though it certainly could have started there. 2 Fast 2 Furious and Fan4stic come to mind.
The Golden Child 2 needs to happen.
shareIt started in the rap community/black culture. If the Rap groups name didn't have a # in it, one of their songs did. White culture then emulated it to some extent, then it became lame
I think this movie will do well with the over 40 demographic.
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Many shortcuts are used in SMS (1992) which has a fixed message size. There were plenty of chat protocols on computers 50 years ago, they often had 80 character limits. There are "hacker dictionaries" that document stuff like FYI, OP, LOL, and smileys which were used almost 40 years ago.
shareIt started long before the 1980s. I remember "4 Sale" signs as far back as the 1950s, and it probably wasn't a new idea even then.
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