James Cameron’s “blockbustepic” Avatar is now officially the highest grossing film ever released in Australia. Late last week the spectacular box office behemoth overtook the previous all time local record of $57.6 million, obtained by Titanic – another James Cameron movie – 12 years ago. Globally Avatar has now gobbled up around $1.14 billion, which on a worldwide scale makes it the second highest grossing feature of all time. The first is – you guessed it – Titanic, with $1.84 billion.
Not bad Jim, not bad. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say you must be feeling pretty happy with himself right about now.
I imagine Cameron spent the last few weeks eating food too delicious for mere mortals like me to pronounce and snorting fine Columbian cocaine off the breasts of buxom women while intermittently checking his Blackberry for the latest box office stats.
But the most expensive feature film ever made has, like virtually every blockbuster, a vocal band of critics campaigning against it.
The particular critics I’m speaking of are not the ones (like me) who might moan about Avatar’s thinly developed characters, cheesy story or the deficiencies of its narrative blah blah blah. I was alerted to the existence of these critics at a barbeque on Saturday when an incensed friend of mine, a graphic designer, grabbed my arm and vented his outrage. He wasn’t miffed about the characters, the storyline or the narrative blah blah blah. No. He was miffed about – wait for it – James Cameron’s use of the font “papyrus.”
For those not in the know, it
and it’s available on just about every PC on the planet via Microsoft Word. It’s also used in Avatar for its title, closing credits and subtitles. My friend was incensed that James Cameron couldn’t afford – well, afford is the wrong word given the film cost around $400 million – to design a new typeface. Didn’t see the need would probably be closer to the truth.
“If any movie shoulda shelled out some cash to develop a decent font, you’d think it would be the most expensive movie ever made,” he said.
And, you know, he’s kinda got a point.
A quick search on the net revealed that plenty of other font aficionados feel the same way, to an alarmingly nitpickish degree.
“He (James Cameron) might as well have used Comic Sans,” one blogger recently scoffed. “Seriously dude, you’re like, a bajillionare, you can afford a suite of fonts. Maybe he’s editing it in iMovie. I don’t know.”
I found an open letter to James Cameron written from, bizarrely, the perspective of the font itself. And then there’s the website papyruswatch.com which monitors its apparently ubiquitous life. In addition to Avatar, recent papyrus sightings include The David Letterman Show and a new program from comedian Dave Chapelle.
I wonder if James Cameron is aware of this storm-in-a-typeface-teacup and what his thoughts are on the subject. Like I pointed out to my friend, it could’ve been worse. He could have used Times New Roman.
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11 Comments
Perhaps papyrus grows on Pandora.
The debate surrounding Avatar is all about the medium v. the message. Does the technology excuse the script? Is the scenario/context too PC? Is it lefty propaganda?
My main personal issue is that seeing Avatar contributes to Rupert Murdoch’s evil media empire. He and Cameron are strange bedfellows. But business is business.
Q. Why does a record-taking blockbuster need to charge extra in Oz just because it’s 3D?
A. Business is business. Or never give sucker an even break.
Whew, because I am well and truly in that category.
I actually enjoyed Sherlock Holmes more – the absense of ponderous pretention was a relief.
nothing to do with fonts but…..interesting article by george monboit
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/01/11/the-holocaust-we-will-not-see/
papyrus always irritated me, mostly because my sister used it as hetr default font on windows on her profile.
Supposedly self-described geeks are up in arms about this vocal band of critics. My beef with as a self-described geek myself is that *Avatar* isn’t really science fiction. It’s fantasy of the Harry Potter and LOTR sort. The veneer of sci-fi is incidental to the story (compared to *real* sci-fi where the whole plot is built upon fictitious science which itself is a creation or unique take of the author). There is no unique take on fictitious science in *Avatar*.
My more detailed take on this angle can be found here:
http://suddenlyfourty.blogspot.com/2010/01/after-seeing-avatar.html
Fantasy is very visually appealing but because it is completely unhinged from science (and does not even attempt a pretense at even pseudo-science), you can have a plot in which every character and twist can be explained away by an infinite-regress to mysticism.
So yeah, Avatar didn’t scrimp on fonts alone. It also scrimped on imaginative storytelling. Perhaps there wasn’t much left after all the technology brought to bear in its production sucked up all the dough.
I prefer Helvetica. Probs not appropriate to a romping Sci-Fi Fantasy about blue people vs the man, but its a good font.
Me, I’m a Wingdings man.
Suddenly Fourty
How would you classify District 9 and Moon, two of the best of 2009 whether they be SF or fantasy?
Measuring a film by its box office is such a bullshit exercise, because a dollar in 1998 was worth a lot more than a dollar today. It’s called inflation and is not insignificant. In fact, $57.6m in 1998, subject to 3% p.a. inflation, would be worth $82.1m today. So, I’d say that Avatar has a way to go yet to beat the local box office record, though I suspect it will make it.