Yahoo Movies Of course the Avatar team saw the SNL 'Papyrus' sketch
You bet the makers of Avatar and the upcoming sequels are aware of one of the greatest Ryan Gosling Saturday Night Live moments.
In September 2017, as Gosling hosted his second episode of the long-running late-night sketch comedy show, the actor delivered a profoundly hilarious bit about the Papyrus font for the Avatar movie logo.
In the sketch, written by Los Espookys star Julio Torres, Gosling played a man losing sleep and sanity, consumed with the fact that someone "highlighted Avatar, he clicked the dropdown menu, and then he just randomly selected Papyrus like a thoughtless child just wandering by a garden, just yanking leaves along the way."
20th Century Studios; NBC 'Avatar' producer Jon Landau addresses the beloved 'SNL' sketch with Ryan Gosling, 'Papyrus.'
"Yes, I've seen that. Ryan Gosling. Absolutely saw it," Jon Landau, who produced Avatar and this month's sequel Avatar: The Way of Water, told EW of the sketch. "It's fun that it stimulated a conversation."
Landau does point out that the typography for the sequels bears a different font that isn't Papyrus.
"When we realized that the movie was going to expand into a franchise and we'd have other IPs, we went out and created our own font that we're now using, and we call it Toruk, and it's available for people to use," he says. "But the Papyrus font is a fun thing, and I also love the fact that… it was certainly several years after the movie came out, and I guess it illustrated to people who were questioning Avatar's cultural relevance that it was still part of the culture."
Director James Cameron has also commented on the sketch. He told Empire magazine (via SlashFilm), "I was not aware that our font was an off-the-shelf thing; I assumed the art department or the title company came up with it. Of course, it was trolled mercilessly as a lazy choice, but frankly, I like the font."
Avatar: The Way of Water, the second of four sequels that's in theaters Dec. 16, returns to Pandora to meet the children of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana). The third film was shot alongside the second, and Cameron has big plans for the fourth and fifth installments — which means more Pap... we mean, Toruk.
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