Typographer Upset About Fonts in Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, Writes Letter to Brad Bird

Wow. I won’t say “hugely pretentious letter”…out loud…

Good god. What a complete Waste of Time.

Or is it?

I agree that it’s not as big a deal as this guy makes it out to be, but for one, he makes a living choosing and making good fonts. And for two, he raises a few pretty good points. The movie could have been more authentic.

Guy knows what he’s talking about. He isn’t making all that big of a deal, he’s pretty humble and gracious to be honest.

But what was the reply? It’s only half a story so far…

Dear Mr. Butterick,

I appreciate that you took the time to write this letter and post it on the internet, and I can see your concern in how the font for the subtitling in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol would be a cause for duress. I can’t help but notice, however, that at the end of your letter you asked a question however you ended the sentence with a period. I thoroughly enjoyed your letter, but I must say this this brazen misalignment of sentence to punctuation mark ruined the experience for me. At two points in the letter I notice that you did use a question mark, so it irks me to see you brazenly ignoring the simplest rules of grammar and punctuation at the end. Please take note of these suggestions for all future letters or other written works you produce.

Kindest regards,
Robert Meisler

Awww… Those people are just riled up because like most Americans, they don’t understand the difference between constructive criticism and insults.

That might be funny if he was actually asking a question with that sentence. He unfortunately was not and comes away unscathed by your attempt at humor and you wind up looking like the pretentious asshole who thinks a movie that costs hundreds of millions of dollars to make and prides itself on being cutting edge should use outdated and inappropriate font for its subtitles.

This guy is no different than the ex military guy in the theater watching a war film obnoxiously commenting on discrepancies. 
It’s a film for what? ENTERTAINMENT, yes.  DOCUMENTARY, no. 
Go critique a library or a college student who wrote a paper on Iraq but refused to use the font sandscript.

good for him.  Quality is in the details.

Wow, another crybaby. I’m impressed that a polite critique of their font choice offended you so much. Your analogy is also utter rubbish. He politely sent a letter in to the director which you then chose to click on and read in this article, hardly a situation where he was forcing people to listen to him “commenting on discrepancies” instead of enjoying the film. It’s also interesting you used a veteran as your example… Perhaps you dislike veterans because they’re always kicking your ass at whatever FPS you’re currently playing online? Try not to be such a juvenile, whiny, self-righteous little fucktard, OK? You’ll be better recieved by those around you.

What he says makes sense, and he’s got a great signature.  What font are these comments in?

Is it a waste of time if this is his profession? No. Good for him. Someone should make it their business when there are more than enough people in the audience who recognize poor design and typographic choices.