[Everything Everywhere All At Once] OPEN SPOILERS. GO SEE IT NOW. NOW. DO IT!

Hahnsoo1

"Everything Everywhere All At Once" (2022) is a new movie by the Daniels (Daniel "Dan" Kwan (關家永) and Daniel Scheinert), who made their name doing music videos of all things. This is their sophomore movie, after the quirky and bonkers "Swiss Army Man" (2016), and it's getting rave reviews by both critics and the general public (something like 97% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and a 92% audience score as of this writing).



The movie is about Evelyn (played by Michelle Yeoh, known for many roles), who is married to a drip of a husband (played by Ke Huy Quan, better known for his performance as Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and his role in Goonies) and is undergoing an IRS audit of her laundromat business (spearheaded by a hilarious performance by Jamie Lee Curtis). However, she discovers that she can tap into the multiverse and access other "what if?" versions of herself. The result is a madcap genre mashup of movies that defies categorization, but anchored with great performances from the principal actors as well as a solid emotional heart.

This is an OPEN SPOILER thread. Discuss.

Their VFX team was 5 people! FIVE PEOPLE!
https://youtu.be/hFFopPPrGiE

Here's a breakdown of a few key scenes from the movie from the Directors and Michelle Yeoh.
https://youtu.be/C2k3esJHFuE

Michelle Yeoh's reaction to the script:

https://twitter.com/GQMagazine/status/1511748442518863875

Ke Huy Quan's attitude and gratitude are infectious. Here is a Jimmy Kimmel Interview:
https://youtu.be/D918UfHYrhM

Crossposted from the Movies thread (thanks @Jacobkosh for this delightful bit):

https://twitter.com/JeremyTiang/status/1516769507985010693

Hahnsoo1

I said to myself "That's a Chekov's Butt Plug right there". I wasn't fully prepared for how right I would be, or how much I underestimated that prediction, like the cyberpunk genre completely underestimating the impact of The Internet.

Naphtali

I'll never look at hot dogs the same again

durandal4532

This was a great film and I liked it a bunch. I appreciated that while it often focused around the importance of familial reconciliation, it also expanded that into a more general sense that you should be open to taking other people seriously, but comfortable telling people to stop being pricks.

The scene of Evelyn asking Gong Gong how he could have had such an easy time abandoning her hit real hard for me. My own parents talked about how one of the things that hit hardest for them after having kids was realizing their own parents had either never felt the same way about them as they did about their own children, or had worked hard to suppress that feeling. Too many movies about the importance of family focus on family being simply the people you forgive for everything, and this one was more about speaking candidly with people about who you are and what you're feeling and what everyone needs.

Dracomicron

I lost my stepdad in April 2017. He was a professor and expert in sci-fi, fantasy, YA, and children's literature. Best man I ever knew.

He was also an atheist Jew, and his family is where I got my lifelong love of bagels. I got my lifelong love of genre movies, shows, and books from him directly (first thing I remember doing with him was seeing the original TRON; the last thing, geeking out about The Expanse).

Watching this movie, almost exactly five years later, I couldn't help but think that it was everything he loved about sci-fi/fantasy: funny, brilliant, heartfelt, ridiculous, inclusive, even internally consistent (for certain values of internal consistency)...

And then that fucking Everything Bagel. That would have tickled Mike to no end. I almost broke down in the theater.

God damn it, this is so good. Maybe too good. Fuck. I miss my stepdad.

And I kinda want a hot dog.

Jokerman

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/10/13/who-did-this-someone-put-googly-eyes-historic-georgia-statue-police-want-answers/

Immediately what my mind went to with the Dad putting Googly Eyes on everything.

Johnny Chopsocky

Cross posting my non-spoiler thoughts from SE++

The real honest superpower of 'Everything Everywhere All At Once' for me is its sincerity. In a world where everything is either "just a joke" or trolling or a shit post, it says what it means and it means what it says. For all the completely bonkers concepts, visuals, acting beats, and jokes; it means every word.

I'm tired of cynicism and nihilism and trolling. I'm tired of existing in an insincere world. So I'm happy when someone or something is sincere and honest, and EEAAO made me very happy indeed.

MegaMan001

I've been thinking about this movie and themes a lot.

Joy's argument is that because there are infinite universes and choices where everything has already happened or will happen then everything is meaningless. If you can literally do anything at any time (as she experiences the entirety of existence at once) then each choice is unimportant.

But the movie points out that the very act of making a choice or not making other is what makes life meaningful. There's not much stopping a person from just uprooting their life or whatever, but the choice to not do that is what's important.

Shazkar Shadowstorm

I have some very good articles and interviews I must post about this movie

Also I need to see it again, saw it like 3 weeks ago

I highly recommend these two articles and also this video
You might cry more tho:

https://www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/2022/03/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-1.html

https://www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/2022/04/daniels-interview.html

https://youtu.be/3trFt71LXGE

I am on my phone or I’d type more about them but I HIGHLY recommend all these articles and videos

Shazkar Shadowstorm

Also they made the movie with like 6 vfx guys and a limited budget mostly in one building!

Shazkar Shadowstorm

Other things from my own observations and the articles and interviews

How hard that movie hit for children of immigrant parents because wow

But also I found this bit really interesting

And felt

Hahnsoo1

Ke Huy Quan is just phenomenal in this, both in terms of acting (he had a body language coach that taught him to behave like different animals, so first Waymond was a squirrel, while Alpha Waymond was an Eagle, and Successful Lonely Waymond was a Fox) and just the sincerity and earnestness he poured into his performances. The gut-punch of the divorce speech, where he just knows something is wrong and doesn't know how to fix it ("I can tell when you look at me."), to the speech at the end where he's just pleading for everyone to be kind. And finally, that whole speech by Successful Waymond about rather doing laundry and taxes with her than being successful without her. His delivery is very heart-on-his-sleeve in the best way.

And, of course, he looked like a natural in the kung fu sections. He must have just thrown himself into everything about the role, and it shows.

Winky

I was astounded to find out he has been out of films for so long, his fight choreography was incredible I would've believed he was fresh out of 10 other action movies.

Winky

Johnny Chopsocky wrote: »

Cross posting my non-spoiler thoughts from SE++

The real honest superpower of 'Everything Everywhere All At Once' for me is its sincerity. In a world where everything is either "just a joke" or trolling or a shit post, it says what it means and it means what it says. For all the completely bonkers concepts, visuals, acting beats, and jokes; it means every word.

I'm tired of cynicism and nihilism and trolling. I'm tired of existing in an insincere world. So I'm happy when someone or something is sincere and honest, and EEAAO made me very happy indeed.

There was definitely a point near the beginning-middle of the movie where I was worried that all of this would just turn out to be a goofy farce, and that none of these wacky gags would amount to anything overall, but then the final act of the movie is just utterly drowning in pathos and sincerity and I could not be more satisfied with how all the disparate silly gags come back in legitimately touching ways.

Hahnsoo1

I saw it again at a drive-in movie theater over the weekend with my girlfriend, and something that she pointed out that I missed on my first viewing (let's face it, I missed a LOT of things on my first viewing because SO MUCH is going on) is that the speech that Alpha Waymond gives to Evelyn when he points out that she knows deep inside her bones that something isn't right was "Your clothes never wear as well the next day. Your hair never falls in quite the same way"... the lyrics to the one-hit wonder "Absolutely (Story of a Girl)" by Nine Days.

https://youtu.be/ZIANBamMgas

Which, of course, plays in the background later when Evelyn is the cleanup maid for the BDSM dude.

Hahnsoo1

Shazkar Shadowstorm wrote: »

https://www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/2022/04/daniels-interview.html

I read this part of this interview, and I'm like "Good lord, WHAT?". RE: Censorship -

DS: we knew that the gay story was going to be tough, but also gonna be really hard to cut out by design. That kind of excites me and it's like, it's just there, deal with it. But then the sex toys is like, all right, even if you blur them out, the movie's intact. But we had one territory cut out the rocks. And I was like, what? And we were both like, "But, but..."
DK: We were horrified. This movie is garbage without the rocks.
DS: Why on earth would you cut the rocks? They're the sweetest. And the answer, it turns out, is that it's a pretty religious country. And that the way those rocks explicitly talk about meaninglessness is like, essentially, they're talking about there being no God, you know, and their censorship board was like, "We can't put this out, not with the rocks." It's not even the taboo stuff that scared them. It kind of makes sense to me, because in a way that censorship board noticed what we were actually making a movie about, which is staring into infinity and feeling like there's no religious texts that I can turn to, to explain the Nothing that is there, that's going to answer these questions. That's just been on my mind lately to be like, oh fuck, I'm mad at them, but they're not wrong, either. I was not expecting there to be an explanation for it that involved nihilism. I was expecting that someone's just stupid, but of course there being no God is a lot scarier than these girls being gay.
DK: Let people kiss who they like to kiss. But yeah, I can understand why you'd be upset about meaninglessness.

Winky

Hahnsoo1 wrote: »

I saw it again at a drive-in movie theater over the weekend with my girlfriend, and something that she pointed out that I missed on my first viewing (let's face it, I missed a LOT of things on my first viewing because SO MUCH is going on) is that the speech that Alpha Waymond gives to Evelyn when he points out that she knows deep inside her bones that something isn't right was "Your clothes never wear as well the next day. Your hair never falls in quite the same way"... the lyrics to the one-hit wonder "Absolutely (Story of a Girl)" by Nine Days.

https://youtu.be/ZIANBamMgas

Which, of course, plays in the background later when Evelyn is the cleanup maid for the BDSM dude.

They made a bunch of alternate versions of the song! The next time I watch it I'm going to make my mission to pick all of them out.

Kanden

This movie is so good, I love that they got Randy Newman in for a Raccaccoonie theme. I think he might have voiced the raccoon as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5DRSy_L2BE

Shazkar Shadowstorm

Hahnsoo1 wrote: »

Ke Huy Quan is just phenomenal in this, both in terms of acting (he had a body language coach that taught him to behave like different animals, so first Waymond was a squirrel, while Alpha Waymond was an Eagle, and Successful Lonely Waymond was a Fox) and just the sincerity and earnestness he poured into his performances. The gut-punch of the divorce speech, where he just knows something is wrong and doesn't know how to fix it ("I can tell when you look at me."), to the speech at the end where he's just pleading for everyone to be kind. And finally, that whole speech by Successful Waymond about rather doing laundry and taxes with her than being successful without her. His delivery is very heart-on-his-sleeve in the best way.

And, of course, he looked like a natural in the kung fu sections. He must have just thrown himself into everything about the role, and it shows.

the segment in that cast discussion i posted above at the 12m mark is... so touching
what jlc says ;_;

chrono_traveller

I just got back from seeing this and its 1:38am, so I just have two things to say before I fall asleep:

1) What in the multiverse did I just watch?!

2) Holy cow was it awesome, in the most heart touching way I didn't expect at all

Phoenix-D

Bagel.

Also this is yet another movie I'm.glad we started quickly as the load screen shows a lot of key moments I'd rather not have seen as isolated clips

Mathew Burrack

Just finally got around to watching this movie.

And now I'm kicking myself for not watching it sooner.

This is a f*ckin amazing movie.

There's so many parts I love. One amongst so many: somehow, a movie that actually gets how the multiverse works. And then not just gets it but builds on that with the idea of intentionally doing something totally off-the-wall to intentionally branch yourself into a reality closer to where you're trying to get to. Like, that's so goddamn ridiculous and yet makes total sense somehow all at once and I LOVE IT.

And yet AND YET in a movie that has something that awesome, it pales in comparison to TWO ROCKS ON A CLIFF.

And YET in a movie that has something so awesome as the scene of two rocks talking, it one-ups that with GOOGLY EYES ON THE ROCK.

THERE ARE NO RULES!!

AAAAAK!

How does this thread only have one page!?

Antinumeric

It took me ages to realise that the googly eye is the opposite of the everything bagel, a white ring rather than a black one.

Dracomicron

Mathew Burrack wrote: »

Just finally got around to watching this movie.

And now I'm kicking myself for not watching it sooner.

This is a f*ckin amazing movie.

There's so many parts I love. One amongst so many: somehow, a movie that actually gets how the multiverse works. And then not just gets it but builds on that with the idea of intentionally doing something totally off-the-wall to intentionally branch yourself into a reality closer to where you're trying to get to. Like, that's so goddamn ridiculous and yet makes total sense somehow all at once and I LOVE IT.

And yet AND YET in a movie that has something that awesome, it pales in comparison to TWO ROCKS ON A CLIFF.

And YET in a movie that has something so awesome as the scene of two rocks talking, it one-ups that with GOOGLY EYES ON THE ROCK.

THERE ARE NO RULES!!

AAAAAK!

How does this thread only have one page!?

There just isn't much argument about this movie. It's astonishingly good, and almost everyone who's seen it agrees. It's not like a Marvel or DC flick where folks have FEELINGS about how faithful it was to the comics or whatever.

Also, I think we got most of our reactions out in the [Movies] thread.