Everything Everywhere All at Once

"Be kind, especially when you don't know what's going on.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is a 2022 American absurdist comedy-drama film written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (collectively known as the "Daniels"), who produced it with Anthony and Joe Russo. The plot centers on a Chinese-American immigrant (played by Michelle Yeoh) who, while being audited by the IRS, discovers that she must connect with parallel universe versions of herself to prevent a powerful being from destroying the multiverse. Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., James Hong, and Jamie Lee Curtis appear in supporting roles. The New York Times called the film a "swirl of genre anarchy" with elements of surreal comedy, science fiction, fantasy, martial arts films, and animation.[6]

Kwan and Scheinert began work on the project in 2010, and its production was announced in 2018. Principal photography ran from January to March 2020. The soundtrack features compositions by Son Lux, including collaborations with Mitski, David Byrne, André 3000, John Hampson and Randy Newman.

Everything Everywhere All at Once premiered at South by Southwest on March 11, 2022, and began a limited theatrical release in the United States on March 25, 2022, before a wide release by A24 on April 8, 2022. It was a commercial success and grossed over $106 million worldwide, becoming A24's first film to cross the $100 million mark and surpassing Hereditary (2018) as its highest-grossing film.

The film has received near-universal acclaim for its portrayal of philosophical concepts such as existentialism, nihilism, and absurdism, as well as other themes including generational trauma, ADHD, and Asian-American identity. The movie's accolades include being named a top-ten film of 2022 by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute; two Golden Globes for Yeoh and Quan at the 80th Golden Globe Awards from 6 nominations, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and Best Director; five awards from a leading 14 nominations at the 28th Critics' Choice Awards, including Best Picture; five nominations at the 29th Screen Actors Guild Awards, including acting nominations for the overall ensemble and individual nominations for Yeoh, Quan, Hsu, and Curtis; 10 nominations at the 76th British Academy Film Awards, including Best Film; and 11 nominations at the 95th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, becoming the most nominated film of the ceremony.

Plot

Evelyn Quan is a middle-aged Chinese American immigrant who runs a laundromat with her husband, Waymond Wang. Two decades earlier, they eloped to the United States and had a daughter, Joy. The laundromat is being audited by the IRS, Waymond is trying to serve Evelyn divorce papers, and Evelyn's demanding father Gong Gong[a] is visiting for her Lunar New Year party. Joy wants her mother to accept her non-Chinese girlfriend, Becky, but Evelyn presents her to Gong Gong as Joy's American friend.

At a tense meeting with IRS inspector Deirdre Beaubeirdre, Waymond's body is taken over by Alpha-Waymond, a version of Waymond from the "Alphaverse". Alpha-Waymond explains to Evelyn that many parallel universes exist because every life choice creates a new alternate universe. The Alphaverse, led by the late Alpha-Evelyn, developed "verse-jumping" technology, which enables people to access the skills, memories, and bodies of their parallel-universe selves (but not of other people) by performing bizarre actions that are statistically unlikely. The multiverse is now threatened by Jobu Tupaki, the Alphaverse version of Joy, whose mind was splintered after Alpha-Evelyn pushed her to extensively verse-jump. Jobu now experiences all universes at once and can verse-jump and manipulate matter at will; she has created a black hole-like "everything bagel"[b] that could destroy the entire multiverse.

Evelyn is given verse-jumping technology to fight Jobu's minions, who are now converging on the IRS building. She discovers other universes in which she made different choices and flourished, such as becoming a kung fu master/movie star. She also learns of Waymond's plans for divorce. Alpha-Waymond believes that Evelyn, as the greatest "failure" of all Evelyns in the multiverse, has the untapped potential to defeat Jobu. Alpha-Gong Gong instructs her to kill Joy to stop Jobu from entering her universe through Joy. Evelyn refuses and decides to face Jobu by gaining powers through repeated verse-jumping. As Alpha-Gong Gong's soldiers chase Evelyn, Jobu locates and kills Alpha-Waymond in the Alphaverse. As Jobu confronts Evelyn in her universe, Evelyn's mind splinters, and she collapses, lifeless.

Evelyn's consciousness uncontrollably verse-jumps, alongside Jobu, across bizarre and diverse universes. Jobu explains that she has been searching for an Evelyn who can see, as she does, that nothing matters; and killing the Evelyns that don't. She brings Evelyn to the everything bagel, explaining that it will allow Jobu to die finally. Upon looking into the bagel, Evelyn is persuaded and begins to act nihilistically in her other universes, destroying property and relationships.

As Evelyn is about to enter the bagel with Jobu, she pauses to listen to Waymond's pleas for everybody to stop fighting and be kind and seek understanding amid life's absurdism. Evelyn has an existentialist epiphany. She follows Waymond's absurdist and humanist advice and uses her multiverse powers to find what hurts those around her and brings them happiness. In doing so, she repairs her damage in the other universes and neutralizes Alpha-Gong Gong and Jobu's fighters. In her home universe, Evelyn tells Gong Gong of Joy and Becky's relationship, talks with Deirdre after Waymond convinces her to let Waymond and Evelyn redo their taxes, and reconciles with Waymond. Jobu begins to enter the bagel, and simultaneously as Joy in Evelyn's universe, begs Evelyn to let her go. Evelyn says that even when nothing makes sense, if she could be anywhere else in the multiverse, she would always want to be with Joy. Evelyn and the others save Jobu from the bagel, and Evelyn and Joy embrace as the universes are restored.

Sometime later, with the family's relationships improved, they return to the IRS building to refile their taxes. As Deirdre talks, Evelyn's attention is momentarily drawn to her alternate selves and the multiverse before she grounds herself back in her home universe.

Cast

(Clockwise) Everything Everywhere All at Once stars Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis, and James Hong

Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Quan Wang, a dissatisfied and overwhelmed laundromat owner; and as several other versions of Evelyn in alternate universes.

Stephanie Hsu as Joy Wang, Evelyn's daughter; and Jobu Tupaki, Alpha-Evelyn's omnicidal daughter whose growing nihilism is a threat to the entire multiverse.

Ke Huy Quan as Waymond Wang, Evelyn's meek and goofy husband whose existentialism is the antidote to Jobu's nihilism; and as Alpha-Waymond, from the Alphaverse; and other versions of Waymond in alternate universes

James Hong as Gong Gong (Cantonese, "grandfather"),[9] Evelyn's demanding father; and Alpha-Gong Gong, Alpha-Evelyn's father in the Alphaverse who wants Evelyn to sacrifice Joy to impede Jobu.

Jamie Lee Curtis as Deirdre Beaubeirdre, an IRS inspector; and as several other versions of Deirdre in alternate universes.

Jenny Slate as Debbie the Dog Mom, a laundromat customer[c]

Harry Shum Jr. as Chad, a teppanyaki chef working alongside an alternative Evelyn in another universe.

Additionally, Tallie Medel appears as Becky Sregor, Joy's girlfriend; Biff Wiff appears as Rick, a laundromat customer; Sunita Mani and Aaron Lazar appear as actors in a musical film Evelyn watches; Audrey Wasilewski and Peter Banifaz appear as Alpha RV Officers; Andy Le and Brian Le appear as Alpha Trophy Jumpers; and Michiko Nishiwaki appears as Evelyn's kung-fu opponent and costar.

Randy Newman, who has scored nine Disney–Pixar films, appears as the voice of Raccacoonie, a reference to the Pixar-animated film Ratatouille (2007); he is credited as a featured artist on the track "Now We're Cookin'".[11] Directors Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan have cameos in the film, with the former as District Manager, while the latter has uncredited cameos as a man sucked into the bagel and a mugger.[12]

Production

Development and writing

Writer-directors Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan

Co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert began researching the concept of the multiverse as early as 2010, after being exposed to the concept of modal realism in the Ross McElwee documentary Sherman's March (1986).[8] Kwan described the release of the animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), which also deals with a multiversal concept, as "a little upsetting because we were like, 'Oh shit, everyone's going to beat us to this thing we've been working on.'"[8] He also stated: "Watching the second season of Rick and Morty was really painful. I was like, 'They've already done all the ideas we thought were original!' It was a really frustrating experience. So I stopped watching Rick and Morty while we were writing this project."[8]

In early drafts of the screenplay, the directors planned for the main character to be a professor and have undiagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); through his research for the project, Kwan learned that he had undiagnosed ADHD.[13]

Scenes in which Evelyn trains in martial arts and becomes an action film star were visually and contextually inspired by the films of Wong Kar-wai;[8] Chris Lee of Vulture writes that they "conjur[e] a mood of exquisite romantic yearning that will be instantly recognizable ... as touchstones" of Wong's works.[8] The universe in which Evelyn and Joy are rocks was influenced by the children's book Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (1969) and the video game Everything (2017).[8]

Kwan has said the idea of the everything bagel "started as just a throwaway joke".[8] Scheinert said they spent time attempting to develop the religion of bagel followers, but encountered complications: "[Jobu Tupaki]'s a nihilist; should there be dogma? Should there be a book? What should their practices be as a religion? The bagel stuck because it became such a useful, simple symbol that we could point to as filmmakers. And you don't have to explain it much beyond the joke."[8]

Casting

Everything Everywhere All at Once marked the return of Ke Huy Quan (pictured in 2018) to acting since his retirement in 2002.

The script was written for Jackie Chan until Kwan and Scheinert reconceived the protagonist as a woman, feeling it would make the husband–wife dynamic in the story more relatable.[14]

The new script's lead character was initially named Michelle Wang, according to Michelle Yeoh, who said, "If you ask the Daniels, when they started on this draft, they focused on, 'Well, we are doing this for Michelle Yeoh.'"[15] The character's name was eventually changed to Evelyn. Despite the parallels between herself and the universe in which Evelyn is a martial artist and film star,[16] Yeoh opposed naming the character Michelle. "Evelyn deserves her own story to be told. This is a very ordinary mother [and] housewife who is trying her best to be a good mother to her daughter, a good daughter to her father, a wife that's trying to keep the family together", she said. "I don't like to integrate me, Michelle Yeoh, into the characters that I play, because they all deserve their own journey and their stories to be told."[16]

It was announced in August 2018 that Yeoh and Awkwafina had been cast to star in what was described as an "interdimensional action film" from Kwan and Scheinert, with Anthony and Joe Russo attached to produce.[17] Awkwafina left the project in January 2020 due to scheduling conflicts, and was replaced with Stephanie Hsu. James Hong, Ke Huy Quan, and Jamie Lee Curtis joined the cast. It marked Quan's return to film acting, from which he had retired in 2002 due to a lack of casting opportunities.[18][19] Kwan and Scheinert were inspired to cast Quan after seeing a meme of politician Andrew Yang being shown as a grown-up version of Short Round, Quan's character from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). They were curious to learn what Quan had been up to, and learned that he was the right age of Waymond; coincidentally, Quan had decided to return to acting around the same time frame before he was approached for the role.[20] Quan's former The Goonies (1985) co-star Jeff Cohen served as his attorney to negotiate his deal for the film.[21]

Filming

Principal photography began in January 2020, with A24 announcing that it would finance and distribute the film.[22] Shooting took 38 days,[23] mostly in Simi Valley, California.[24] The Daniels said the film's kung-fu fight scenes were shot unusually quickly; for example, the fanny-pack fight was shot in a day and a half.[25] Filming wrapped in early March 2020 during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.[26]

Themes

Everything Everywhere All at Once incorporates elements from a number of genres and film mediums, including absurdist comedy, science fiction, fantasy, martial arts films, and animation.[27][28] A. O. Scott of The New York Times described the film as a "swirl of genre anarchy", explaining that "while the hectic action sequences and flights of science-fiction mumbo-jumbo are a big part of the fun (and the marketing), they aren't really the point. [The movie is] a bittersweet domestic drama, a marital comedy, a story of immigrant striving and a hurt-filled ballad of mother-daughter love."[6]

The film explores the concepts of the meaning of life and various associated philosophies, and particularly the opposites of existentialism and of nihilism; according to Charles Bramesco of The Guardian, "The bagel of doom and its tightening grip on Evelyn's daughter lend themselves to the climactic declaration that there's nothing worse than submitting to the nihilism so trendy with the next generation. Our lone hope of recourse is to embrace all the love and beauty surrounding us, if only we're present enough to see it."[29] This nihilism is also incorporated into the film's exploration of Asian American identity. Anne Anlin Cheng wrote in The Washington Post: "It's not only that the multiverse acts as a metaphor for the immigrant Asian American experience, or a convenient parable for the dislocations and personality splits suffered by hyphenated (that is, "Asian-American") citizens. It also becomes a rather heady vehicle for confronting and negotiating Asian-pessimism", a term she uses in reference to Afro-pessimism.[30]

Consequence's Clint Worthington wrote that "for all its dadaist absurdism and blink-if-you-miss-it [sic] pace, Daniels weaves the chaotic possibilities into the multiverse into a cohesive story about the aches and pains of the road not traveled, and the need to carve out your own meaning in a meaningless universe".[31] Describing Jobu Tupaki's modus operandi, Worthington notes "the living contradiction that is the everything bagel: if you put everything on a bagel, what more is left? And if you've experienced everything that the multiverse can offer, what's the point of any of it?"[31] Kwan said that the everything bagel concept "did two things. It allowed us to talk about nihilism without being too eye roll-y. And it creates a MacGuffin: a doomsday device. If in the first half of the movie, people think that the bagel is here to destroy the world, and in the second half you realize it's a depressed person trying to destroy themselves, it just takes everything about action movies and turns it into something more personal."[8]

The film engages textually and metatextually with the "real world" of the viewer.[32][33] Critics have noted that one version of Evelyn—a famous martial arts movie star—is a portrayal of Yeoh herself,[33][34][35] that Ke Huy Quan's experience as a stunt coordinator is used diegetically in Waymond's fight scenes,[36] and that James Hong's transformation into "a more sinister, English-fluent, Machiavellian strategist" parallels his character Lo Pan in Big Trouble in Little China (1986).[32][37]

Music

Main article: Everything Everywhere All at Once (soundtrack)

Experimental band Son Lux composed the film's score.

The musical score was composed by Son Lux, whose members are Ryan Lott, Ian Chang, and Rafiq Bhatia.[38] Daniels asked them to approach the score individually, and not as a band. Lott said, "I think that the complete picture of not only who we are as a band, but also who we are as individuals and what we have accomplished and the places we've gone creatively individually, meant for them that there was a possibility that many of these universes of sound could be within reach with this particular trio".[39]

Son Lux took two to three years to compose the score, which includes more than a hundred musical cues.[40] The soundtrack album consists of 49 tracks and runs for more than two hours. It features several prominent musicians,[41] including Mitski, David Byrne, a flute-playing André 3000, Randy Newman, Moses Sumney, Hajnal Pivnick and yMusic.[42][43][11] Two songs—"This Is a Life" featuring Mitski and Byrne[44] and "Fence" featuring Sumney—were released as singles on March 4 and 14, 2022.[45] The album was released on March 25 to positive critical response.[46][47]

The film features several instances, both in audio and in dialogue, of the 2000 Nine Days song "Absolutely (Story of a Girl)". When Daniels reached out to Nine Days vocalist John Hampson about using the song, Hampson enthusiastically agreed to record three alternate versions of the song for use in the film.[48][49]

Release

Theatrical

Everything Everywhere All at Once had its world premiere at the South by Southwest film festival on March 11, 2022.[50] It had a limited release in theaters on March 25, 2022,[51] followed by a nationwide release on April 8, in the United States by A24.[52] On March 30, 2022, the film was released in select IMAX theaters in the U.S. for one night only. Due to its popularity, the film returned to select IMAX theaters for one week starting on April 29, 2022.[53][54] The film was not released in most parts of the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, due to censorship of LGBT issues in those countries.[55] The film was released in the United Kingdom on May 13, 2022.[56] The film was re-released in U.S. theaters on July 29, 2022, unchanged but adding an introduction by the Daniels and eight minutes of outtakes after the credits.[57][58] It was re-released again in U.S. theaters on January 27, 2023 on 1,400 screens to celebrate its Oscar nominations.[59][60]

Home media

The film was released on digital streaming platforms on June 7, 2022, and was released on Blu-ray, DVD, and Ultra HD Blu-ray on July 5, 2022, by Lionsgate Home Entertainment.[61][62]

Reception

Box office

Everything Everywhere All at Once has grossed $72 million in the United States and Canada and $34.5 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $106.5 million.[4][5]

In the United States and Canada, the film earned $509,600 from ten venues in its opening weekend. Its debut had a theater average of $50,965, the second-best since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic for a platform release (behind Licorice Pizza) and the then-best opening theater average in 2022.[63] In its second weekend, the film grossed $1.1 million from 38 theaters, finishing ninth at the box office.[64] It received a wide expansion in its third weekend, going from 38 to 1,250 theaters.[65][66] It made $6.1 million, finishing sixth at the box office.[67][68] Playing in 2,220 theaters the following weekend, it earned $6.2 million, finishing fourth.[69] In its sixth weekend, it added $5.5 million, part of which was attributed to a wider IMAX release following its successful box office run up to that point.[27] It added $3.5 million in its seventh weekend,[70] and another $3.3 million in its eighth.[71] By May 21 it had made over $51 million, surpassing Uncut Gems ($50 million) as A24's highest-grossing film domestically.[72] By June 9 it had made over $80 million, surpassing Hereditary ($79 million) as A24's highest-grossing film of all time.[73] It remained in the box office top ten before dropping out in its sixteenth weekend (ending on July 10).[74] The film crossed the $100 million mark worldwide on July 31, making it the first independent film released during the pandemic and in A24's history to do so.[2]

Outside of the United States, other top-earning territories as of July 31 were: the United Kingdom ($6.2 million), Canada ($5.1 million), Australia ($4.5 million), Russia ($2.4 million), Taiwan ($2.3 million), Mexico ($2 million), Hong Kong ($1.7 million), Germany ($1.5 million), and the Netherlands ($1.1 million).[2]

Critical response

Michelle Yeoh received universal acclaim for her performance in the film, with many reviewers and viewers calling it the best role of her career and earned her a nomination for the Academy Award For Best Actress.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 95% based on 368 reviews, with an average rating of 8.6/10. The website's consensus reads: "Led by an outstanding Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once lives up to its title with an expertly calibrated assault on the senses."[75] On August 26, 2022, Rotten Tomatoes users voted Everything Everywhere All At Once as "A24's Best Film of All Time" in their A24 Showdown.[76] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 81 out of 100, based on 54 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[77] Audiences polled by PostTrak gave it an 89% positive score, with 77% saying that they would definitely recommend it.[67]

David Ehrlich of IndieWire called the film an "orgiastic work of slaphappy genius", praising the direction and performances, particularly Yeoh's.[78] The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney called it a "frenetically plotted serve of stoner heaven [that] is insanely imaginative and often a lot of fun", complimenting the cast and score but found the handling of the story's underlying theme underwhelming.[79] In her review for RogerEbert.com, Marya E. Gates lauded Yeoh's performance, writing: "Yeoh is the anchor of the film, given a role that showcases her wide range of talents, from her fine martial art skills to her superb comic timing to her ability to excavate endless depths of rich human emotion often just from a glance or a reaction."[80] Charles Bramesco, writing for The Guardian, praised the Daniels for constructing a "large, elaborate, polished and detailed expression of a vision".[29] Amy Nicholson of The Wall Street Journal wrote: "Over its nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time, the movie's ambitions double, and double again, as though it's a petri dish teeming with Mr. Kwan and Mr. Scheinert's wildest ideas."[7]

In her review for Vanity Fair, Maureen Ryan highlighted Yeoh's performance, writing: "Yeoh imbues Evelyn with moving shades of melancholy, regret, resolve and growing curiosity" and adding that she "makes her embrace of lead-character energy positively gripping".[81] Adam Nayman of The Ringer referred to the film as "a love letter to Yeoh", adding: "Everything Everywhere All At Once is extremely poignant, giving its 59-year-old star a chance to flex unexpected acting muscles while revisiting the high-flying fight choreography that made her a global icon back in the 1990s".[82] In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Jake Coyle wrote that although Everything Everywhere "can verge on overload, it's this liberating sense of limitless possibility that the movie leaves you filled with, both in its freewheeling anything-goes playfulness and in its surprisingly tender portrait of existential despair".[83] Tasha Robinson of Polygon named the scene of Evelyn and Joy Wang as rocks with their dialogue appearing as on-screen subtitles, all while trying to find common ground, as one of the best movie scenes of 2022, saying "...it’s a perfect moment. Like so many EEAAO sequences, it turns between emotions on a dime. But the quiet of the moment is essential. Out of context, it’s just an odd moment between rocks. But within the context of the film, it’s a breather the audience and characters both desperately need, and the emotions are so heightened that just the sight of rock-Joy and rock-Evelyn sharing a companionable laugh is remarkably heartening and hilarious."[84]

Dissenting reviews include those of Richard Brody for The New Yorker, who dismissed Everything Everywhere as a "sickly cynical feature-length directorial pitch reel for a Marvel movie",[85] and Keith Garlington, who noted that while the film was an ambitious task, it "often gives way to overindulgence making this overlong and overstuffed genre stew a well-meaning but exhausting experience".[86]

Letterboxd announced that Everything Everywhere All at Once had briefly become the highest-rated film of all time on the site, surpassing The Godfather (1972) and Parasite (2019).[87] It remained in the top fifteen on the site until January 2023.[88] The New York Times named character Jobu Tupaki, played by Hsu, one of the 93 Most Stylish 'People' of 2022.[89]

Accolades

Main article: List of accolades received by Everything Everywhere All at Once

Everything Everywhere All at Once was nominated for 11 Academy Awards,[90] 10 British Academy Film Awards,[91] 13 Critics' Choice Movie Awards (winning five)[92] and six Golden Globe Awards (winning two).[93] It was named one of the top 10 films of 2022 by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute.[94][95]