The Audacious Vision of "Everything Everywhere All At Once"

In a standout sequence from Everything Everywhere All At Once, a multiversal version of Stephanie Hsu's character, adorned as Elvis, causes a man's head to explode into confetti before dispatching another with rubber sex toys. Hsu, who portrays both the struggling daughter Joy and her weapon-wielding variant, recalls the unusual fight choreography: "The sack is a good handle, you know!" she laughs, noting that the dildos, surprisingly pliable, felt much like nunchucks during practice. For Hsu, it was simply "another day in the multiverse office."

Such creative extremes are a hallmark of directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, known collectively as 'Daniels'. Their films are so replete with wild concepts that traditional notions of "normal" become fluid. Kwan explains a recurring creative drive: "This might be the last thing anyone ever lets us make! We better put everything into it!" He jokes that this escalating commitment eventually culminated in this ambitious film.

Indeed, Everything Everywhere All At Once, as its title suggests, is a grand cinematic endeavor to inject every conceivable idea onto the screen, including infinite multiversal versions of every mundane object. The film is a tapestry of concepts: our place in the universe, the complexities of parent-child relationships, and the challenge of processing information in the digital age. Ke Huy Quan, who plays Joy's father Waymond, praises its boundless invention, humor, and action, yet emphasizes its core message: "at the end of the day, it’s about love." Quan's faith in Daniels was cemented by their 2016 debut, Swiss Army Man, where a flatulent corpse powers its way across an ocean. He surmised, "If they can make me laugh, cry, fall in love, immerse myself in this absolutely outrageous story, I think they can do anything."

According to Hsu, Daniels are "self-proclaimed maximalists," filmmakers whose inventiveness often spills over. Everything Everywhere All At Once provided a narrative framework for this very trait. "We got to explore our own ADHD, too-many-ideas problem in a narrative," Scheinert reveals.

Describing the film is a challenge in itself: it’s a mind-bending multiversal sci-fi, a kinetic martial-arts action film in the Hong Kong tradition, a surreal and often raunchy comedy, a poignant immigrant-family drama, and an existential exploration of life and meaning. At its core, it features an omniversal being of pure chaos threatening reality, a team of multiverse-jumpers tasked with stopping it, all centered on an Asian-American laundromat owner named Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) simply trying to do her taxes. The film's trailer, upon its December debut, sparked widespread internet curiosity, leaving audiences asking, "What the hell is this thing?" Kwan notes their deliberate defiance of easy categorization.

Artistic Roots and Personal Reflections

The early indicators of Daniels' unique, chaotic vision can be found in their music video work, where they first gained renown. Their promotional video for DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s ‘Turn Down For What’, boasting over a billion YouTube views, famously features a man whose magical, destructive crotch-thrusts quite literally blow through multiple ceilings. While a massive viral sensation, the video initially perplexed Daniels' parents. Kwan recalls his mother's suggestion to "read more books," a sentiment that only shifted after the video garnered a Grammy nomination and she attended the ceremony.

This theme of parental incomprehension is recurrent for the duo. "Our parents are constantly having to deal with the fact that we are their kids," Kwan explains, referencing the "Farting Corpse Movie." This dynamic, of parents struggling to grasp their child's unconventional path, directly informed Everything Everywhere All At Once, transforming the generational divide into a powerful multiversal metaphor. Kwan hopes it serves as "a very gracious portrayal of our relationship with our parents."

Other creative impulses fueled the film's genesis. Scheinert notes it began with a sci-fi idea, to which "like, ten other things glommed on" over time. The concept of an infinite multiverse proved to be the key, unlocking boundless storytelling potential. "We’re like, ‘Ah, great! We can do our existential film... It can be a playful sci-fi. It can be an Asian-American story. We can do kung-fu fight scenes...'"

Yeoh's Brave Embrace of the Absurd

The sheer complexity of the film initially challenged even Daniels. They immersed themselves in "pop science" books about the multiverse before fabricating a "stupid, film-friendly version" for the screen. The initial 240-page script was tailored specifically for Michelle Yeoh, with the character even named "Michelle." Scheinert humorously recounts telling producers, "We don’t have a back-up. We really hope she likes it. Because we have zero other ideas."

Yeoh herself, after a momentary Zoom connection issue ("I just jumped into another multiverse!"), admits her initial reaction to the script: "I had never read anything so crazy." Despite her self-professed "dinosaur" status regarding online searches, the script's intrigue and the challenge it presented captivated her. She found solidarity in her confusion with Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays IRS agent Deirdre. Curtis confessed, "I couldn’t figure out what the f**k was going on," but accepted the "little tiny weird movie" solely for the opportunity to work with Yeoh, even performing a rap tribute on set.

Daniels expressed being "blown away" by Yeoh, having grown up admiring her more playful roles. The film cleverly integrates her cinematic legacy; Evelyn's "verse-jumping" ability allows her to tap into highly capable, Michelle Yeoh-like variants, even incorporating actual stock footage of Yeoh from the Crazy Rich Asians red carpet. Kwan notes this is "very much tied into the DNA of Michelle as a human and as an actress."

This connection extended to the film's action. Instead of a traditional Hollywood stunt team, Daniels sourced their fight choreographers, Martial Club (brothers Andy and Brian Le), from YouTube. Kwan marvels, "Everything they know is from watching Hong Kong movies," and Yeoh discovered they were deeply influenced by her own work. She found the choreography a "walk down memory lane," reminiscent of her early career alongside legends like Buster Keaton and Jackie Chan. Yet, even a martial-arts icon faced moments of delightful breakdown on set. Kwan recounts a scene involving interdimensional soldiers and a peculiar trophy that left Yeoh "hysterical on the floor," requiring a ten-minute pause in filming. Scheinert cherishes these moments "where you get a bunch of really talented people together to do something stupid."

Finding Meaning in the Absurd

The film constantly escalates its bizarre elements, notably in a sequence set in an alternate universe where humans have hot-dog fingers. This led to Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis spending a day on set wearing fake hands and lovingly smearing ketchup on each other's faces. Yeoh initially dismissed it as a joke, attempting to persuade Daniels to cut the scene. Curtis recalled their mutual bewilderment, but ultimately, "You just surrender."

Remarkably, despite the outlandish premise, this sequence delivers a genuine emotional payoff. Both the actors and directors approached the absurdity with earnestness. Yeoh explains, "We went into the different universes believing: that is the real universe." Curtis found it "as moving for me as an actor as anything I’ve ever done," despite the hot-dog fingers.

Daniels emphasize that their surrealism is never for shock value alone. "We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to push the envelope without doing a shock-value movie," Scheinert states. They consistently aim to "ground it in something real, some sort of true emotion," Kwan adds. Beneath the puerile insanity, Daniels insist, lies a genuine philosophical inquiry: what does it all mean?

For Daniels, filmmakers shaped by the internet age, the concept of "everything" has profound implications. In an era of constant information overload, they grapple with the search for meaning. The film confronts nihilism, initially conceiving it as the villain's philosophy. Scheinert found they "actually related with that," and the movie ultimately suggests that "a good little dose of nihilism can make you a better person." He clarifies, "We’re actually, like, very sweet, hopeful, romantic people."

If, as the film suggests, nothing ultimately matters, Daniels propose responding to this meaninglessness with absurdity and empathy. If we are merely specks in an indifferent universe, we might as well be kind to one another—and perhaps throw in some dildos for a laugh. Kwan articulates their artistic ethos: "The delineation between highbrow and lowbrow, the profound and the profane, the beautiful and the disgusting... Our work is always trying to encapsulate that in a way that feels beautiful and thought-provoking."

The film left Michelle Yeoh more introspective than she ever anticipated. "The philosophy in this chaotic thing!" she exclaims. "The strength of this story is the will to not give in. We have to live in the now. There may be multiverses out there, but we are not out there. We are here. And we have to love it." And with that, the Zoom call cuts out once more.