I Dont Know

Stephanie Hsu sang a song about wanting to play different parts, then went and played all the parts. I want your outfits.

Stephanie could do the genie, but Robin Williams couldn’t do Jobu Tupaki

The scene with Alpha Waymond praising Evelyn for being so bad at everything had most of the theater laughing, but being an ADHDer, after Evelyn had been shamed by Deirdre for failing at so many hobbies, hearing just the capacity for experiences praised and considered as elements of identity, I was sobbing and ya know also laughing

This explanation is told in a hilarious way, is the most thorough and convincing reason an everywoman should become any sort of chosen one, and it’s also the best way to construct a superhero story while deconstructing the inherent ableism in the genre.

Daniels talked about a couple cut scenes that more thoroughly resolved Evelyn’s and Jenny Slate’s relationship, one with the same character and one where Jenny plays a talking macaroni boy. It was somewhat clear that Evelyn was being racist in the beginning, but still uncomfortable it didn’t resolve that further

The feet in the Debussy looked um super accurate to the notes at first glance. If they really did pull that off that’s my favorite miracle of the movie

So Daniel Scheinert gave himself the job of being spanked by Michelle Yeoh in the kink-positive climax of the movie.

I want to see more people talking about this ending: this movie reinvents sci-fi action, then makes non-violence look cooler. Evelyn could’ve gotten up those stairs faster with punches, but she wouldn’t have been able to stay grounded enough to care without committing 100% to Waymond’s principles, learning to love even the hot dog verse. And after all that they make rebuilding lines of communication look even cooler.

For all the feats this crew accomplished, they got this movie made cause Michelle Yeoh signed on, and they got Michelle Yeoh by simply writing a complex East Asian woman. Indie creators in all media take note.

Alpha Waymond could have given himself the last paper cut on the other hand.

It would feel disrespectful to the point of the movie to not somehow adapt the themes of the second half, but I know for a fact the mechanics of the first half of EEAAO would be a blast to run as a ttrpg: “Roll me two d100? Ok you’ll be able to pick this lock, but first you have to either hiccup or bark like a dog.”

While we should be talking about the wild things that we are talking about, it’s worth celebrating how well this movie coheres. By constant attention to context, visual references, sound design, whatever it was, I was never once confused which universe we were in. I get lost in normal movies.

I can’t wait to watch a hundred rip-offs of the first act of EEAAO that attempt 10% of what EEAAO succeeds at (sincere).

The trend of fight scenes set to pop songs is over. Long live fight scenes set to remixed Chinese opera.

If Liam Neeson can start an action stardom at 56, we can easily launch Ke Huy Quan at 50.

Son Lux could do Inception, but Hans Zimmer couldn’t do EEAAO

Settling into my post-EEAAO self, I love how much easier it is to feel pride in my skills that have never been visibly useful, and to feel patience for the disappointments and paths I never followed. Somewhere another me is helped by my skills, and somewhen my disappointments will help me access another me.

So them Daniels keep starting with weird concepts then figuring out how to make it about parenting. Dan Kwan wasn’t even a dad when Swiss Army Man dropped and still made a movie about the pain and joy and values we pass on.

The visuals alone were insane and stunning and so smart-- but the plot did so well in setting up this seemingly simple and relatable premise of a struggling Asian- American woman going through it and making something MORE out of it.

Like the themes of intergenerational values and trauma were so prevalent throughout this movie through all the goofiness-- whether it's through Evelyn and Joy's struggles in understanding one another, Evelyn's and her father's own lost past, and to how it's linked between the literal generational divide for Joy where nihilism is a key factor to self-destruction in the form of an Everything Bagel.

The bagel is a bagel with everything on it!! It's overloaded with everything where in the end, it seems pointless!! It's a metaphor about the current gen/present day experiencing everything all at once in its extreme monstrosities-- where it feels like life is meaningless in this chaos and agony. And through Joy's eyes, it's so painful that the doomsday bagel isn't the doomsday device for the multiverse, but for herself.

Joy wasn't searching for all the Evelyns to kill her-- she just wanted one Evelyn, any Evelyn, to understand her in this pain. That maybe everything is pointless and it should be okay to give up, because again, what's the point? And we see Evelyn almost accept this ideology as truth-- until her own flawed and too sweet husband, Waymond, steps up to refute that.

He calls for kindness. Begs her to see love. Acknowledges that she's a fighter and thinks him too soft, but stands his ground in that his love is his way of fighting, too, and he'll keep at it, even when love will cost him the most.

I cried at this scene. And then cried some more the rest of the movie when Evelyn wakes up and starts to fight with love.

All the seemingly irredeemable characters that were introduced as unlovable, she refutes that strongly by saying "there is always something to love." And through that love we see change occur.

There's still chaos, still meaningless pain and struggle in it all-- but the movie confronts that meaninglessness to state that we can try for kindness, try for love and fight with it, because for our limited time here, alive together, that short time will still be cherished. That maybe there really is no point to anything, but we can choose to find our own meaning, choose to be kind and to love and to accept and to grow.

Which is a lot like how some immigrant families catastrophize the moment their children become their own people. Some of us are made to feel that we will ruin EVERYTHING if we aren't straight/don't choose a "secure" career/don't anything that's supposed to align with our parents ideals. Many of us maintain relationships with our parents founded on unsaid and uncomfortable misunderstandings- and we yearn so badly for a situation where we don't have to reach out across the gap.

YEOH: You know, I think a lot of immigrant parents, first-generation, when they come here, they have to make a conscious choice for the next generation. It’s like, do we hold on very firmly to all our cultural- our language and everything, and we stick to a group of immigrants as well? Or do we make them, or help them, blend in, so that they will be able to fit in better?

So I think it’s a very very hard choice, and I think it’s not just the first-generation immigrants. I think parents, even today, from different cultures face the same thing. You know, if we want them to fit in better, maybe they should just speak English. But then it’s a shame if they don’t speak their own language, which is what you find with Joy in Everything Everywhere All At Once, it’s like she has morphed into a true American—ABC, American Born Chinese—in that sense, so she doesn’t really speak the language.

And the worst thing is we find that a lot of Asian parents, especially the older generation, they don’t really give- they are more critical in the sense that the feeling is, if I tell you you are great in everything, then you will walk away thinking you don’t need to learn any more, because I’m already so great. So they always say, like in this scene that you’re describing, she wants to talk to her daughter. She wants her to understand that she accepts the fact that she is gay, she has a white girlfriend. But it’s impossible to communicate that to her father from a previous generation, because in his eyes, Evelyn would have been a total failure—as she is a failure as a daughter, now she is a failure as a mother, because she can’t even teach her daughter to be proper.

So there is so much confusion and emotional contradiction that Evelyn is facing, the first words that come out from her mouth is like, “You are getting fat.” It’s another criticism, you know, but it’s a very common thing that we say to our children. Instead of, “Oh, you’re looking so beautiful today,” they’ll say, “Oh, I think you need a haircut.” Or, you know, “Maybe you need to go to the gym, you need to drop some pounds.” But the first thing they always give them is food, because that is the way they show how much they love them, how much they care for them. The best food is always reserved for them.

So what it shows here very clearly is how the misunderstandings occur. And the worse they don’t know how to communicate, that chasm gets bigger and bigger, until to the point where everything that comes out from the mouth seems to be hurtful. It’s like a dig. It’s almost like Joy feels, “I’m hurting so much. When I say things to you, I want you to feel that hurt, so I’m going to reply with a very hurtful answer.” And that, for her, is one of the easiest solutions, which is not a solution at all.