A24’s critical and commercial hit Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most wildly original movies ever made. It brings an arthouse sensibility into the mainstream and combines elements of every genre from sci-fi epic to screwball comedy to martial arts movies. The Daniels’ perfectly crafted script tells its intimate story through an epic lens. They never lose sight of the emotional core of the characters, no matter how bizarre it gets.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is a truly unique movie, because it has such bonkers alternate universes as a world with hot dog fingers and a world with talking rocks, and also delivers a wonderfully life-affirming message about the key to happiness. This movie is full of timely wisdom.
Nihilism Isn’t The Answer
Although it’s introduced as a visually stunning MacGuffin, the “everything bagel” at the center of the multiverse ends up representing the lack of meaning in life and the temptation to resign to a belief in nothing. This ominous cosmic bagel presents the ultimate paradox: no matter how much stuff is on the bagel, it’ll never be enough. Joy being Jobu Tupaki’s avatar is a genius plot device, not only because it gives Evelyn a compelling reason to save her; it also draws parallels between the nihilism of a multiversal entity who’s run out of worlds to conquer and the nihilism of a Generation Z kid with an overbearing mother.
Despite exploring nihilism and the reasons for it in some depth, Everything Everywhere All at Once doesn’t endorse a nihilistic worldview. The movie’s message is that nihilism, though increasingly tempting in a world that keeps getting darker, isn’t the answer. In every iteration of the universe, it’s up to individuals to create their own meaning within the life that they’ve been given (even if that life includes hot dog fingers).
Fighting Won’t Solve Anything
After treating audiences to a glorious battle royale (on the office floor of an IRS branch of all places) in the first half of Everything Everywhere All at Once, the Daniels subvert the usual expectations of a big final battle in the climactic sequence. Before a brutal dust-up between Evelyn and Jobu Tupaki’s multiversal henchmen, Waymond steps in and begs them all to “stop fighting!”
He insists that violence isn’t the answer and implores Evelyn to find another way to save their daughter. As Evelyn prepares to decimate them all in combat, she changes her mind and decides to take his advice. She pops one of her husband’s googly eyes on her forehead and takes down the henchmen one by one, but not by beating them to a pulp; by verse-jumping into their original worlds, fixing all the problems in their lives, and making them happier people.
Optimism Is Its Own Kind Of Fight
One of the patterns across all universes is that Waymond is an unwavering, starry-eyed optimist who always looks for the bright side in things, and Evelyn thinks that’s naive. In one universe, Waymond explains why he remains optimistic, and its that it’s much more difficult than it seems.
Waymond tells Evelyn’s martial artist variant that he sees himself as a fighter like her, but his fight is against a cruel world that doesn’t always present a bright side. She sees his optimism as a weakness, but he sees it as a strength (and a coping mechanism). He fights to stay optimistic and see the positive side of things: “This is how I fight.”
Don’t Worry About The Road Not Taken
As she becomes a more confident verse-jumper, Evelyn starts spending longer and longer embodying her variants. She begins to resent her relatively meager existence made up of “laundry and taxes” when she realizes her other selves are rich celebrities with fulfilling, creative careers. But the movie’s advice is not to worry so much about what could have been – just enjoy what is.
When Evelyn complains to one of the Waymond variants she didn’t marry that, in another life, all they do is laundry and taxes, he says he’d be happy just doing laundry and taxes with her. Evelyn learns to appreciate what she has: a loving husband and a daughter who desperately wants to connect with her.
There’s Always Something To Love
Just as Jobu Tupaki’s footsoldiers are about to defeat Evelyn and she accepts a grim fate, she decides to give Waymond’s method a go and fights with love, not hate. When Deirdre refers to herself (and Evelyn) as “cold, unlovable b***hes” before delivering a death blow, Evelyn kindly assures Deirdre that she’s not unlovable, because “there’s always something to love.”
The ultimate lesson in Everything Everywhere All at Once is that the key to happiness isn’t lamenting what isn’t there; it’s being grateful for what is there. Even in a world where human beings are cursed with ridiculous, floppy hot dog fingers, there’s still some beauty because people just “get really good with their feet.” Deirdre’s multiversal self stays true to Evelyn’s “always something to love” claim, as her hot-dog-finger-verse variant learns to play beautiful music on the piano with her extra-dexterous toes.
