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Movie Review: Everything Everywhere All at Once
Despite my best efforts—watching Nova on PBS, reading pop-sci books written in the simplest terms—I don’t understand the multiverse theory. You did a math problem and came to the conclusion there are an infinite number of parallel universes? I’ll take your word for it, Mr. Hawking.
It was a relief to learn that the “theory” isn’t a theory in the scientific sense, but mere hypothesis. The implications are horrifying. For every universe you raise a happy, successful family there’s one where you’re miserable and destitute. That time you felt queasy and saved yourself embarrassment by not attending your brother-in-law’s dinner party is a wash, because one universe over you did attend and were browner and sadder for it. Every dumb observation, inappropriate joke, Vox headline, and rude comment you kept to yourself was blurted out by one of your parallel “selves.” Decisions don’t matter.
The sleeper hit Everything Everywhere All at Once, which opened nationwide last weekend, shows that if nothing else, the multiverse theory is a goldmine for creative storytellers. It’s about Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) who is at her wits’ end. Her laundromat business is in hot water with the IRS, her marriage is struggling and she’s not even aware her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) has filed divorce papers, her college-age daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is dating a woman and that won’t go over well with Evelyn’s father (James Hong) who is visiting from China.
At the IRS office, Evelyn gets roped into an interdimensional conflict. She is informed she is one of many Evelyns. The Evelyn from the Alpha Universe was the first person to discover a method of traveling between universes. That Evelyn is recruiting this Evelyn to combat the villain, Jobu Tupaki, a being who experiences all parallel universes at once and is a threat to the entire multiverse. As confusing as that synopsis is, the movie is not hard to follow. For all its elaborate plotting and its temporal and spatial anarchy, EEAaO keeps the viewer in the loop and does so without a condescending amount of exposition. You’re never more confused than the characters are.
The Wang family played by (left to right) Stephanie Hsu, Michelle Yeoh, and Ke Huy Quan.
The movie was directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert known mononymously as Daniels. Their only previous feature is Swiss Army Man, in which a man played by Paul Dano escapes a deserted island with the aid of a farting corpse played by Daniel Radcliffe. I have not seen Swiss Army Man on the basis no movie could live up to such a premise. Daniels like their high concepts, but they know ideas only get you so far. Anyone can come up with good ideas. Consider the 2019 indie movie Mega Time Squad. It’s about a small-time crook who gets his hands on an amulet that lets him travel back in time fifteen minutes, each time creating a copy of himself. He uses these copies to create a gang to pull off heists. A brilliant concept for a story. It starts off fun, then you realize the writer never got further than the initial idea and wasn’t going to exploit the premise for the various bonkers possibilities it offers.
The Daniels don’t introduce an idea without exploring its sundry implications. Maybe because comedy plays such a big part in their movies, they understand the importance of paying off what you set up. Getting back to EEAaO, there are technicians who look up the quickest ways one can channel the abilities of their selves from other universes, like having to make paper cuts between your fingers to gain the spryness of yourself from a universe in which you were a gymnast. I won’t spoil the many methods to initiate this “verse-hopping” as they call it. I’ll only say that two characters merely glancing at an object leads to the biggest laugh in the movie.
Jamie Lee Curtis is near unrecognizable as Deirdre Beaubeirdra.
A plot this zany—and trust me, I’ve barely touched on the zaniness—requires superb performances to maintain some semblance of reality. Michelle Yeoh is the heart of the film. She portrays Evelyn as frazzled and so put upon you can’t help but root for her even while realizing she’s stubborn, oblivious to her husband, and clueless with her daughter. It’s great seeing this legend of Hong Kong cinema get her dues, and at 59 she still carries an action scene. Ke Huy Quan plays Waymond as her equally flustered spouse, and switches to an ultra-competent take on the character when he plays the version from the Alpha Universe. Quan played Data and Short Round in The Goonies and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom respectively. It would’ve driven me nuts had I not known that beforehand. The most surprising performance comes from Jamie Lee Curtis as an IRS agent. It’s not surprising because it’s good; that’s a given. It’s surprising because I had no idea it was Curtis until the end credits.
Everything Everywhere All at Once loses some steam about halfway through once it can no longer run purely on manic energy and novel ideas, and must delve into its central drama which is Evelyn reconciling with her daughter. The emotions are laid on thick. It’s hard to complain, though. Here’s a new movie that’s not based on an existing IP, respects the audience’s intelligence, is boundlessly creative, and yet is a humble martial arts comedy with wide appeal. Consensus is rare in this business, but believe me, everyone is right: this movie is good. And as far as learning about the multiverse, it beats sitting through a Michio Kaku lecture. Hell, I’m warming to multiverse theory myself. Now if only I was in the universe where the couple next to me in the theater kept their commentary to themselves.
Published in Entertainment
It’s the type of thing that keeps me up at night. I’m glad I could give you some further food for thought on the subject.
I assume infinite universes doesn’t necessitate there’s a universe for everything we can imagine. The fact I can think up a universe in which everyone is named Steve doesn’t mean it has to be represented among all the universes. They all are still bound by physical laws. There might be some logical, philosophical, or scientific fact I’m missing here, but that sounds right to me.
I stand by my statement it’s a crowd-pleaser. The multiverse may not be explored in the most in depth manner philosophically, but it is 100% explored in depth as a narrative device. I recommend seeing it in a theater if possible.
I should clarify. From my understanding (which I’ve admitted is minuscule) different initial conditions for the universe could result in different physical laws, so maybe there could be a universe tuned exactly so everyone is named Steve, but the multiverse doesn’t necessitate that there must be one.
Again, I may be totally wrong. I’m hurting my brain.
Well I first had that idea maybe 45 or even 50 years ago, so I smell plagiarism…
Alright, think of it this way. Suppose there exist interactions that lead to a new universe whatever choice you make. When you roll up a new character for your next Elden Ring playthrough. what’s it going to look like? Hypothetical numbers:
Now let’s say that this choice spawned new universes depending on what you selected. How many? Five? That would mean they’re equally likely. A hundred? That’s the minimum to adequately express the probabilities listed. With a hundred universes you could count and say exactly 15 of them had grey headed old men in them. What if the probabilities are more fine than that? If you actually have a 17.34% chance of witchery in your future then the decision would have to spawn ten thousand universes to measure the probability that fine. If the probability of an Adonis is actually exactly π then your decision has to spawn an infinite number of universes to accommodate.
In physics terms, if I solve the equation to explain where an electron is around a hydrogen atom I don’t get a specific “Here it is!” I get a probability density function. There’s an x percentage chance that, if I measured an actual electron on an actual hydrogen atom, that I’d find it between y1 and y2 distance from the nucleus. But there’s no upper bound. I could calculate the chance that that electron is actually in the Andromeda galaxy. In theory; this fails both on the bounds of we can’t measure the physical constants that precisely and also that I’ve forgotten most of the quantum mechanics I once knew. All the equations of quantum mechanics depend on summing up infinite numbers of infinitesimally small probabilities to mostly get the same everyday world we expect where everyone isn’t named Steve.
This is a comment about Steve. What’s all this have to do with Steve? Treat the naming decision like it’s a probability density function. Let’s say that there’s a 1% chance that any given new parent names his son Steve. Then there’s a 1%*1% chance that two boys born in the same hospital at the same time would both be named Steve. Extend that math to the whole world and you get 1%^(5 billion) chance that everyone in the world is named Steve. That chance is miniscule, astoundingly so, but it’s still greater than zero. In an infinite number of universes the Steviverse must exist.
Wait, aren’t there two sexes in the world? Okay, let’s assume that nobody wants to name their darling girl Steve. Let’s assign it one chance in a million. Our number becomes (1%^2.5 billion) * (one in a million ^ 2.5 billion). It’s so tiny it made our last unimaginably small number monstrously big by comparison. But it’s still greater than zero. There’s not just a Steviverse where even the women are named Steve, but an infinite number of them. In roughly a third of them Steve III is running a smokin’ hot brunette through Elden Ring instead of reading this overly long comment.
Maybe everyone is named Steve, but they’re all pronounced differently, like Zathras.
And what if there are universes where people are made of candy?
That overlooks that it’s not just one of us creating new universes, everyone else is making decisions too.
And it might be that you’re even underestimating the different universes each of US creates.
Wouldn’t it create multiple universes too if you roll the dice exactly 1 second from now, or 1.1 seconds, or 1.0001 seconds… Or if one of them goes off the table so you have to roll again…
The argument still works. Let’s say you’ve got a bouncing baby boy. In 1% of the universes you name him Steve. 99% of all universes he’s got a different name, but we can ignore those now. Then you pick your nose right out in public. Let’s say that you only do that 40% of the time, we’ve got 40% of those Steve universes creating daughter universes where you relieved that itch, and 60% where you maintained a polite facade. But those two sets are irrelevant to the considerations of Steve.
Now the couple down the hall are naming their kid. Again, in 99% of the universes we don’t care since we’ve already broken the Steve-ness of this one. In 1%*40% you’ve also picked your nose, and in 1% of those daughter universes the kid down the hall is also named Steve. In 60% of that 1% you’ve not picked your nose, and in 1% of those daughter universes the other couple has christened their little brat Steve.
If you run the numbers you’ll find that there’s 1% of 1% of all universes where both kids were named Steve, and that it was entirely irrelevant that you picked your nose in public. You can tell your wife I said so.
I’m not sure that makes any real difference. Infinite is infinite. Or more technically an infinite probability density function on the real number line will give you an uncountably infinite set, but also an infinite set of such sets is itself in one-to-one correspondence with the set of all real numbers and hence even equally as large as the last one. Or more succinctly א^א = א
“What if there are universes where people are made of candy?”
That is less likely than universes where candy is made of people.
Quit telling the secret ingredients!
I think the larger point – or at least why I find it pointless and boring – is that things like TV shows about “multiverses” with different version of The Flash and Super Girl etc, are ridiculous because they claim to be switching between a rather small number of “universes” where if that theory actually holds, there would be infinite alternatives depending on what each one had for breakfast that day etc.
No doubt there’s a universe out there in which all Red Lectroids are named “John”.
Come to think of it, we live in a universe in which nearly all members of the Bach family of musicians were named “Johann”.
I found a copy of Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League on the shelf of my local book store. So far the writing has been pretty crappy.
The Bach family had it easy!
It seems Youtube age-restricts this biographical investigation of a certain inhabitant of Ulm.
Then just double-click on it or whatever, and watch it on regular youtube.
It requires an ID to sign in with. Can I borrow yours?
You refuse to set up a google/gmail/youtube account? Do it with a VPN and stuff, you can’t be traced.
Yes.
It’s not the tracing. It’s the evil empireness of it.
Doesn’t just watching it do that, even without an “account?”
Anyway I only saw one other version that’s “normal,” everything else seems to be a “tribute” done by other people, for whatever reason.
If this one is also age-restricted, then I guess you’re SOL.
That one works.
Why assume that every parent has a probability above 0% (however infinitesimal) of naming their child Steve?
The latest character I made is a recreation of Simon Belmont so I guess we found ourselves in this particular universe.
Good question. The distinction between ‘wildly unlikely’ and ‘never’ makes a pretty big difference here. I’ll refer you back to the image I posted before. This is exactly the kind of thing I wouldn’t expect to happen even in an infinite multiverse.
My line of thinking is that if you accept the multiverse theory, then free will is a no go (maybe someone has reconciled the two, or attempted to). It stands to reason that if our choices are the result of a complex series of chemical reactions and electrical activity in our brains, then there would be limits on what people could choose, beyond the obvious physical limitations on what we can do.
For some examples, someone who speaks a language very different from English might not have the brain makeup to have Steve as one of the options to choose from; if there was a spate of Steves, then those predisposed to non-conformity may have the capacity for a multitude of names for their child, but Steve wouldn’t be one. At a point, even conforming people might buck the trend unless there is some infinitesimal possibility that everyone is capable of abandoning the very reason for names, differentiating one person from another. This is all untestable. Thought experiments don’t quite stack up to lab experiments.
I saw a spate of Steves open for Emo Philips. It was a long night.
Another comic panel I saved for Ricochet, one that I haven’t gotten to use before because I generally stay out of the threads which are headed in this direction:
Thought experiments do rely on our biases, or if you want to word it slightly less negatively our assumptions.
Ok it’s taken me two months, but I finally watched this movie last night. It was great fun, as expected. It had a lot of the multiverse madness that I wished Disney/Marvel would allow Sam Raimi to do. I’ve watched Michelle Yeoh since I was a kid and she never disappoints. But the whole cast is good here. It was overly sentimental at times, but the Daniels’ absurdist humor balances the tone.
I wanted to die laughing at this, but was afraid what they would say at my eulogy.
Well at least you wouldn’t have to hear it.