Towards the end of 2022, as critics dutifully compiled lists for their favourite films of the year, fans of multiverse-jumping darling Everything Everywhere All At Once (EEAAO) were about to get very angry. In response to a ranking from The New York Times, one EEAAO enthusiast tweeted that the film’s omission showed the author to be an “upper middle class zealot”. One of the film’s co-directors, Daniel Kwan, intervened: “This aggression will not stand, man.” Kwan also decried discourse around end-of-year rankings (“toxic af”), outrage-fuelled social media algorithms (“capitalism has taught us to see everything as a zero-sum game”). And he issued a warning for the upcoming Oscars: “I want to see absolutely no bullies, no meanies, no buttheads acting out on behalf of our film post-Oscar announcements.” Perhaps there is a multiverse in which this could happen; in ours, the one where a billionaire wannabe-spaceman owns Twitter, such peace seems unlikely.
How, exactly, did we reach this fever pitch? In some respects, EEAAO – directed by Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (known collectively as the “Daniels”) – is one of the more traditional Best Picture frontrunners this season. The A24-distributed film has critical acclaim (even measured reviews did not deny the film’s emotional depth, flair, or stand-out performances from Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan) and box office success (with a budget of $25 million, it has made over $100 million worldwide, easily overtaking Hereditary as A24’s biggest film). The storyline is whacky, sure – Chinese immigrant Evelyn Wang (Yeoh) stumbles upon the multiverse during a fractious IRS session – but it has very well-worn themes at its manic, kaleidoscopic heart: family, regret, love’s ability to overcome.
And yet, it doesn’t act like a typical awards favourite. It is not a biopic. No one in the cast gained weight, lost weight, shaved their head, or stayed in character for three years for the role. It is that rare Hollywood picture with a majority Asian cast. Quan, the likely and worthy frontrunner for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars, has not acted regularly since his break-out role as Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (released almost 40 years ago). Even for those who do not like the film (me included), that is exciting.
But if you’re into it? It’s a perfect storm of nerdy delights. In Deadline’s recent round-table with Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Guillermo Del Toro praised EEAAO as a landmark movie: the type of film his kids could embrace, the same way he had once embraced The Graduate. Cuaron echoed that sentiment: “I think it happened the same way in the ’90s with the films of Tarantino, or with Trainspotting, where it felt like there was a huge new injection of energy into cinema.”
The crossover with comic book movie fans, not shy about expressing their feelings, is also key; Marvel has been working away at its own multiverse with 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and 2021’s world-beating Spider-Man: No Way Home. The Daniels were originally tapped to direct the Loki TV series (which is somehow also about the multiverse). A healthy amount of polarisation seems to be a touchstone of the directors’ work; their 2016 film Swiss Army Man, in which Paul Dano plays a castaway who befriends a corpse (a very game Daniel Radcliffe), is the type of project to elicit laughter or eye-rolls.
It is, of course, a little unfair to blame one group entirely, and it’s worth noting that while EEAAO fans can be irritating, if you look hard enough, there are irritating fans everywhere. Besides, it seems mostly to come from a good place. People have read a lot into this film: immigrant stories, generational trauma, even ADHD diagnoses. Whether you take the film’s ability to mean that many things to this many people as evidence of its boundary-pushing, transcendental power or rather its vague, be kind to one another sentiment, is another question. But it’s easy to see why people have become so defensive. Awards and critical rankings, for better and often worse, validate feelings.
Whatever happens at the Oscars, EEAAO has all the makings of a future cult classic (losing out to Steven Spielberg’s more traditional The Fabelmans would likely only fast-track that status). There’s the unimpeachable casting. The marriage of an immigrant family drama with the freneticism of a music video. The Daniels’ distinct, arguably exhausting aesthetic: googly eyes, dildo-shaped employee-of-the-month awards, hotdog fingers. And the marketing – as you would expect from indie mega-factory A24 – expertly meets demand for all things EEAAO. For $36, you can buy a pair of gloves that make your fingers look like frankfurters. “Casual” does not exist in this fanbase’s vocabulary. But the thing about a cult following? Sometimes, people will act as if they are in a cult.
‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ is available to stream on Amazon Prime and Apple TV
Henry Wong is a senior culture writer at Esquire, working across digital and print. He covers film, television, books, and art for the magazine, and also writes profiles.
