Now that awards season has finally concluded, it's safe to say that Everything Everywhere All at Once has been true to its name, taking home countless awards including Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.
Its award season dominance has been both surprising and emotional. Please allow us to explain why.
I have been living under a rock and haven't seen it yet. What is it about?
It's a sci-fi action movie starring Michelle Yeoh (Crazy Rich Asians) as Evelyn Wang, an exhausted Chinese-American immigrant laundromat owner with a tax problem.
Ke Huy Quan (The Goonies) plays Evelyn's meek, long-suffering husband Waymond, up-and-comer Stephanie Hsu (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) plays the couple's increasingly distant daughter Joy, and Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween) has a memorable turn as tax auditor Deirdre Beaubeirdre.
Evelyn's crumbling life is pushed into total chaos when different versions of Evelyn — from multiverses where, for example, she is a movie star or everyone has hot dogs for fingers — begin popping up. It becomes quickly clear that there's a lot more at stake than her struggling business and personal life (and for those living under a rock, there's even a sequence just for you).
Co-writer and co-director Daniel Kwan told ABC RN's Stop Everything!: "The immigrant story is perfect for the multiverse just because so much of it is about: What if? What if I had stayed? What if I moved somewhere else? What if I didn't have kids? There's so much potential and regret in that kind of narrative."
Sounds wacky, but is it good?
When the movie was released in Australia in April last year, ABC Arts reviewer Luke Goodsell wrote that it "is such a monument to Yeoh that its occasional corniness, even its eager-to-please, gag-a-minute brio, can't help but add to the strangely moving effect … Whichever way you dice it, there's nothing else quite like it in mainstream American cinema at the multiplex."
And there's nothing else quite like it on the awards circuit.
Aside from the Oscars, what awards have the cast and crew taken home?
Yeoh has taken home awards for leading actress, Quan for supporting actor (more on both of their wins in a minute), and writer-directors Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan for directing and writing.
The team's overall haul includes a sweep of the Independent Spirit Awards, as well as Golden Globe, Critics' Choice and Screen Actors Guild (SAG) awards.
For a full list of all the awards the movie has been nominated for, we direct you here.
Stop Everything! presenter Beverley Wang observes: "When Everything Everywhere All at Once was released, it was quite early in the year [2022], [but] usually when films are gunning for award season campaigning, they really wait until the very end of the year so that the memory of them is very fresh.
"So this has also been a very unlikely journey of this weird movie made by these two guys named Daniel who brought together this very unlikely cast."
How has this very unlikely cast reacted to the wins?
Often with lots of emotion (and humour!).
When Yeoh won the SAG for best actress, she became the first Asian woman to win in a lead category.
Accepting the award, she was overcome and reduced to expletives, before she said: "This is not just for me; this is for every little girl who looks like me."
The 60-year-old Malaysian-born comic was also emotional during her Golden Globes speech (where she refused to be played off), as she said: "It's been an … incredible fight to be here today, but I think it's worth it."
On receiving the Oscar for Best Actress (and being greeted with a raucous standing ovation), she told the crowd: "Ladies, don't let anyone ever tell you you're past your time."
Quan was a child actor known for his roles in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies, and his speeches have been similarly bursting with emotion.
His Golden Globe speech was one for the ages: "For so many years, I was afraid I had nothing more to offer. No matter what I did, I would never surpass what I achieved as a kid."
At the SAG awards, he cried, as he also made history as the first Asian actor to win his category, ending his speech by saying: "Thank you everyone for rooting for me; I will be rooting for you."
Finally, he capped his extraordinary comeback with the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, in what was one of the ceremony's most moving moments.
He fought back tears as the audience — including Temple of Doom director Steven Spielberg — gave him a standing ovation.
"Mom, I just won an Oscar!" he said.
I am beginning to understand some of the reasons for all these feelings, but tell me more
After Quan's early fame, acting offers dried up and he ended up behind the scenes doing stunt work.
He only returned to acting after seeing Crazy Rich Asians (2018), a pivotal moment for Asian representation in Hollywood.
Yeoh, who stole the show in Crazy Rich Asians, is the undisputed queen of Hong Kong cinema (Royal Warriors; The Heroic Trio). But she first came to Hollywood's attention as a Bond girl in Tomorrow Never Dies in 1997, and then had an incredible turn in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).
But Everything Everywhere All at Once is the first time the 60-year-old has headlined a Hollywood movie.
Kwan told Stop Everything!: "She's the kind of person who has been dying to experiment and play, and no one has been giving her those opportunities."
Then there's 94-year-old actor James Hong, who plays Evelyn's father in the movie.
Accepting the SAG award for best performance by a cast, he spoke about how the producers of 1937's The Good Earth used yellowface because: "Asians were not good enough and they are not box office-[worthy]'. But look at us now."
Hong's first acting role was as an unnamed Chinese policeman in the 1955 Clark Gable movie Soldier of Fortune, and he spent years playing "magical oriental"-type roles, including in the 1986 film Big Trouble in Little China.
Stop Everything!'s Benjamin Law says: "In Everything Everywhere All at Once, he is the kindly old grandfather, but he also starts becoming monstrous and villainous as well, in ways that you don't expect; this role is such a joy for him."
Wang adds: "It's so extraordinary that he [Hong] even exists in Hollywood, the persistence that would have taken. And at 94 … [he] is [finally] being recognised as a good actor with range."
In conclusion…
"[Yeoh, Quan and Hong] have scrapped and fought for a place on the sidelines and kind have been told all their careers, be happy with that, because you're here anyway. And you're not supposed to be here," says Wang.
"The way I see it, these are healing tears we're seeing in the acceptance speeches of the cast of Everything Everywhere All at Once. To be underestimated or pigeonholed for so long, and then to have an opportunity come along that lets their talents shine and be recognised — it's profound! Of course they're crying."
OK, zooming out, what does this all mean for Hollywood?
Let's use the SAG award for best cast as an example: It was won by the Korean cast of Parasite in 2020 (despite no individual cast member being recognised by the Oscars) and by the predominantly deaf cast of CODA in 2022.
These wins indicate that change is afoot in Hollywood — with people from diverse communities finally getting the representation and recognition they deserve.
Law says: "Parasite was an Asian film in Asia. Everything Everywhere All at Once is very much a film about the diaspora and that is a very, very different community that warrants different representation."
Wang adds: "I think the genre makes a difference. This is not a quiet family drama. There is a family story at the core of it, but there's so much other stuff happening going on; there is multiverse-jumping, extraordinary fight scenes. You could call it an action film, an adventure film, a time-hopping film. It's a different kind of film."
Director Daniel Kwan recognises that audiences might have come to his movie with certain expectations.
"[They're thinking:] This is going to be an immigrant story about our cultures clashing, which at this point, we've seen so many of those. And then for it to become what it does become, I think people will think twice about complaining about there being too many stories about the immigrant experience.
"We're just getting started. This is just the beginning."
