Everything Everywhere All At Once: A guide to the references, Easter eggs and meanings

At archetypal glance, Everything Everywhere All At Once is not a emblematic Oscar-winning movie.

A wildly inventive, universe-jumping communicative astir getting your taxes filed, it features characters with blistery dogs for hands, a nihilistic bagel, and a combat country centred astir a enactment toy.

Despite (or possibly due to the fact that of) the absurd premise, the movie has been the darling of awards season, culminating successful its seven-Oscar haul connected Sunday night.

Not lone did it prime up champion picture, but it won 3 of the 4 acting awards, arsenic good arsenic champion archetypal screenplay and champion manager for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.

After that triumph, galore radical volition beryllium inspired to ticker the movie for the archetypal time... and, connected archetypal viewing, there's a batch to digest.

So here's a useful usher to the main points and, for those of you who cueing it up for a 2nd time, the Easter eggs you mightiness person missed archetypal clip around.

Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) is navigating an existential crisis.

A Chinese-American immigrant, her business, matrimony and relationships are simultaneously crumbling. To distract herself, she dreams of the antithetic paths her beingness could person taken if she wasn't joined to eternal optimist Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) and perpetually locking horns with her girl Joy (Stephanie Hsu, pictured).

But erstwhile she visits the taxation office, things get weird.

An alternate beingness mentation of Waymond abruptly appears, informing Evelyn that each of beingness is being threatened by an cause of chaos known arsenic Jobu Tupaki - who besides happens to beryllium her daughter.

To decision her, Evelyn indispensable harness the powerfulness of aggregate parallel-universe Evelyns, absorbing their skills successful everything from martial arts to opera singing.

Yeoh, who was calved successful Malaysia, got her large interruption arsenic a stunt actress, regularly appearing alongside Jackie Chan successful the 1980s.

When her quality needs to assimilate martial arts skills successful Everything Everywhere All At Once, she taps into a movie prima mentation of Evelyn, whose vocation is based connected Yeoh herself.

The movie adjacent utilizes footage from the actress's nationalist appearances, including a reddish carpet changeable from the premiere of Crazy Rich Asians, and different archival shots from her career.

"This movie is 1 100 percent a effect to The Matrix, obviously," Daniel Kwan said astatine the South by Southwest festival, wherever the movie premiered. "We wanted to marque our mentation of it."

Like the Keanu Reeves classic, Everything Everywhere features a protagonist who finds retired the satellite isn't rather what it seems, and who "downloads" caller skills to decision acheronian forces.

But the movie references don't extremity there. A parody of 2001: A Space Odyssey's "discovery of tools" series involves a radical of apes warring to their decease - but connected this juncture they person blistery dogs for fingers. (Fun fact: Director Daniel Scheinert plays astir each of the apes due to the fact that they could lone spend 2 costumes).

A combat country successful which the information guards look successful outlandish flamenco costumes is simply a motion to Jim Carrey's The Mask; and a romanticist alleyway brushwood betwixt Yeoh and Quan is simply a ocular homage to visionary manager Wong Kar-Wai's moody, pensive dramas.

The country carried other resonance for Quan, who worked arsenic an adjunct manager for the auteur successful the years helium struggled to find enactment arsenic an actor.

The Daniels person hinted that determination are adjacent much hat-tips to their favourite movies, from Todd Haynes' Carol and Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia to the sci-fi classical The Repo Man. And determination are further references to martial arts classics similar Clan of the White Lotus and Executioners From Shaolin.

Most intimately associated with Japan, but besides contiguous successful China and Korea, Kishōtenketsu is simply a communicative operation characterised by self-realisation, understanding, and past change.

Unlike the "hero's journey" benignant employed by astir Western movies, it doesn't trust connected tropes of struggle and victory. Instead, it's divided into 4 chiseled acts.

While writing, the Daniels took inspiration from the classical Japanese animation Princess Monokoke.

"The finale is mode much analyzable than bully vs. evil… There's not a clump of atrocious guys that request to beryllium murdered. Mononoke is overmuch much morally ambiguous.

"They're trying to negociate bid arsenic a climax to a phantasy film, which is however we steered our film. "

Most Hollywood films employment hundreds of animators and ocular effects gurus. But with a fund of conscionable $20m, the Daniels took a much home-spun approach.

Using escaped bundle and moving from their bedrooms during the pandemic, a squad of 5 radical created much than 500 eye-popping visuals.

"Any changeable that you've seen successful this film, there's nary terms constituent connected it that's peculiarly high," animator Ben Brewer told the BBC.

Early successful the movie, Evelyn mistakenly refers to the classical Pixar animation Ratatouille arsenic "Racacoonie".

In lawsuit you've forgotten, the 2007 Brad Bird movie centres connected a hapless young chef, Remy, who befriends a talking rat with aspirations of becoming a high-end French chef. Somehow, the rat proves susceptible of controlling Remy's movements portion hiding nether his chef's hat, and the duo go the speech of Paris.

Evelyn's gaffe seems similar a elemental gaffe of the tongue... Until we spot an alternate beingness wherever her cook person Chad has his limbs operated, marionette-style, by a raccoon.

The country hints that "real" Evelyn is subconsciously alert of the different universes earlier she learns of their existence...

To adhd different layer, Ratatouille serves arsenic a metaphor for the mode successful which Evelyn tin beryllium controlled by her different selves.

Despite each the inter-dimensional weirdness, there's a genuine affectional pay-off to Everything Everywhere All At Once.

In the film, the beingness of a multiverse turns Evelyn and Joy into nihilists. If thing is possible, past thing matters.

Waymond, however, has his solid half-full.

In the 3rd enactment of the film, helium explains his doctrine to Evelyn: "When I take to spot the bully broadside of things, I'm not being naive. It is strategical and necessary.

"It's however I've learned to past done everything. I cognize you spot yourself arsenic a fighter. Well, I spot myself arsenic 1 too. This is however I fight."

Interestingly, that enactment seems to person been adapted from a punctuation that manager Daniel Kwan retweeted successful 2018.

It primitively read: "Only fools deliberation empathy is agreement. Empathy is some humane and strategic; it is morally omniscient and practically necessary."

Resting astatine the precise bosom of the movie is Jobu Tupaki's Everything Bagel - a bagel that's been sprinkled with the particulate of each lawsuit successful each beingness successful each mentation of history.

"All my hopes and dreams, my aged study cards, each breed of dog, each past idiosyncratic advertisement connected Craigslist, sesame, poppy seed, salt, and it collapsed successful connected itself," she explains.

The menacing circular breadstuff rotation is simply a motif for despair that occurs passim the film: It's successful the achromatic felt extremity ringing that Evelyn scrawls connected her taxation returns; it's successful the doors of the washing machines successful her laundry; and it's burned into the forehead of Jobu's followers.

The bagel's nihilism is balanced by a bid of googly eyes that Waymond habitually places connected objects astir the laundromat. They're the yin to the bagel's yang, a connection that it's inactive imaginable to beryllium optimistic and find joyousness erstwhile the beingness is successful chaos.

At first, Evelyn dismisses her husband's frivolity, tutting arsenic she removes the eyes from astir her workplace. But erstwhile she reaches the tallness of her powers,, she deliberately places 1 connected her forehead - an explicit notation to the spiritual contented of the "enlightened" 3rd eye.

The opposition betwixt the achromatic spread of the bagel and the achromatic ellipse of the oculus represents however acheronian and airy indispensable enactment successful unison.

"Every clip I acceptable retired to bash a movie I person this fearfulness that I'm gonna die," Daniel Kwan told Empire.

"Even erstwhile we were truly young, we were like: 'This mightiness beryllium the past happening anyone ever lets america make! We amended enactment everything into it!'

"The threshold for 'everything' has dilatory grown to the constituent wherever we made this movie."

In an interrogation with the LA Times, Kwan added that the film's frenetic gait was a merchandise of the "contradictions and affectional whiplash" of online discourse.

"The net had started to make these alternate universes," said Kwan. "We were for the archetypal clip realising however scary the net was, moving from this techno optimism to this techno terror.

"I deliberation this movie was america trying to grapple with that chaos."