Everywhere, Not Everything, All at Once
*This article contains major spoilers, and is intended for those who have already finished this film. You should watch the movie if you haven’t already.
During Thanksgiving break 2025, I watched Everything Everywhere All At Once with my parents for the first time. I’d stolen my dad’s credit card to watch it on YouTube Movies for the first time, and I was seriously amazed. Not only could I relate to Evelyn’s fear of “making nothing of [her] life” as I entered high school, but I could also distinctly feel the causes of Jobu’s hatred and nihilism as a child of Chinese immigrants. I chose to believe that Jobu didn’t die in the Everything Bagel, and that she had returned to her home universe like Evelyn and would stay there to make things right. I did not cry, and thought something was wrong with me for several days afterward after watching a few reaction channels. Other than that, the soundtrack was great, the fight scenes were great, everything was great.
Thanksgiving was not so. My mom had to go to the bathroom three times despite drinking once beforehand, and I insisted on pausing the movie for her so we could all get the full experience. During these intermissions, I asked my dad if he could follow what was happening; EEAAO’s presentation is purposefully chaotic, and I wanted my parents to enjoy the movie as much as I did. Maybe they’d relate to it as Chinese immigrant parents! Though squeals and gasps were heard when Jobu turned guns into dildos and Evelyn kicked a buttplug-shaped trophy away from the trajectory of a possessed man’s ass, I trusted that they could handle it.
I started to worry when my mom immediately wanted to leave our basement theater after the credits started. After asking her and my dad what they didn’t like about the movie, they had a few main points:
Too many unnecessary & extreme scenes to get across a simple message.
Not an accurate representation of Chinese martial arts.
Evelyn could’ve had a mental illness instead of being a multiverse jumper and the plot would’ve been the same.
Now, all of these points can be countered by “it was/wasn’t supposed to be that way.” The movie wasn’t supposed to be straightforward because navigating collapsing relationships often isn’t, and audiences needed to get what they were sold: a wacky multiverse action movie. The fight scenes weren’t supposed to be accurate to one culture because the jumpers have to counter each other’s infinite knowledge banks by being even more unpredictable. It doesn’t even matter what condition Evelyn has, as they’re all literary devices used to deliver the message. But making the writers’ vision absolute can invalidate the connection—or lack thereof—that people feel to a work and their reasons for that (thank you to Literary Theory and Analysis, taught by Dr. Chow), so I won’t do that.
After reading reviews online, I found that the negative side often held the same view as my parents: that the film was mistaking its confusion for depth, and that it was a poorly constructed story that relied on its simple, spoon-fed message in Act 3. The film clearly isn’t for everyone, but no film is, and I admit it was my mistake in thinking there was a universal Chinese immigrant experience whose elements could engage my parents. But I do disagree that the visuals and setting being all over the place was meaningless. The whole of Act 2 & 3 is Evelyn trying to become like Jobu to save her universe’s Joy from being overtaken by her (at 1:09:36, I rented it this time), and that involves jumping into as many universes as she can at once like Jobu did. She clearly states the film’s reasoning and the underlying plot: trying to understand Jobu, the personified negative emotions of her daughter. As a person who values believable in-universe justifications, this seemed pretty solid.
On the topic of the film’s message, I think its presentation mattered more than the uttered “be kind” and “nothing matters.” Throughout the film, Evelyn’s relationship with her daughter, husband, and father is what drives her to seek the multiverse’s chaos. When Evelyn is overwhelmed by the struggles of her alternate selves, tears down their accomplishments in her apathy—everything has already happened and she will continue to suffer; her husband leaves her in 3 universes—and is about to fight the Alphaverse jumpers in Act 3, it’s her husband who steps in to protect her and save her from self-destructing in the Everything Bagel with Jobu. In her lowest moment, her husband’s love touches her, gets her to change her way of thinking, and is ultimately why she decides to reach out and stop Jobu from killing herself. Her existence matters to him, and she realizes that her daughter still matters to her. Because collective success can’t outweigh the negatives of human nature, we have to find what matters to us and hold on to it to keep from drowning our thoughts—thoughts that lead to depression and suicide (THE BAGEL!!!!!!) (BEING KIND IS HOW EVELYN HOLDS ON TO JOY)---in that fact. Here, the weight of “be kind” and “nothing matters” is put on full display by the plot occurrences surrounding it.
As I write this, I understand that the meaning I derive from this film is solely based on my own analysis, connections I’ve made that have been influenced by my personal experiences to construct an argument against another opinion. But if explaining this movie through my lens has given it meaning where you hadn’t seen any, then it’s proof that the presentation of a message matters. And it’s why I will continue to think EEAAO is at least a good movie.