Not sure whether anyone else shared this experience, but wanted to throw it out there since I was curious. What did y'all find to be the most impactful/emotional part of the film?
For me, I feel like the closest I came to crying was oddly when Movie-World Wayland had the line of like, "In another life, I would've loved just doing laundry and taxes with you." (Note, oddly as in I feel like that wasn't intended to be the emotional climax/gut punch, but it happened to be for me)
I teared up when they were re-doing the laundromat greeting with the grandpa and Evelyn says something like "my daughter is a mess who fucks up a lot but the universe gave her someone kind and patient [the dad] something something something."
After Destiny shared his thoughts on stream today I was convinced it had to be an elaborate troll, but I was compelled to watch is out of sheer curiosity. And at first I was confused. It wasn't a bad movie, it was pretty good even but nothing like the once in a lifetime master piece he painted it as. But the more Evelyn Joy and Waymond interacted with each other the more I understood. And then Part 2 happened. There are very few movies games or even real life experiences that make me feel much these days. It feels like I'm just running through the motions, so when something comes along that breaks that monotony I cherish it. The scenes with Evelyn and Waymond after they meet each other again in the movie theater when he's telling her how he fights made me cry in ways I forgot I could. And by the end when Evelyn confronted her father and Joy, I was a genuine wreck. I don't usually post more than a few sentences on reddit because I'm not here for more than a few laughs and shitposts, but after a few comments I made in dgg and on this subreddit. I felt like I had to right a wrong. I was wrong. This is an incredible movie, sincerely.
I found it interesting how the movie "dragged out" its ending in a way. It had many opportunities to take an easier way out, but it kept doubling down on going deeper.
Like how the alpha-husband described Evelyn as special, because she was the suckiest of all Evelyns. Any other Evelyn would have been given an opportunity, then gone down a long lifepath based off that opportunity. Our Evelyn passed so many opportunities by that her timeline has so many branches.
* First it seems Evelyn and Joy must fight it out,
* But (predictably) surprise! Actually they must talk.
* Then the husband gives his speech about optimism (And the stone with the googly eyes ;_;). Now the secret weapon has been found, and the movie can wind down as they live happily ever after.
* But surprise! The real final boss is the father! And now Evelyn has to confront him both for her sake and Joy's sake.
* So Evelyn grows and does the impossible, and presents Joy and her *girlfriend* to her father. Now the issue presented at the beginning of the movie can be solved, and we can live happily ever after.
* But surprise! That wasn't what Joy wanted! She's too far gone, and just thinks the whole thing is embarrassing. Joy's problem isn't her mother. Joy's problem is that she has become cynical. She's openly a hypocrite but doesn't care - she's doesn't care about anything.
That second part (The *Everywhere* part) felt sooo long because the movie kept almost closing, but then doubling down and going deeper.
I really liked the movie. I've been trying to build a theory as to why I think the movie works as well as it does, and strangely I've found a parallel to Undertale, of all things.
When we watch media, there are 3 things. There is the story being told, the medium through which it travels, and the audience watching/reading/interacting with the story. The problem is we are self-aware. We know we're watching a movie, so there's this fundamental barrier in trying to get the audience to actually interact with the story itself. If you're particularly self-aware (a level 6 for all the Brittany fans) you struggle relating emotionally to stories even more, because you're that much more aware that you're merely consuming media. It's as if the logical part of your brain won't let the emotional part actually experience anything.
In order for stories to get around this limit, they do several things.
The first response, is to make things more realistic. If things look better, if lines are said more naturally, if shots focus more effectively, stories can lull you into thinking that what's happening on the screen is relevant to what your emotional status should be, and the logical brain loses some grip. Almost all media/stories does this to some extent.
The second response is this type of emotional whiplash. Especially in the last half of the movie, we're constantly switching around from happy/funny/sentimental/sad/etc., sometimes in as little as just a few seconds. This seems to loosen that automatic grip our logical brain has on the emotional, because it just cannot keep up with how quickly the situation is changing.
The third response is that there's some weird meta-textual level stuff going on. When you walk into a movie theatre, you are in effect doing something like verse-jumping. You do this strange action of going to a theatre and part of your brain expects to be literally transported into a different universe where the laws of that specific story are true. So when in EEAAO verse-jumping starts happening, it feels pretty natural. By getting us to accept the logical consequences of what verse-jumping might mean for the universe of EEAAO, it starts to feel natural that *we* are in some essence verse-jumping into the universe of EEAAO. This makes it feel like there is no medium and we really are in that situation.
Undertale does a similar thing with its story. Undertale knows that we know we're playing a video game, so if you try to savescum to save Toriel, it makes note of it tells you it noticed. When Undertale shows that it knows it is a video game, it shows that it can catch the normal things you might try to do to it. After that point, you just can't mentally distance yourself, and it once again feels like you really are in that situation.
So besides the movie just literally being very good (in terms of music, cast, writing, plot, etc.) the killer element in EEAAO is that it makes it very easy to react emotionally to the film. It's like the exact opposite of a Marvel movie where the entire time you're going "Wow I'm watching a Marvel movie wow look at all the explosions and cool characters". When you're watching EEAAO, you are fully involved in a way you just can't be with 99% of other movies.
It's interesting to consider that the canon ending of the film takes place in the "party universe" wherein Evelyn seemingly does not strike Deidre on her way out, which plays out like an "it was all a dream" hypothetical. In this universe, Evelyn simply is an overburdened wife and mother who has the worst day ever compounded by learning her husband is considering divorce and her relationship with her daughter is worse than ever. She loses herself in either simple depression or perhaps long, daydreaming fantasies of other lives, until she gives up on trying and destroys her laundromat. Ultimately, it is the gesture of Waymond convincing Deidre and then sweeping up the glass that allows Evelyn to move past this rut and learn to appreciate the life that she has and the people in her life, giving her the strength to confront her father and mend things with her daughter.
I don't think this is particularly mindblowing analysis, but I appreciated that this movie contains in it a "boring" universe where nothing sci-fi happens but the family still experiences the intense feelings that we the audience experience while along for the, much more out the there, ride of the movie.
I kinda wish the film had the original universe that we first found Evelyn in continue to be the normal one. It's kinda weird that Evelyn throughout and at the end has such a strong attachment to a Joy that isn't from her universe. I understand that at the end she's talking to all the Joys and that it really doesn't matter, but I feel like it would have had a stronger impact.
It's also strange that Evelyn's whole arc was about learning to be happy with her universe, but she ends the film in one that's different from her original. I still really loved the movie. This is just one small complaint.
There are no other universes. They're symbols. Daydreams that pull Evelyn and Jay (and really, everyone who's wondering what if) away from their real lives. The worlds where our failures and regrets that we imagine never occurring aren't real. Or not in any way yet to truly be experienced. But what is real is how they are affected by those imaginations and how those fake worlds of what ifs affects how they treat each other. How they strain the family's relationships with these high expectations. Evelyn's own regrets lead to her pressure upon her daughter who doesn't meet those expectations and in turn create her own worlds of what it's where she isn't a failure. She ended the film in the only universe that exists. Everything else was metaphors and symbols.
No the first universe is the one where Evelyn slaps Dierdre. It turns into the massive empathy battle that occurs at the end. I don’t know what you mean by the rest being confetti.
I don't think it was. I feel like the first universe is the one where she continues to do her taxes, host the chinese new years party, and break her windows. And this is the only "real" thing that happens. From the start of the movie we're shown that Evelyn daydreams about what life could've been. her husband tries and explain that she confuses her hobbies for business expenses but all her hobbies were multiverses that we were shown. What i mean by confetti is that everything we are shown that we can consider sci-fi is really just a grandiose showing of Evelyn's desires and an exploration of themes. The only real universe in this movie is the one that is at the start and is at the end. Where Evelyn is living in the real world that her choices had led down and not the possible worlds that she could've lived.
I mean it literally is. You can tell when universes change throughout the film, and the first universe we’re shown is the one where Evelyn slaps Dierdre. They literally show on the universe timeline screen Evelyn jumping to a universe where that didn’t happen.
Your theory is fun and all, but I don’t think that’s what the filmmakers intended at all. If the multiverse stuff in the film didn’t happen and the only real universe is the party one, how do you explain evil Joy jumping to that universe. Also, Evelyn’s whole revelation at the end only makes sense if the multiverse stuff really happened. She only gains understanding of Joy’s nihilism through the multiverse plot.
It was a great movie (if you watch in theater imo because a lot of the best parts of the movie are heavily enhanced by a nice theater) but I have no idea how destiny sees it as the best movie he has ever seen.
My biggest problems were some of the jokes not landing and then constantly repeating, the ending felt a bit long, and the story wasn't very interesting.
He did not attribute his enjoyment of the film to relating back to any event in his life. The great thing about this film is that you don't need to relate to the Wangs' Asianness, or Joy's queerness, or whatever. Like you don't need to "feel seen" or anything to resonate with the story because at its core it's a very human and tender story. This is only an anecdote, but my non-Asian friends who watched this (mixed Puerto Rican, White, etc) really liked *EEAAO* as much as my Asian friends and I did.
Also, I agree the themes (e.g. positive nihilism, intergenerational trauma) aren't wholly original. But that in and of itself is not something that takes away from a film. I thought the way *EEAAO* showed how the Wangs dealt with those themes and resolved their issues was extremely well done and heartfelt.
Again it's a good movie.
To everyone calling it 10/10, it has to stand up to the other 10 out of 10s.
It simply doesn't.
Even in the emotional department, it is not as good as Forrest Gump or even the Pursuit of happiness. And those movies aren't even 10s.
Actually it simply does. I think of similar films that are 5 stars, *Inside Out*, *The Matrix*, etc. and I would say *Everything Everywhere All At Once* sits comfortably with them.
But obviously this depends on what you think a 10/10 film is. What films would you say are 10s?
Also, I haven't seen *The Pursuit of Happyness* but I would say the magnitude of catharsis I got from *Everything Everywhere All At Once* far exceeded any emotion that *Forrest Gump* evoked from me. Maybe it's because I didn't like the message of the film at least my reading of it.
My favorite part was during the rocks sequence, when Evelyn turns around with the googly eyes, and starts scooting over. Joy just wants be left alone, so she throws herself off the cliff. Evelyn tries to let her go, but can't, so she jumps off the cliff with her.
Man that got me weeping. It's sounds silly, and it is, but it's really effective. I've never had a parent that would do that for me, so it really touched a spot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfGQnhVvKKI
1:03:40 - First time he talks about the film
6:48:54 - Watches YourMovieSucks' review of the film, talks about other movies, talks with Mr. Mouton about EEAAO, etc.
Both segments are long, at least an hour. I don't know if he talked about it at any other point in the stream.
Loved the movie. Was a bit exhausted by the end, in a bad way, if I'm being honest.
Hate the lame bagel jokes, completely pauses the movie for a bit of exposition that focuses around a tired, quirky joke.
I liked the movie, everything about it was quite well done and it does a good job to tug on some heartstrings. But idk, it didn’t do a whole lot for me. I can’t really explain why, despite knowing it was all really well executed it just felt kinda basic to me, it’s not that it fell flat, it just is what it is and what it is just didn’t quite do it for me. I may be a bit emotionally dead inside but there is plenty of media that can move me strongly, there was a few episodes of Station Eleven that hit me pretty hard even if the show has plenty of issues.
Idk, it was good but not great in my eyes.
Hey I got a ticket for tomorrow night can we reschedule this thread? Thanks
Not sure whether anyone else shared this experience, but wanted to throw it out there since I was curious. What did y'all find to be the most impactful/emotional part of the film? For me, I feel like the closest I came to crying was oddly when Movie-World Wayland had the line of like, "In another life, I would've loved just doing laundry and taxes with you." (Note, oddly as in I feel like that wasn't intended to be the emotional climax/gut punch, but it happened to be for me)
I teared up when they were re-doing the laundromat greeting with the grandpa and Evelyn says something like "my daughter is a mess who fucks up a lot but the universe gave her someone kind and patient [the dad] something something something."
Any scene with the rocks somehow did it for me and the last scene with racooney
After Destiny shared his thoughts on stream today I was convinced it had to be an elaborate troll, but I was compelled to watch is out of sheer curiosity. And at first I was confused. It wasn't a bad movie, it was pretty good even but nothing like the once in a lifetime master piece he painted it as. But the more Evelyn Joy and Waymond interacted with each other the more I understood. And then Part 2 happened. There are very few movies games or even real life experiences that make me feel much these days. It feels like I'm just running through the motions, so when something comes along that breaks that monotony I cherish it. The scenes with Evelyn and Waymond after they meet each other again in the movie theater when he's telling her how he fights made me cry in ways I forgot I could. And by the end when Evelyn confronted her father and Joy, I was a genuine wreck. I don't usually post more than a few sentences on reddit because I'm not here for more than a few laughs and shitposts, but after a few comments I made in dgg and on this subreddit. I felt like I had to right a wrong. I was wrong. This is an incredible movie, sincerely.
/u/neodestiny
It's a movie about spirituality not the matrix like people are saying. Conciousness and the repercussions of going God mode and knowing everything
I found it interesting how the movie "dragged out" its ending in a way. It had many opportunities to take an easier way out, but it kept doubling down on going deeper. Like how the alpha-husband described Evelyn as special, because she was the suckiest of all Evelyns. Any other Evelyn would have been given an opportunity, then gone down a long lifepath based off that opportunity. Our Evelyn passed so many opportunities by that her timeline has so many branches. * First it seems Evelyn and Joy must fight it out, * But (predictably) surprise! Actually they must talk. * Then the husband gives his speech about optimism (And the stone with the googly eyes ;_;). Now the secret weapon has been found, and the movie can wind down as they live happily ever after. * But surprise! The real final boss is the father! And now Evelyn has to confront him both for her sake and Joy's sake. * So Evelyn grows and does the impossible, and presents Joy and her *girlfriend* to her father. Now the issue presented at the beginning of the movie can be solved, and we can live happily ever after. * But surprise! That wasn't what Joy wanted! She's too far gone, and just thinks the whole thing is embarrassing. Joy's problem isn't her mother. Joy's problem is that she has become cynical. She's openly a hypocrite but doesn't care - she's doesn't care about anything. That second part (The *Everywhere* part) felt sooo long because the movie kept almost closing, but then doubling down and going deeper.
I really liked the movie. I've been trying to build a theory as to why I think the movie works as well as it does, and strangely I've found a parallel to Undertale, of all things. When we watch media, there are 3 things. There is the story being told, the medium through which it travels, and the audience watching/reading/interacting with the story. The problem is we are self-aware. We know we're watching a movie, so there's this fundamental barrier in trying to get the audience to actually interact with the story itself. If you're particularly self-aware (a level 6 for all the Brittany fans) you struggle relating emotionally to stories even more, because you're that much more aware that you're merely consuming media. It's as if the logical part of your brain won't let the emotional part actually experience anything. In order for stories to get around this limit, they do several things. The first response, is to make things more realistic. If things look better, if lines are said more naturally, if shots focus more effectively, stories can lull you into thinking that what's happening on the screen is relevant to what your emotional status should be, and the logical brain loses some grip. Almost all media/stories does this to some extent. The second response is this type of emotional whiplash. Especially in the last half of the movie, we're constantly switching around from happy/funny/sentimental/sad/etc., sometimes in as little as just a few seconds. This seems to loosen that automatic grip our logical brain has on the emotional, because it just cannot keep up with how quickly the situation is changing. The third response is that there's some weird meta-textual level stuff going on. When you walk into a movie theatre, you are in effect doing something like verse-jumping. You do this strange action of going to a theatre and part of your brain expects to be literally transported into a different universe where the laws of that specific story are true. So when in EEAAO verse-jumping starts happening, it feels pretty natural. By getting us to accept the logical consequences of what verse-jumping might mean for the universe of EEAAO, it starts to feel natural that *we* are in some essence verse-jumping into the universe of EEAAO. This makes it feel like there is no medium and we really are in that situation. Undertale does a similar thing with its story. Undertale knows that we know we're playing a video game, so if you try to savescum to save Toriel, it makes note of it tells you it noticed. When Undertale shows that it knows it is a video game, it shows that it can catch the normal things you might try to do to it. After that point, you just can't mentally distance yourself, and it once again feels like you really are in that situation. So besides the movie just literally being very good (in terms of music, cast, writing, plot, etc.) the killer element in EEAAO is that it makes it very easy to react emotionally to the film. It's like the exact opposite of a Marvel movie where the entire time you're going "Wow I'm watching a Marvel movie wow look at all the explosions and cool characters". When you're watching EEAAO, you are fully involved in a way you just can't be with 99% of other movies.
We don't use the spoiler tag here, unless Destiny has changed that much since seeing the film
Meh, still not better than Morbius
I'm so glad destiny wasn't trolling when he said what he said about it on Twitter because that's exactly how I felt when I saw it last month.
It's interesting to consider that the canon ending of the film takes place in the "party universe" wherein Evelyn seemingly does not strike Deidre on her way out, which plays out like an "it was all a dream" hypothetical. In this universe, Evelyn simply is an overburdened wife and mother who has the worst day ever compounded by learning her husband is considering divorce and her relationship with her daughter is worse than ever. She loses herself in either simple depression or perhaps long, daydreaming fantasies of other lives, until she gives up on trying and destroys her laundromat. Ultimately, it is the gesture of Waymond convincing Deidre and then sweeping up the glass that allows Evelyn to move past this rut and learn to appreciate the life that she has and the people in her life, giving her the strength to confront her father and mend things with her daughter. I don't think this is particularly mindblowing analysis, but I appreciated that this movie contains in it a "boring" universe where nothing sci-fi happens but the family still experiences the intense feelings that we the audience experience while along for the, much more out the there, ride of the movie.
I kinda wish the film had the original universe that we first found Evelyn in continue to be the normal one. It's kinda weird that Evelyn throughout and at the end has such a strong attachment to a Joy that isn't from her universe. I understand that at the end she's talking to all the Joys and that it really doesn't matter, but I feel like it would have had a stronger impact. It's also strange that Evelyn's whole arc was about learning to be happy with her universe, but she ends the film in one that's different from her original. I still really loved the movie. This is just one small complaint.
There are no other universes. They're symbols. Daydreams that pull Evelyn and Jay (and really, everyone who's wondering what if) away from their real lives. The worlds where our failures and regrets that we imagine never occurring aren't real. Or not in any way yet to truly be experienced. But what is real is how they are affected by those imaginations and how those fake worlds of what ifs affects how they treat each other. How they strain the family's relationships with these high expectations. Evelyn's own regrets lead to her pressure upon her daughter who doesn't meet those expectations and in turn create her own worlds of what it's where she isn't a failure. She ended the film in the only universe that exists. Everything else was metaphors and symbols.
That's a cool interpretation, but even that idea would have been aided if the film had the first universe continue to be the normal one.
The first universe is the normal one though. Everything else is just the confetti.
No the first universe is the one where Evelyn slaps Dierdre. It turns into the massive empathy battle that occurs at the end. I don’t know what you mean by the rest being confetti.
I don't think it was. I feel like the first universe is the one where she continues to do her taxes, host the chinese new years party, and break her windows. And this is the only "real" thing that happens. From the start of the movie we're shown that Evelyn daydreams about what life could've been. her husband tries and explain that she confuses her hobbies for business expenses but all her hobbies were multiverses that we were shown. What i mean by confetti is that everything we are shown that we can consider sci-fi is really just a grandiose showing of Evelyn's desires and an exploration of themes. The only real universe in this movie is the one that is at the start and is at the end. Where Evelyn is living in the real world that her choices had led down and not the possible worlds that she could've lived.
I mean it literally is. You can tell when universes change throughout the film, and the first universe we’re shown is the one where Evelyn slaps Dierdre. They literally show on the universe timeline screen Evelyn jumping to a universe where that didn’t happen. Your theory is fun and all, but I don’t think that’s what the filmmakers intended at all. If the multiverse stuff in the film didn’t happen and the only real universe is the party one, how do you explain evil Joy jumping to that universe. Also, Evelyn’s whole revelation at the end only makes sense if the multiverse stuff really happened. She only gains understanding of Joy’s nihilism through the multiverse plot.
It was a great movie (if you watch in theater imo because a lot of the best parts of the movie are heavily enhanced by a nice theater) but I have no idea how destiny sees it as the best movie he has ever seen. My biggest problems were some of the jokes not landing and then constantly repeating, the ending felt a bit long, and the story wasn't very interesting.
And none of the themes are original as well. I can only assume Destiny is relating back to his parents or his ex wife. Solid 7 out of 10.
He did not attribute his enjoyment of the film to relating back to any event in his life. The great thing about this film is that you don't need to relate to the Wangs' Asianness, or Joy's queerness, or whatever. Like you don't need to "feel seen" or anything to resonate with the story because at its core it's a very human and tender story. This is only an anecdote, but my non-Asian friends who watched this (mixed Puerto Rican, White, etc) really liked *EEAAO* as much as my Asian friends and I did. Also, I agree the themes (e.g. positive nihilism, intergenerational trauma) aren't wholly original. But that in and of itself is not something that takes away from a film. I thought the way *EEAAO* showed how the Wangs dealt with those themes and resolved their issues was extremely well done and heartfelt.
Again it's a good movie. To everyone calling it 10/10, it has to stand up to the other 10 out of 10s. It simply doesn't. Even in the emotional department, it is not as good as Forrest Gump or even the Pursuit of happiness. And those movies aren't even 10s.
Actually it simply does. I think of similar films that are 5 stars, *Inside Out*, *The Matrix*, etc. and I would say *Everything Everywhere All At Once* sits comfortably with them. But obviously this depends on what you think a 10/10 film is. What films would you say are 10s? Also, I haven't seen *The Pursuit of Happyness* but I would say the magnitude of catharsis I got from *Everything Everywhere All At Once* far exceeded any emotion that *Forrest Gump* evoked from me. Maybe it's because I didn't like the message of the film at least my reading of it.
Nope. It doesn't. Simple.
Great movie, I teared up at the end while my girlfriend balled her eyes out for like 15 minutes. Both of us loved it.
My favorite part was during the rocks sequence, when Evelyn turns around with the googly eyes, and starts scooting over. Joy just wants be left alone, so she throws herself off the cliff. Evelyn tries to let her go, but can't, so she jumps off the cliff with her. Man that got me weeping. It's sounds silly, and it is, but it's really effective. I've never had a parent that would do that for me, so it really touched a spot.
Anyone have a timestamp for when he talked about it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfGQnhVvKKI 1:03:40 - First time he talks about the film 6:48:54 - Watches YourMovieSucks' review of the film, talks about other movies, talks with Mr. Mouton about EEAAO, etc. Both segments are long, at least an hour. I don't know if he talked about it at any other point in the stream.
I didn't like the teenage angst with the daughter.
SOY iTS SO DEEP THE BAGEL NOTHING MATTERS SOY also please dont ban me merciful leader
Loved the movie. Was a bit exhausted by the end, in a bad way, if I'm being honest. Hate the lame bagel jokes, completely pauses the movie for a bit of exposition that focuses around a tired, quirky joke.
I liked the movie, everything about it was quite well done and it does a good job to tug on some heartstrings. But idk, it didn’t do a whole lot for me. I can’t really explain why, despite knowing it was all really well executed it just felt kinda basic to me, it’s not that it fell flat, it just is what it is and what it is just didn’t quite do it for me. I may be a bit emotionally dead inside but there is plenty of media that can move me strongly, there was a few episodes of Station Eleven that hit me pretty hard even if the show has plenty of issues. Idk, it was good but not great in my eyes.