Summary

• Layers of fantasy, comedy, and family drama make Everything Everywhere All At Once's meaning incredibly deep.
• The movie's absurd plot and nihilistic themes are conveyed through a multiversal adventure.
• It's a thought-provoking commentary on Hollywood's storytelling capabilities over big budgets.

Everything Everywhere All At Once appears at first glance to be an action film about saving the multiverse but the visual spectacle contains multiple thematic layers that make the true Everything Everywhere All At Once meaning incredibly deep. The movie tells the story of Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh — who won an Oscar for her performance), a middle-aged Chinese-American woman running a failing laundromat with her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), while failing at connecting with and fully accepting her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu), all providing the deeper themes of a multiverse adventure.

Directors The Daniels entwined fantasy, comedy, family drama, and sci-fi in Everything Everywhere All At Once, meaning that it has an increasingly absurd, charming, and hilarious plot surrounding depressed villain Jobu Tupaki. The movie also uses Evelyn's own struggle to find fulfillment in her unexciting life, and it's here that much of Everything Everywhere All At Once's meaning can be found.

The Deeper Meaning Behind Everything Everywhere All At Once

The Movie Is A Celebration Of The Freedom A Meaningless Life Brings

Though never expressly stated, Everything Everywhere All At Once suggests that what makes life meaningful is the recognition that, because life has no inherent meaning, all things and moments are equally meaningful. It turns out that Jobu Tupaki (a variant of Evelyn's daughter Joy) doesn't want to kill Evelyn, but is just seeking another person who can shift through the multiverse, largely out of hope for some different perspective to make sense or find some meaning in it all.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is very thoughtful in its treatment of nihilism and depression, and it never gives an explicit answer to the problem of meaninglessness in an infinite universe. Instead, Everything Everywhere All At Once's ending reveals that the movie should be viewed as a prolonged argument that, perhaps, the only meaning to be found in life is the people in it, and so the solution is to be present every moment possible.

Why Everything Everywhere All At Once Is Absurdly Funny

Absurdism Plays Heavily Into The Movie's Comedic Elements

Everything Everywhere All At Once is best explained through its comedic scenes, as these drive its point home with its absurdist style and messaging. Absurdism as a philosophy accepts the lack of meaning in the world and defies it by embracing life anyway. In short, if nothing has meaning, everything is just as meaningful as anything else. The zany Everything Everywhere isn't merely a multiversal action-comedy, but a deeply personal family drama.

The multiversal trappings are set pieces meant to highlight the true message — family, love, and finding joy in one's life are all that matter.

The multiversal trappings are set pieces meant to highlight the true message — family, love, and finding joy in one's life are all that matter. With the movie releasing just before the MCUs Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, this inevitably drew comparisons between Everything Everywhere All At Once and Marvel's multiverse. Inadvertently, the movie also shone a spotlight on just how lightly the MCU has scratched such a deeply promising concept at the beginning of its Multiverse Saga.

Ultimately, Everything Everywhere All At Once is a fresh amalgam of genres. Part action, part comedy, part drama, part think-piece, but the message never gets lost in the mix — the real meaning of Everything Everywhere All At Once is clear enough to be grasped. What the Daniels achieved with Everything Everywhere All At Once is conveying its meaning without the need to expressly state it. Yet, there is an even deeper layer to Everything Everywhere All At Once's meaning when examined from the perspective of its low-budget production.

The Deeper Cinematic Message In Everything Everywhere All At Once

The Movie Was Also A Subversive Commentary On Modern Movie-Making

Other than the absurdism, Everything Everywhere All At Once is proof that it's possible to deliver a visually complex, sumptuous, layered, and energetic story on quite a minimal budget. A large part of Everything Everywhere All At Once's release hype is the fact that the special effects team who knocked it out of the park is just composed of five people — who taught themselves to do the movie's effects through YouTube tutorials. However, as it's box office, critical acclaim, and awards success prove, this unorthodox setup was no setback.

The movie further shatters the illusion that Hollywood's future is in big-budget films.

It's a movie driven by stories, with its timing being so close to Doctor Strange 2 that even long-time Marvel viewers couldn't help but realize just how much better the MCU should be. Everything Everywhere All At Once's meaning in of being a commentary on Hollywood is a sternly worded message about how storytelling beats big budgets any time of the day — and not just in of delivering compelling cinema, but box office success as well.

Impressively, while Everything Everywhere All At Once's $25 million budget and box office earnings of around $100 million are just pocket change to entities like Marvel and Disney, it's still a massive and unprecedented success, which proves that blockbusters don't always need six-figure budgets. Moreover, with A-listers like Michelle Yeoh g on for the low-budget production, the movie further shatters the illusion that Hollywood's future is in big-budget films. Indeed, it's undeniable that Everything Everywhere All At Once shook the movie industry (for the better) in more ways than one.

How The Bagel Captures The Meaning Of Everything Everywhere All At Once

The 'Everything Bagel' Is Far From A Cheap Gag

A key plot point in Everything Everywhere All At Once is Jobu Tupaki's Everything Bagel. As the name suggests, the Everything Bagel is a bagel with literally everything in the entirety of creation on it. Not only could this bagel destroy the very fabric of the multiverse, but the lack of satisfaction Jobu felt after creating it is partly what led her to begin her deadly rampage across the multiverse. While there are a few more factors in why Jobu Tupaki wants to end all of creation, the Everything Bagel is also perhaps the element of the film that explains the meaning of Everything Everywhere All At Once most succinctly.

Creating a bagel with literally everything there could possibly be on it, far from bringing Jobu Tupaki joy, only served to increase her misery.

Creating a bagel with literally everything there could possibly be on it, far from bringing Jobu Tupaki joy, only served to increase her misery. There was literally nothing missing from the bagel, and yet it still left her unsatisfied. While she thought creating it would bring her life meaning, it only left her feeling more empty. This is the core crux of the meaning of Everything Everywhere All At Once. Happiness isn't found by placing everything into one space or goal, but in accepting that even when having everything one currently desires, it's still possible to feel unfulfilled.

What The Everything Everywhere All At Once Directors Say About The Real Meaning

The Daniels Have Revealed The Message Is A Rejection Of Nihilism

Everything Everywhere All At Once directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert have also weighed in on the discussion about their runaway hit movie. In a previous interview, the Daniels revealed how they came up with the concept and plot for the film, as well as the philosophy behind Everything Everywhere All At Once's multiverse.

Back when Kwan first proposed his multiverse idea to Scheinert, the latter explained how he hated multiverses for making him feel nihilistic thoughts. However, Kwan fired back with a compromise that practically sums up Everything Everywhere All At Once's meaning as grasped by most audiences. During an interview with the Daniels, here's what Kwan said to Scheinert (via Radio Times) regarding the latter's concern for the meaninglessness of the multiverse:

"Let's make a movie that's nihilistic and acknowledges that!' Then it just kind of bounced back and forth until we're like, 'Oh, the multiverse is the perfect metaphor for what it feels like to live right now.' If we can explore all of our neuroses and fears through the multiverse, maybe we can learn something about ourselves. And so that was it, we're just chasing questions when we're making movies – we don't know the answers until we show it in front of an audience sometimes."

Navigating Everything Everywhere's Themes Landed Michelle Yeoh Multiple Awards

The Complex Role Is A Career Highlight For The Star

For her role as Evelyn Wong — the central character that ties together Everything Everywhere All At Once's meaning — Michelle Yeoh took home her first Golden Globe win in 2023. Impressively, Yeoh won the 2023 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Musical/Comedy Movie, besting other formidable nominees like The Menu's Anya Taylor-Joy, Babylon's Margot Robbie, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris' Lesley Manville, and Good Luck To You, Leo Grande's Emma Thompson. The accolades didn't stop there.

There's a clear reason why EEAO's awards success extended to Michelle Yeoh, and it's not just because of her comedic timing.

Everything Everywhere All At Once went on to win Best Picture at the 2023 Oscars, with Michelle Yeoh herself picking up the Academy Award for Best Actress. There's a clear reason why EEAO's awards success extended to Michelle Yeoh, and it's not just because of her comedic timing. Everything Everywhere All At Once is a deep and complex movie, with a script any acting talent would find difficult to navigate. Michelle Yeoh's performance as Evelyn was flawless throughout — natural regardless of the absurdity of whichever moment or reality Evelyn was in.

She rightly gained multiple awards thanks to her ability to navigate Everything Everywhere's bombastic story, bringing forth the themes the Daniels wanted to express and ensuring the audience could digest the core message. Everything Everywhere All At Once and Yeoh's historic Golden Globe and Academy Awards wins were well deserved, and underscore how crucial it was to have a strong and engaging lead in a movie with such a complex concept and narrative. There's plenty to take away from Everything Everywhere All At Once, and thanks to Michelle Yeoh's performance as Evelyn, viewers don't miss any of it.

Everything Everywhere All At Once's Themes Also Made It A Box Office Hit

The Deep Yet Digestible Message Resonated With Audiences

When looking at the box office take of Everything Everywhere All At Once, it doesn't appear impressive when compared with blockbusters. It ranked 27th for the year domestically (via Box Office Mojo) and 35th worldwide. However, there is a lot more to the box office than just raw numbers. With only a $25 million budget, it was a huge box office success for A24. By the end of its run, Everything Everywhere All At Once was the biggest commercial hit for any movie from the prestige studio, with its $111.4 million worldwide take beating Hereditary by $30 million (via The Numbers).

These are ideals that everyone can relate to, and no multiversal timeline could detract from that deeper meaning, helping this movie reach a very wide audience.

It was also easy to see what made this movie so popular for mainstream audiences. Other A24 movies often seem like a struggle for many moviegoers, with Hereditary and Talk to Me bringing in horror fans and little else. Others, like The Whale, Uncut Gems, and Beau is Afraid were just outside of normal enough to fend off many fans. However, a movie like Everywhere All At Once is better compared with 2017's Lady Bird, which ranks third for A24 at $80.1 million. These movies are about people and real-world relationships, even if they are placed in difficult situations.

Everything Everywhere All At Once risked being too weird for mainstream audiences and could have faced the disappointing numbers of Beau is Afraid, but it brought something special to the mix. This was a story about a mother and a daughter and their strained relationship. It was about the difficulty in a parent letting their child be who they were meant to be, whether that meant breaking away from traditions or exploring their sexuality, and about a family struggling to make ends meet in a tough economy. These are ideals that everyone can relate to, and no multiversal timeline could detract from that deeper meaning, helping this movie reach a very wide audience.