![]() ![]() The quiet moments that the film sets up between its main characters including Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) and Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) amid the literal chaos that everyone has alluded to, are such an artful contrast and respite. Li Zhou: Yes! It’s that combination of tenderness and spectacle that ultimately got me. Even people with hot dogs for hands can have epic multiverse-spanning love stories, and that’s beautiful.īecause the other thing about this movie is not just that it got incredible word-of-mouth, but that everyone also told you to bring tissues: that this was not just a fun, zany, chaotic brain-buster of a movie, but one that would shred your heart in the best way. Reality seems more overwhelmingly surreal by the day, so why not make a movie that combats existential despair using positive absurdism, where Jamie Lee Curtis may have hot dogs for hands. We live in an era where our foremost Black rapper is a white supremacist, where Florida bans math books for teaching kids about their feelings, where chatbots are learning to generate gigantic-chested fake girls with missing fingers and extra eyelids. This film’s geek cred is almost as stuffed and randomized as its plot.īut the other thing is that the film’s utter absurdism functions like a yell in response to the present age. It’s a storyline about a multiverse with an entire subplot dedicated to homaging Ratatouille. One is the sheer popular appeal of a movie produced by the guys behind Stranger Things, made by the guys who did the “Turn Down For What” video, with a cast that includes a martial arts movie legend, a horror scream queen, and an ‘80s action movie child star. You can say, “THE ROCKS!” and the other person will say, “THE ROCKS!” and then you both say, “THE ROCKS!” and it’s like speaking a secret language, which I think all points to how the Daniels, Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, and that incredible cast pulled it off.Īja Romano: When we think about the why, I think there are a couple of factors. I think what I ended up doing was that I would tell someone, “Go see this movie.” Then that person sees it, and you can finally talk to them about how absolutely bonkers everything is. And if you tried to describe all those things, I don’t think that would sell the movie. could ever accurately describe what’s happening at any given moment during this maximalist fantasia. No amount of description - alternate timelines, jumps, existential crises, moms, hot dog fingers, butt plugs, etc. The funny thing about that is that this movie is impossible to explain. ![]() So I want to ask: In your estimation, what accounts for that success? What about it grabbed people enough that they had to grab their friends? What’s the secret sauce? Why did you see it?Īlex Abad-Santos: Throughout EEAAO’s theatrical run, one of the big explanations of why it was doing so well was word of mouth - basically that people who saw the movie went and told everyone how great it was. That’s the way movies used to be, but few get that chance anymore. People who saw it liked it, and they grabbed their friends by the shoulders and yelled, “You too must see this!” and went back a second and maybe a third time to see it again. And those numbers tell a story - in this case, that the main ingredient in its success was word-of-mouth buzz. All that with a modest budget of around $25 million, and without a Marvel star or preexisting IP in sight. It opened modestly and never really exploded, but it played in theaters for months (which most movies don’t get to do these days) and ended up making a very healthy amount of money: over $70 million in the US, and over $100 million worldwide, the magic number that turns a movie from a “modest success” to a hit. Yet it really turned out to be the little movie that could. Maybe I’m just brain-poisoned from years of seeing only franchise films top the charts, but I thought this kooky, frenetic, big-hearted, wild-imagination film might be too much for audiences. everything.Īlissa Wilkinson: Everything Everywhere All at Once (EEAAO) turned out to be a bona fide sensation, and I confess I was a little surprised. Why Everything Everywhere All at Once won. ![]()
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