Everything Everywhere All At Once Was Born Out Of A Single Contradictory Question [SXSW 2024]

We loved "Everything Everywhere All at Once" around these parts (you can read our review right here), but it seems like some folks have soured on the flick ever since it took home an Oscar for Best Picture. So it goes. The feature helmed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, aka The Daniels, is wild, unpredictable, funny, and emotional. Perhaps the emotional angle is what turns people off these days — it seems like anyone or anything who dares to express any type of half-positive emotion is labeled as "cringe." And that's a shame. None of this is to say you're not allowed to dislike the movie. To each their own. 

But if you still have a place for "Everything Everywhere All at Once" in your heart, you might be curious about how the wild and crazy film came together. Or more specifically, where all of the over-the-top insanity originally sprung from. In the movie, Michelle Yeoh plays Evelyn Quan Wang, an unhappy Chinese immigrant who suddenly finds herself dealing with the multiverse and all of its crazy implications. Things get increasingly weirder and more action-packed from there. And as it turns out, a question about action — and violence — is what lead to the film. 

/Film's Ryan Scott attended a SXSW panel discussion with The Daniels in which the filmmakers talked about the origins of their Oscar-winning hit. "The movie was so hard, but the fact that Michelle Yeoh was there made me work 10 times harder," said Daniel Schienert. "I was like, 'Oh, my childhood hero's right there, so I'm not going to complain about anything.'" 

Yeoh is an international star, known for her classic action roles, and the action became a big part of the film. But it wasn't the point of the story. As Kwan explained: "One of the things we realized for this talk is taking these circles and pulling them into the blue circle intersection, what the world needs, really produced a lot of interesting stuff for us. So one of the things we asked was, "Does the world need another 'Matrix' sequel?" Probably not. Actually, I really liked the fourth one [...] We love 'The Matrix,' we love all this stuff. But really, does the world need another action movie, or does it need a hug right now?"

Scheiner added: "We kept asking ourselves, 'When is violence the answer?' And our answer was like, 'Basically never.' How do you make an action movie when you don't believe that violence is the answer?"

According to Kwan, that question about violence is what gave the film its framework:

"That's when we came up with one of the fundamental building blocks of our film, what we called the empathy fight. This moment in which Michelle's character Evelyn is working her way up the stairs, doing all of the same kind of fun, action, dopamine hit kind of playfulness, but all for the sake of, rather than hurting her enemies, understanding them instead. That was really a beautiful a-ha moment that suddenly became something we were building into the entire film, trying to get to this moment."

Whether you like the film or not, you have to admit that basing your action-packed movie around a question about whether or not anyone needs a new action movie is unique, and that's part of what makes "Everything Everywhere All at Once" stand out.