Once upon a time, four Gen Z Asian kids watched a film that resembled them and their families in a badass way.
A24’s “Everything Everywhere All At Once” is not an easy film to describe.
But for these four Pepperdine students, the film meant something-close-to-everything to see an Asian immigrant family’s story portrayed on the big screen with such nuance and grandeur.
“Everything” explores the cultural divide between immigrant parents and their second-generation children, as well as the tensions between traditional, straight-identifying parents and their queer kids. The film transports audiences to multiple universes, reminding them just how “small” and “stupid” humans are yet how lovable and extraordinary human connection is — if one chooses to experience it.
Students discussed the connection each of them felt with the characters and themes in this whirlwind of a movie, the power of representation in the film, the relationships and characters they related to and the existential crises they experienced.
“I feel like I came out of the film loving people and humanity as a whole a little bit more,” said senior HeeJoo Roh, who is also a Graphic staff artist.
Directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as the Daniels, take viewers to numerous alternate universes filled with martial arts action, science fiction, romance and intergenerational family drama in this movie. Within this multiverse, the film centers on laundromat owner Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), who has a strained relationship with her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) and her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu), all while facing a looming IRS audit — along with “a great evil.”
“To have a movie like this — where people of every background, every culture, can come together and just breathe and just go into this world and have a good time but also learn and grow and love and experience — I think this is the perfect time for a movie like this, and we all needed it,” Communication Professor Jasmine “Jaz” Gray said.
The power of Asian and intersectional representation
With no prior expectations, senior Sabrina Kuo watched “Everything” in her living room with her mom in August.
“I cried,” Kuo said. “I laughed. All the emotions.”
Kuo, who is of Taiwanese and Chinese descent, said she was first curious about the film when people on TikTok commented on her posts saying she bears resemblance to the character Joy.
Kuo said she found it refreshing to see a film that was really different from other movies she’s seen and that also has a full-Asian cast.
“I feel like I haven’t seen a movie with that much [Asian] representation since like, ‘Crazy Rich Asians,’ and, like, ‘Shang-Chi,’” Kuo said.
Junior Tony Lin, a Chinese American with first-generation immigrant parents, said he watched the movie in theaters in May.
“The way they talked and interacted with each other, the things they said, it was so real, like, these could have been conversations and interactions that people in my family could have had,” Lin said.
Senior KJ Ross said the opening scene of the film also reminds her of her family, especially with the way the characters speak using a mix of Cantonese and Mandarin.
The opening scene shows Evelyn attempting to organize piles of paperwork and receipts on her desk, which both Lin and Ross said they grew up seeing their moms do.
For Lin, the movie accurately represents the dynamics of an Asian American family.
“It’s a little weird getting exposed like that,” Lin said. “It’d be like, you’re watching this in theaters, you’re just like, ‘Oh my God, someone went into some random Asian lady’s house and just filmed this,’ you know? Like, it’s so real.”
Ross said she felt proud that a film with a mostly Asian cast became popular and rated well among viewers. She appreciated seeing Yeoh star in the film since Ross grew up watching Yeoh’s other films with her mom.
Roh said they loved “Everything” so much the first time they watched it with their friends that they watched it again in theaters with their parents. Roh identifies as a queer person and is of Korean descent.
One scene in the film shows Evelyn introducing her daughter Joy’s girlfriend Becky (Tallie Medel) to Joy’s Gong Gong, or grandfather, (James Hong). At first, Evelyn refers to Becky as Joy’s “good friend,” but near the end of the film, Evelyn identifies her as Joy’s girlfriend.
This moment brought tears to Roh’s eyes, they said. Roh had come out to their mom a little over a year before they saw this exact scene in theaters with their parents.
Roh said their mom did not reject them when they came out, but she also was not completely accepting either.
“That character arc that Evelyn came through was kind of like a wish fulfillment coming true for me,” Roh said. “It made me think, ‘Oh, I wonder if my mom had that little arc as well in her mind when I came out.’”
Daniel Kwan, one of the directors of the film, learned that many of his queer friends who grew up with immigrant parents came out to their families multiple times, according to an article in USA Today.
“Each time, it’s almost brushed over or ignored, or the parents are waiting for the ‘phase’ to end,” Kwan told USA Today. “There’s no big screaming match. They just end up having to come out every couple years, every time they introduce their partner. They have to basically fight for the chance to be seen — it’s like this slow-motion erasure of who they are.”
Roh said they appreciate seeing queer Asian representation in “Everything,” as they rarely see this intersectional identity in movies.
“We see that natural use of language in homes, and we see tons of Asian faces, Asian actors and Asian stories, and I just haven’t seen anything like that before in film,” Roh said. “And add a queer, little gay touch, like, that’s good.”
Gray said films have historically represented Asian Americans as a model minority, hypersexualized Asian women, emasculated Asian men and have perpetuated other stereotypes that do not recognize their full humanity.
“It’s important to see a film like this,” Gray said. “Because I think, on so many levels, whether it is the casting, whether it’s the storyline, whether it is the capacity to help us see in these characters ourselves, there are so many aspects of the film that fight back against dominant narratives that have been stifling.”
Roh said they believe the film’s characterization of Waymond Wang, Evelyn’s husband, might seem like a stereotypical, emasculated representation of an Asian man in mainstream media, but the movie turns the stereotype on its head and shows Waymond’s kindness is actually a strength.
In the beginning of the film, Waymond appears passive since Evelyn seems to always tell him what to do, but Roh said Waymond’s character is actually quite active. Roh sees this through Waymond taking the initiative to bring Evelyn the divorce papers so they can talk about and work on their marriage.
Lin said Waymond is a character who is not afraid to fight for those he cares about while also having a capacity for silliness and positivity.
“It’s a movie that humanizes all sides,” Roh said. “And that’s what I love about it.”
A first-generation immigrant parent-child relationship
The Daniels wanted the film to tackle the idea of questioning one’s choices and wondering about other paths one could have taken through using the multiverse, according to an Atlantic article.
Roh said they think the multiverse works particularly well with immigrant characters because of how life-changing the decision to move to another country is.
Ross herself has moved around a couple times — from Southern California to Portland to Seattle — and her mom also moved from Hong Kong to Michigan to Southern California. Ross said she related with Evelyn when she imagined the different possible lives she could have had if she remained in different places.
“At the same time, it’s like, there’s no point in wondering about it because I’m glad to be where I am now,” Ross said. “You know, I was just like, ‘Why would I want to redo it?’ Because any possibilities can have its challenges, so it’s not like you can find a possibility and shortcut those.”
Lin said Evelyn and Joy’s relationship resonated with him as a child of immigrant parents.
“I think it is a good visual metaphor of the pressure and the burnout that accompanies the high expectations of being an immigrant family, like not just being the child, but also the mother,” Lin said.
Lin said many second-generation U.S. residents — the children of immigrants — might experience a cultural gap between them and their first-generation immigrant parents because of differences in how they grew up. Lin said his parents want to make sure he succeeds and has a better life than they did.
“My mom never went to college, and she said, ‘I want you to stand on me, I want you to step on me, and however high I can boost you is however high I can boost you, but the rest you’re gonna have to do yourself,’” Lin said. “And it’s that type of mindset, where it’s like, the mother sacrifices herself.”
Ross said she personally identified with Joy during scenes with her mother Evelyn. One scene that spurred emotions in Ross was when Evelyn and Joy argue in the parking lot near the end of the movie.
“I never related to a scene so much because they basically hate each other, but they want to be with each other,” Ross said.
In the scene, Evelyn tells Joy she hates tattoos, even if Joy got them to represent their family. Ross said she can imagine that, if her mom knew about her own tattoos that represent her Chinese and Korean heritage, her mom would tell her something similar.
Near the end of the scene, one line in particular brought tears to Ross’s eyes.
“Maybe there is something out there, some new discovery that will make us feel like even smaller pieces of shit,” Evelyn tells Joy. “Something that explains why you still went looking for me through all of this mess, and why, no matter what, I still want to be here with you.”
Ross said she can see herself in Joy, who is going through a lot and trying to figure life out, so for Evelyn to show her daughter unconditional love felt close to home.
“It’s almost like the conversation my mom and I have never had, but it is always felt,” Ross said.
Kuo said this scene also moved her and made her think about how Joy still looked for her mom despite the generational trauma and turmoil across universes.
Roh said a scene that stuck out to them the most is during Evelyn and Joy’s last fight when Evelyn tells Joy, “Stop calling me Evelyn. I. Am. Your. Mother.” They said they’ve often seen that phrase, “I am your mother,” used in the context of control and constraint, but in this context, Evelyn uses it out of care for her child.
“I started crying right there because despite everything, what she does, and even if there is a miscommunication between generations, she did everything out of love,” Roh said.
If “nothing matters”
One of the main themes Lin and Roh took away from the film is the pursuit of meaning. Lin said recognizing the impermanence of life can feel painful, and one might come to the conclusion that “nothing matters” as a result.
A fan-favorite scene from the film has no dialogue or actors. Yet, somehow, it is one of the most emotional scenes in the movie.
Evelyn and Joy are transported to an alternate universe where there is no life; the characters sit on the screen as rocks, one gray and one brown, as they communicate through text that fills the screen above them.
Lin said he believes this scene represents the sense of detachment one might experience to avoid feeling pain.
“I actually quite admire that about the movie, is the fact that there’s no sound, it’s text on a screen, and yet, it makes you feel this sense of like, penultimate defeat,” Lin said. “Like we’ve come all this way, we fought so hard, and at the end of the day, what do we have? What’s there? It’s just these two rocks laughing on a cliff.”
Lin said even if “nothing matters,” that idea can potentially empower people to find a sense of meaning in doing the things that actually matter to them.
“When you think about it that way, you’re just like, ‘Oh, nothing matters,’” Lin said. “But there’s like a sense of freedom in that as well, where it’s like, OK, maybe nothing in the long run really matters, but what matters is now and here.”
Roh said the motifs of the everything bagel and the googly eye in the film encapsulate the existentialism in the film.
While the everything bagel has a white center, the googly eye’s center is black, emphasizing how they are inverted versions of each other. Roh said Joy’s everything bagel represents the viewpoint that there are good things, but it’s all going to come to an end. The googly eye reflects the lens that, even if good things come to an end, one should not discount all the joys that come out of it, Roh said.
Factors behind the film’s success
Films have a unique capacity to persuade audience members, Gray said.
“We’re seeing Michelle Yeoh, and we’re watching her joy, watching her pain, we’re watching her fight the bad guys, we’re watching her love,” Gray said. “When we are experiencing her as a character, we build a relationship where, to different varying degrees, we feel connected to what this character is experiencing.”
The independent, mid-budget film became A24’s highest-grossing movie globally, making over $100 million, according to Variety. The movie also received a 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes and an 8.1 out of 10 rating on IMDb.
“The fact that they were able to make over $100 million off of the film will hopefully make it that much easier for the next group of filmmakers who want to create an innovative film that’s featuring Asian actors to actually get it done,” Gray said.
Gray said a continual push for diversity in the entertainment industry and an acknowledgement of what made “Everything” successful needs to occur to help open doors for other films like it.
“I think it is so important so that we can see more not of the same story but innovation that’s getting greenlit so that we can see fuller representations of a variety of people that audiences gravitate to and enjoy,” Gray said.
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Contact Emily Shaw by email: emily.c.shaw@pepperdine.edu
