Everything Everywhere All At Once

I think you're mixing up Joy with Jobu.

Aren't they basically the same character? I'm not sure how the movie distinguishes between them.

Jobu also very clearly tells Becky to leave the room so she can have her fight with Evelyn, so there's that, too.

Evelyn learns to accept Joy proverbial warts and all after seeing all the variations of existence there are. I personally didn't find anything wrong with the portrayal of Everlyn's acceptance because I never felt Becky was meant to be that important - at least I wasn't looking for more from her amidst all the other stuff going on.

I think Evelyn accepting the hotdog universe and the others was rather entertaining.

Well, wrong is perhaps too strong a word, and yeah, it was all very entertaining. This was more of a Fridge Logic moment.

Edited by Redmess on May 3rd 2023 at 7:48:44 PM

I felt the brilliant part of the movie was the Central Theme about the power of empathy. Evelyn was accepting of Joy and Becky, but she saw everyone around her as an enemy in some fashion. The "third googly eye" was where she gained the ability to see the good qualities in people around her. The end result is basically saying acceptance is easy, empathy takes work. It's why Evelyn retains some "overbearing Asian mom" traits at the end, as pushing your child to be better is its own form of love.

Yeah, true, and I like that she was accepting, but it had to grow into empathy.

The main slip-up that Evelyn makes about Becky directly is calling her “he” that one time. And her explanation about Chinese not actually having gendered pronouns is correct. (It’s actually a thing I’ve heard from trans people, where older first generation immigrants from China will frequently misgender basically everyone regardless of how accepting they are and a lot will just pick a pronoun and stick to it. Calling everyone He for example.) Everything else is like, her being the overbearing “I care through criticism” type mom to an extreme that means Joy thinks Evelyn actually legitimately dislikes her sometimes.

The “I want to be here with you” scene gets through to Joy (and I think helps Evelyn understand herself) what the actual feelings are and then at the end Evelyn starts doing the “care through criticism” thing towards Becky, but in a much less harsh way and Becky seems to get what’s going on.

Really? Odd, I never heard of that. So how do Chinese distinguish between men and women, then?

By using people's names or if they really have to, say something that works out in English to "this person is a man/woman." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_pronouns

Chinese pronouns lack gendering when spoken all together. The only pronoun used in Mandarin for he/her/it is tā and for they/them is tāmen. There are some written variations but it doesn't pass through to the spoken language. Chinese also doesn't have the huge number of first person pronouns that Japanese does so if someone doesn't elaborate, it's really easy to have a conversation in Mandarin or Cantonese where you never once refer to anyone's gender despite directly referring to them.

Gendered pronouns are not actually that important to language. It's perfectly possible to speak English without using any gendered pronouns and remain perfectly comprehensible, for example. Under most circumstances, it's not actually important to know what gender someone else is.

Edited by Zendervai on May 4th 2023 at 1:05:46 PM

To provide a couple answers in English, if I told you “My brother’s super athletic, they’re on the varsity soccer team” or point to a well-dressed man and say “they’ve got style” you’d know in both cases the gender of the person being discussed. In the first case, because the gender-neutral pronoun is referencing a gendered noun, and in the second because of the presentation of the individual being referenced. Mandarin, at least, (I’m not familiar with other languages in that family) still has gendered nouns for people’s relationships so if it’s relevant you can usually determine from context what gender the individual referred to with a pronoun is.

Edited by 4maskwolf on May 4th 2023 at 5:38:11 AM

I guess it's better than French, which just inverts what the gender is pointing to from the subject to the object, which is pretty confusing when you're used to it being the other way round.

Been meaning to see the movie again. Still think about how great it was from time to time and glad it got so much love last year too.

Quick reminder this is one of very few Lunar New Year movies so now is a good time for a rewatch.

I also didn't watch it all in one sitting the first time, so that's another reason why seeing it again would definitely be beneficial. I've seen three reaction videos to it too, so those helped me to appreciate certain things I didn't catch onto the first time as well.

I watched it in Chicago when released and my first thought after getting the "The End" screen is to think... it was mindblowing!!!

Indeed, for me, that I was recording film podcasts for around 9 years, it was my first 10 out of 10 in a film, and it was the last film I talked about when I closed my podcast a couple months later (it coincided that the film was released in Mexico in June and I moved to Madrid the same month)...

Then I watched three more times when it was released in digital streaming and the most interesting thing is that in that three times I am always discovering new things..., when you have a film like that, you know that is an excellent film...

Yeah, it's a great movie. I hear people complain about how tired they are of the multiverse stuff in movies, but this movie does it really well.

I think because the overlap of things that are so on point with each other rather than contrasting with each other—that there's as much an emphasis on what's similar as opposed to what's different, is where it all feels most palpable. You question which reality is ultimately the real one as well as whether or not Evelyn actually traveled through it or not. In the end, it doesn't really matter…because it's all relative.

That something like your family breaking up could be comparable to a universe-ending event? Definitely without question.