Michelle Yeoh is a national treasure in the sci-fi action comedy thriller Everything, Everywhere, All at Once.

I wrote an essay called “Storytelling Power Creep” a few days ago about the slow but continued expansion of stories which require the endangering all of reality in order to raise the stakes for speculative fiction and fantasy films these days. Since the Avengers have made it okay to imperil at least half the Universe, or if you watched Loki, thousands of parallel or branching realities, it makes sense someone would feel compelled to make a film in which the Multiverse itself is in danger.

It appears Daniels has decided to expand the simple idea of ‘The One’ where a protagonist discovers he is one of many versions of himself spread across the breadth of all there is.

In ‘The One,’ (2001) Jet Li discovers whenever one of his selves is killed, the narrative ‘conservation of badassery’ is transferred to the remaining selves. He plays this role to the hilt and though it isn’t a brilliant film, it is a cult classic, well-loved among the Multiverse-speculative fiction films.

Daniels decides to expand the framework of this new Multiversal tale and instead of making it purely about kung-fu fighting across the Multiverse, Yeoh appears to be a story of a mild-mannered business owner who becomes embroiled in a conflict which spans the Multiverse.

Yeoh is recruited and told it would be her least impressive multiversal expression which would be the self most likely to accomplish the agency’s objectives. There appears to be multiversal skill transfer, a bit of dimensional travel and more than a bit of humor during this opportunity to witness the Many World’s Theory in action.

The martial arts, Michelle Yeoh‘s stock in trade, is being further expanded by having her take on multiple roles from a variety of Universes over the course of this story. Seeing as this is the first trailer from A24, they give us nothing but strange, out of context clips, fight scenes and a bit of comic relief.

No. I have no idea why ‘googly eyes’ play a pertinent role in this film. But making the spiritual third eye, a googly one, was an over the top bit of irreverence which, in my mind, bodes well for this movie. Looking forward to the next trailer.

Official Trailer: https://youtu.be/wxN1T1uxQ2g

RELEASE DATE: March 25, 2022
DIRECTOR: Daniels
CAST: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., with James Hong and Jamie Lee Curtis

See Also: Storytelling Power-Creep https://www.facebook.com/thaddeushowze/posts/10158643933662201

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