Tag: The Multiverse

Movie Review: Everything, Everywhere all at Once

Yes, I know. I really should have reviewed this movie months ago, or at least before it won the academy award for best picture. To be honest I just didn’t get around to seeing ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ until after it won the Oscar. I just hope you can forgive my tardiness and that you’ll still find my review to be of some interest.

Even the best of us can get a bit behind sometimes. (Credit: Redbubble)

First off the film isn’t quite ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ but for a motion picture it certainly does pack an awful lot of action, in a great many different location, into two and a half hours. The idea behind ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ is that an opening in the Multiverse allows the characters to experience something of the lives of their alternate selves in other realities. I recently reviewed a novel by Blake Crouch entitled ‘Dark Matter’, see my post of 18th February 2023, that deals with the same idea and like the novel ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ is a breathtaking thrill ride full of wild ideas that will make you think.

The novel ‘Dark Matter’ by Blake Crouch deals with the same ideas as ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ using the Multiverse to question how our lives could have been different if we’d made different choices. (Credit: Goodreads)

Evelyn Wang, played by actress Michelle Yeoh, leads a rather boring existence. She and her husband Waymond, played by Ke Huy Quan, own, manage and live above a laundromat. The couple’s only child is a daughter Joy, played by Stephanie Hsu who has recently begun a lesbian relationship and who feels she simply cannot communicate anymore with her parents.

It is of course impossible to fully display the Multiverse in a motion picture, but ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ does a pretty good job of giving a small glimpse of it! (Credit: IMDb)

The Wang’s also live with Evelyn’s father Gong Gong, played by actor James Hong, who thinks his daughter ruined her life when she married Waymond. Oh, and by the way Waymond is planning to divorce Evelyn. To add to the troubles the Wang’s are being audited by the IRS, specifically by IRS agent Deirdre Beabeirdra, played by Jamie Lee Curtis.

In addition to winning the Best Picture Academy Award ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ received three best actor awards. From left to right Michelle Yeoh won for best actress, Key Huy Quan won for best supporting actor while Jamie Lee Curtis won for best supporting actress. (Credit: CBR)

It’s midway through the Wang’s audit that the Multiverse breaks in, as Waymond suddenly becomes an agent fighting the ultimate evil, the daughter Joy, in another Universe that only Evelyn can defeat. When Evelyn asks how she could possibly defeat anyone the other Waymond tells her that she is actually the least accomplished of all the Evelyns in the Multiverse and that allows her to assume the abilities of all the others. At this point don’t ask, just go with the flow as ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ becomes part Science Fiction, part Comedy and Part Action Movie.

Actress Michelle Yeoh has spent much of her career playing in such Kung Fu pictures as ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’. Her abilities as a martial artist were put to good use in ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’. (Credit: DGA)

Throughout ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ there are numerous references to other well known movies like ‘The Matrix’, ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and ‘The Terminator’. The big reference however is that in another Universe instead of marrying Waymond Evelyn became a star in Kung-Fu movies, which of course is exactly what actress Michelle Yeoh actually has been throughout her career.

Movies making references to other classic movies has become a thing nowadays. ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once ‘even reminds us of the origins of man section of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. (Credit: Peatix)

The action and dialogue in ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ is frantic and I think this is one movie I’m going to have to watch several times to really figure out everything that’s going on. To add to the confusion the Wang’s go back and forth between speaking English and Mandarin, sometimes in the same sentence. There are subtitles for the Mandarin but with all of the rapid fire dialogue you have to concentrate a bit to keep up. If at any time it all becomes a bit bewildering that’s O’k, this is the Multiverse and anyone who doesn’t find the Multiverse to be bewildering just isn’t paying attention.

The Multiverse will do that to a person. (Credit: Robotics and Automation Review)

In the end everything works out for the best, Evelyn reconciles with her husband, daughter and father, in fact the final scenes are a bit maudlin. Nevertheless ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ is an intellectual roller coaster ride of ideas and action that is just a lot of fun to watch.

Book Review: ‘Dark Matter’ by Blake Crouch

From time to time we all stop for a moment to consider the ‘what ifs’ in our lives. You know what I mean; we wonder how our lives would be different if we’d made different choices, or if we could go back and change something that had happened in our past. Author Blake Crouch goes a little further, he wonders how the Universe would react if people could actually make those kinds of changes and writes Science Fiction novels where he examines the consequences of such technologies.

Many Science Fiction novels are actually meant to provide a mirror on human society. In his ‘The War of the Worlds’ H. G. Wells was actually commenting on Europe’s violent colonizing of the rest of the world. (Credit: Wikipedia)

Back in my post of 2 September 2022 I reviewed Crouch’s novel ‘Recursion’ where Time Travel allows people to go back into their pasts and change the biggest moment of their lives. In ‘Dark Matter’ he uses the idea of the Multiverse to allow his characters to go to other universes where they have made different choices in their lives.

In ‘Recursion’ Blake Crouch uses Time Travel to comment on how people dream about changing the mistakes they’d made in their lives. (Credit: Amazon)

Jason Dessen is a professor of physics at a small mid-western university, a happily married man with a wife and son. It could have been different, he could have accomplished big things but he got his girlfriend pregnant and when the baby was born the child had a lot of medical problems so Jason gave up his chance at scientific immortality to be a father and husband. At the same time his wife Daniela gives up her career as an artist to be a wife and mother.

Author Blake Crouch and the cover art for his novel ‘Dark Matter’. (Credit: Aralingua)

Then one night as he is walking home Jason is kidnapped by a man in a mask and taken to an abandoned power station outside Chicago. There his assailant forces him to exchange all their clothes, takes his wedding ring and then injects him with drugs that knock him out. When Jason wakes up he is in another Universe, a world where he became a top scientist, in charge of a billion dollar project to open up the doors to the Multiverse, a world where his entire life is taken up by his work with no personal life at all.

Is there an infinite number of different Universes? The idea actually makes sense according to several of the latest models of how our Universe works. (Credit: Universe Today)

In his attempts to get back to his Universe, where his assailant has now taken his place, Jason visits many different Chicagos, different Universes, each of which differs to some degree, great or small from the Chicago that is Jason’s. In this part of ‘Dark Matter’ Crouch gives a wonderful glimpse into just what the reality of a Multiverse, the infinity of Universes each just a tiny bit different from all the others, could mean. Then, when somehow Jason does find his way back to his own Universe, things really get weird, but since I don’t want to spoil things I’ll stop there.

The windy city of Chicago is the setting for ‘Dark Matter’ or to more accurate several versions of Chicago are the settings! (Credit: Choose Chicago)

As he did in ‘Recursion’ Blake Crouch takes us on a wild ride that builds to a crescendo, I didn’t see the ending coming at all. In ‘Recursion’ Crouch just asked us to accept just one thing, his way of time travel. Once we allow that everything else in the novel follows quite logically. Same thing in ‘Dark Matter’ Crouch only asks that we agree to Jason’s method of opening up the Multiverse, then everything else makes sense no matter how weird it gets.

In his novels Blake Crouch really only asks us to accept one, very strange idea. The rest of the story works pretty logically from there. That makes ‘Suspension of Disbelief’ much easier. (Credit: Go Teen Writer)

Except at one point, and it’s a big ‘hey wait a minute’. Jason spends more than a third of the novel trying to get back to his Universe amongst an infinity of Universes. His assailant however had no difficulty taking Jason to his Universe, dumping him there and then getting back to Jason’s Universe to take his place!

Aside from that ‘Dark Matter’ is a wild ride, both thought provoking and exciting, I absolutely look forward to reading more of Blake Crouch’s works, but I have a little worry. Both ‘Dark Matter’ and ‘Recursion’ use science fiction to examine the ‘What ifs’ in our lives. I’m hoping that Blake Crouch doesn’t get into a rut. I hope his next novel is an alien contact story or something similar.

We really do need to get on with our lives and not let the ‘what ifs’ destroy whatever chance for happiness we still have. (Credit: Icy Tales)

And if it is you’ll see it reviewed here at Science and Science Fiction.