CINEMISSES! Everything Everywhere All At Once

In this conversation, some version of Matt and Tug delve into the intricacies of the film "Everything Everywhere All At Once." They explore the multiverse concept, character dynamics, and the film's unique blend of realism and fantasy. The discussion highlights the importance of communication and relationships within the narrative, as well as the film's visual storytelling and the importance of giving new and different filmmakers the opportunities they need to explore. (Thanks A24.) They also reflect on the character development of Evelyn and the thematic depth of the story, concluding with plans for Season 3 of the show. Also: Tug's voice is clearly vacationing in a parallel universe. He is currently verse-jumping in hopes of locating it. 

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Transcript

 Matt Loehrer (00:00)
You're listening to Cinemissas a podcast about movies that one or the other of your two hosts just never got around to seeing. I'm Matt.

Tug McTighe (00:07)
I am Tug and we're reminding you that anybody can make a podcast about movies that they have seen. We're here because we haven't. Thank you for joining us on Cinemass and Action! Okay, hey buddy, how are you?

Matt Loehrer (00:21)
I'm great. I'm doing really great. I told you off mic, I'm flying down to see my brother Alex in Florida and by the time this airs, I'll be back so people can't just go break into my house.

Tug McTighe (00:32)
It's as if you were in the multiverse. It's a you can do anything you want. It's a time. We're time looping this whole thing. No one knows what it really is, nor does it matter. Right. Yet another theme in the movie. But what I was really wanting to talk to you about was two weeks ago, I went to the last weekend of the Kansas City Renaissance Festival. And that is, as you know, out out in in KCK, they have a permanent one of the only permanent

Matt Loehrer (00:34)
Right.

Right.

Tug McTighe (01:00)
Renaissance festival grounds where they don't tear it down. It's not a tent city. It's physical structures in this little wooded area. It's really quite charming and fun and You sort of feel like that's what it might that's what it looks like in a medieval village. Okay, but but at this Ren fest

The term renaissance is not correct for what this has become. It's more sci-fi fantasy fest. And really, it's any fucking thing you like fest. That's what I'm doing. Because you can go to the Ren Fest and see a guy dressed as a centaur. You got a dragon. Ooh, there's a steampunk guy. Ooh, there's a metal Darth Vader samurai. Doctor Who.

Which one? All of them. yes, correct. Correct is having a right, correct, correct. So the point that I want to talk about is that it really is like that self-help book from the seventies. I'm okay. You're okay. Cause nobody's judging anybody at the Renfest. You're like, I will, you know what? I will have a mead.

Matt Loehrer (01:49)
Right, like Star Trek people in costume act like they they beam down into a planet that is is set in the Renaissance. It's amazing.

Tug McTighe (02:14)
I would like some honey mead from the beer hall. Do you have a large stein for me? So when I was thinking about the Renfest and thinking about this movie that we just watched, there's a lot of stuff in this movie that could be called fantasy, sci-fi, superhero, obviously multiverse, but it really is this really awesome stew.

of different elements and kinds of stories and storytelling all just sort of rolled into one. Lots of different influences from West to East and back again that I found fascinating. So to pull the bandaid off the movie we're talking about here for season two, episode 10.

The finale of season two is everything everywhere all at once.

Matt Loehrer (03:08)
Yes, and I had seen this and you had not. ⁓

Tug McTighe (03:11)
I had not, that is

accurate. I wanted to see it. I had another one of these where a lot of people that I respect, a lot of people that like the shit I like and that you like, really like this movie. And it really is, I just never got around to it.

Matt Loehrer (03:13)
This

It was not in theaters long, I feel like it was on Amazon Prime, like in a week. I was like, well, shoot, I'll watch this. ⁓

Tug McTighe (03:30)
Yeah, quickly. And it won a

shit ton of Oscars, which we'll talk about. yeah.

Matt Loehrer (03:33)
We will. So let's, as always, we kind of kick things off by asking the person who has

not seen it, in this case, that's you, what did you think you knew about this before you saw it?

Tug McTighe (03:41)
Yeah,

okay, so I knew some of the cast. Michelle Yeoh from Caution Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and crazy rich Asians, countless kung fu films. She's a legitimate kung fu star, but she's the most famous. Then Ki-Hoo Kwan, who is short round, and Data from the Goonies, who we'll talk about him a little bit later.

And then

Jamie Lee Curtis, who I love, forever I've loved Jamie Lee Curtis since Halloween, frankly, it being spooky season and all, and still married to Christopher Guest, I've been married forever. So I knew they were in it, I knew it was a mind-bending martial arts leaning time traveling multiverse.

fantasy sci-fi flick I again I knew it had this kind of gumbo of Lots of different elements lots of different influences and then I like I said, I knew it won a bunch of Oscars including best picture Also hot dog fingers, that's it hot dog fingers were famous Yeah, I did I knew a lot

Matt Loehrer (04:43)
Alright, so you you knew to. You knew a lot. ⁓

Fair so like you kind of touched on. I had a buddy over Friday night and wives were kicking the girls out with football games. I said, well, while we're waiting, let's just throw this movie in. I'm going to watch it again for the 25th time and he said, what's it? He said, what's it about? And I said. I can't tell you man, you're just going to have to watch the movie. I couldn't, so let's let's check out the log line.

Tug McTighe (04:58)
Just watch it again,

I don't even know. I couldn't even explain it to someone.

Matt Loehrer (05:11)
A middle-aged Chinese immigrant is swept up into an insane adventure in which she alone can save existence by exploring other universes and connecting with the lives she could have led. It's not wrong.

Tug McTighe (05:22)
It's not wrong. It's...

Matt Loehrer (05:23)
Do you feel that this

is comprehensive?

Tug McTighe (05:27)
I wouldn't say it's comprehensive. There's a lot in this which I want to talk about where

There's a really pivotal moment where Alpha Wayman says something to Evelyn that is really sad and also uplifting, but I don't want to spoil it. But yeah, I think there is a disappointment. I am a character who's disappointed in my life. I am a character who feels like she's failed. I am a character who wonders what might have been had I made different choices.

Matt Loehrer (05:58)
and she's failing other people.

Tug McTighe (05:58)
You know, sort of

classic sort of, you know, driven Chinese parents who think she's a failure. Her father, Gong Gong, is hard on her and thinks she could have done something else. And she's like, I'm not great for my business and I'm not great at my husband and I'm not great at my daughter. So there's a lot in it, which I think makes it really, really personal. So yeah, for sure.

Matt Loehrer (06:21)
I agree. I think

you could have said you could have said a middle aged Chinese woman struggles to deal with a disappointed father and her own failures as a mother and wife. Also, she's tripping through the multiverse and has matrix like superpowers. I that's right. It's worth noting because she does play though she herself. I don't think is originally from China. I feel like she's from Malaysia. It's interesting. I need to go back and.

Tug McTighe (06:28)
Right, right.

by the way, yeah, okay.

That may be right.

Matt Loehrer (06:50)
check all this. the point is they are a Chinese immigrant family and the studios apparently really tried to whitewash this. ⁓ They said, hey, how would you know what white actors could we get in this and credit to to Daniel Kwan and Daniel Shiner, the Daniels who directed this. They really pushed back. And I can't imagine this being nearly as interesting a movie.

Tug McTighe (06:55)
Correct.

100%, which I want to talk about for sure.

Yeah, no. No way. No way.

No way. No. And by the way, if you think, know, Battle Angel or whatever, whichever one has Scarlett Johansson in it, the anime that just never should have, you think that was, yeah, Ghost in the Shell, right? Just stop. it's just ridiculous to even, you know, to even bring that up, it's just ridiculous. So man, I'm tired of you for, and look, you're ridiculous for bringing it up.

Matt Loehrer (07:21)
Yo, ghost in the shell.

Well, why don't you? I agree and. I blame myself.

Well, why don't you jump into just trying to describe what this movie is?

Tug McTighe (07:38)
Okay,

so 2022, American independent film, sort of a drama, sort of absurdity, sort of comedy, sort of nihilism, sort of existentialism, a lot of isms.

Matt Loehrer (07:49)
Well, do you know

what an absurdist film is? Because I can shed a little light on that.

Tug McTighe (07:54)
Well,

why don't you shed a little, I took, I did take a, I took a class at Drake University, absurdist literature. So carry on. see if we agree. I did, we did read. We, of course we did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I read, I, in later years, I read Jean Paul Sartre's Being in Nothingness, which is his existentialist philosophy. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (07:59)
No, excellent school. OK, and I bet you read Camus and Kafka, right? OK, so they are kind of the the forerunners of this style. It is about.

Also another one.

Yeah. So it's, is an existential ⁓ exploration.

Tug McTighe (08:21)
Yeah, life is meaningless, there's only

existing is the only existence, only thing that matters. But there's definitely, right, nothing matters is the theme of this. So we've got to stop.

Matt Loehrer (08:30)
For sure. it

but it still lends itself as a style. This absurdism existentialism lends itself really well to satire and humor as we saw in this movie.

Tug McTighe (08:39)
Yes.

Quick aside, Jean-Paul Sartre's play No Exit has three characters in a white room. He's the father of existentialism. Three characters in a white room. They are in hell. And it is a man and two women. The man is in love with woman one who's a lesbian. The lesbian is in love with woman two.

Woman 2 is in love with a man who is impotent.

And the play, yeah, the play famously ends with hell is other people. Yeah, right. So everybody go read No Exit. There's your literature lesson for the evening. I'll give you that one for a nickel, everybody. But Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheiner wrote and directed this. They produced it with the Russo brothers, right? Who we know from their Marvel expertise.

Matt Loehrer (09:08)
It sounds great.

I've heard that before. Far out. Alright.

And also a lot of TV. They produced Community, which had some really great episodes. ⁓

Tug McTighe (09:35)
lot of tv Yes of all things right

And community had

a lot of surrealist shit in it. Right? Insight, right. But I mean, again, it incorporates elements from everything from surrealist comedy to sci-fi to fantasy to martial arts to this immigrant narrative, which we were talking about a minute ago. Animation, there's some animation in it. There's lots of cool stuff in this. Michelle Yeoh is Evelyn Kwan Wang.

Matt Loehrer (09:44)
for sure. Yeah, and meta stuff like that was a big part of it. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (10:05)
She's a Chinese American immigrant who, well, again, and then, hey, there's nothing like an exciting, an inciting incident where you're being audited by the IRS. That's what happens. She realizes, learns, she has to, she's sort of the nexus of this multiverse, and she learns, she has to learn how to traverse these multiverses to save her family and her business, and then eventually the world. Spoiler alert.

So there's just, again, a lot in this. All these works of Hong Kong, John Woo, think, Wong Kar-Wai is a Hong Kong film director that the, they call themselves the Daniels, Matt, Wynert and Kwan, that the Daniels really like. There's this book, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, which is, I do know that book, which is where the rocks are just the rocks.

Matt Loehrer (10:51)
Now do you know that book?

Well, this so this is a quick aside. This is a John Donne memory lane for me because I love this book. You know, we read a billion children's books in this house and this was one which I just it might be my favorite children's book. And the premise is a boy. He's he's an only child. He is out and he finds this rock and he collects pebbles. That's what he does. He collects pretty rocks and he finds this blood red, beautiful, perfect stone. And he picks it up and it starts to rain and he says,

Tug McTighe (11:04)
Of course, of course you did.

Matt Loehrer (11:22)
I wish it would stop raining and it stops raining. And he realizes that the stone can make whatever he wishes for happen. So suddenly there's a lion there. And instead of all the things that he could have done, he says, I wish I were a rock. And he becomes a rock. And this pebble is just sitting right on top of him and he can't move. He can't change. He can't do anything. And his parents are looking for him. And this is what's just terrifying to me as I'm reading this. Like he's gone for a year.

Tug McTighe (11:27)
grant him these powers, right?

Right.

Matt Loehrer (11:50)
And the parents are finally like, guess our son is gone and it's awful. And they go and have a picnic and they picnic on this rock. And the mother says, he, you know, our son would have loved this little pebble that's sitting right here. It's just like somebody collect. He says, I wish I were a boy again. And he turns back and it's great. And it ends like that. They put the rock away and they never use it again. Exactly.

Tug McTighe (11:56)
On the rock, right?

Right?

Yeah, because it delved quickly into nihilism and existentialism and then we had to make it a kids

book again.

Matt Loehrer (12:15)
So as they were talking about all the things that influence them, and we'll talk about more of it because they are not ashamed to show that they definitely were influenced by the matrix and they were influenced by other pop culture And if they're not stealing it, it's kind of an homage. It's kind of more than that building on our collective knowledge of these things to make something new and different.

Tug McTighe (12:26)
100%.

we're right, we're right, right, where we, again, I always do this Venn diagram, right? It's like we're laying all these elements in and then a new thing comes out of that combo.

Matt Loehrer (12:48)
So about the directors, you know, screw that. Imagine I just because typically we would say, you know, this is what the directors did and they were important. But this is my analogy. It's like if I told you I just had the best pizza I've ever had in my entire life and you would say, well, tell me about it. And I would say, yeah, it had the sauce. It was red. It's a spicy sauce. You're like, OK, what else? I'm like, is this the thickness of the sauce?

Tug McTighe (12:52)
Okay

Matt Loehrer (13:15)
If I just talked about that one thing that doesn't give you an idea of why it was a great pizza. Yeah, so I don't think you can talk about this movie and just focus on the directors or just so I say, they had a great cast because the support the producers were important citizens.

Tug McTighe (13:18)
That doesn't tell you what you're at, right.

Again, that gumbo,

that stew.

Matt Loehrer (13:31)
More than any other movie that we've talked about this year, it was a collaboration of all these things and 824 coming together.

Tug McTighe (13:38)
Yeah, always

coming in with A24, happy to embrace weird, happy to embrace silly, happy to embrace different. So God bless them.

Matt Loehrer (13:49)
Yeah, we'll talk about that

here. Yes. So everything ever roll at once was directed by, as we said, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheiner, known collectively as Daniels, who had previously collaborated on another indie absurdist comedy drama, Swiss Army Man. Do see that one?

Tug McTighe (14:03)
I did not see that one, but I've seen a lot of clips. That's ⁓ Paul Dano and Daniel Ratcliffe.

Matt Loehrer (14:05)
You should, it's crazy.

Yes, yeah, and this is I guess this is where I talked about what is an absurdist comedy drama anyway. It's these existential questions, but they do bring a lot of humor into their their films. For sure, so Daniel started kicking around this idea of a multiverse around 2010. ⁓

Tug McTighe (14:19)
Yeah, sometimes you gotta laugh to keep from crying.

Okay, so

they've been noodling on this for some time.

Matt Loehrer (14:30)
Right, but then you had shows like Rick and Morty, which I don't know if you've watched any Rick and Morty, but it's pretty great. Yeah, there's infinite. They traveled the infinite multiverse in that, you know, the Spiderverse movies came out and these guys were just crapping their pants at this point, so like.

Tug McTighe (14:34)
I've never seen any Rick or Morty.

Did you ever

watch the regular show?

Matt Loehrer (14:49)
no.

Tug McTighe (14:49)
So the regular show is a cartoon, cartoon talk, an animated series. It was on Cartoon Network when the boys were probably, Sean's 24 now, the boys were probably 10, 12 and nine, so 10 years ago. But it fits right in this zone. It seems to take place in the 80s. Mordecai is a Blue Jay, Rigby's a Raccoon.

Matt Loehrer (15:15)
I've seen the characters, okay.

Tug McTighe (15:16)
Their

boss is a bubblegum machine. They work in this park and every episode they screw something up and there's a supernatural element. They either go through a wormhole or go to space or go to no magic. So it's again, it's similar in this. It's this kind of thing.

Matt Loehrer (15:36)
Sure. then, and meanwhile, you know, the Marvel Universe is doing it's yeah, that's good to know. I'll watch it. Marvel Universe is doing all its multiverse stuff. So these guys are like, did we, and as a creative, have you been here where you're like, there are no new ideas. I can't come up with anything that somebody else isn't already doing. I have an idea and then I see something and I'm like, what's, what's the point of anything? So that happens to me quite a bit, but they soldiered on. They, they were still developing the screenplay. So.

Tug McTighe (15:38)
fantastic by the way. Yes.

Sure, sure. yes, I have.

Matt Loehrer (16:04)
They continued that. Meanwhile, it was produced by A24, who was just the production company was A24 was just founded in 2012, which is amazing to me. But it was like, no. And it was three producers who said, let's get together and make these auteur art directed films that are not mainstream films.

Tug McTighe (16:14)
So, not long ago at all.

Let's get

these directors that have interesting viewpoints and interesting ideas and we'll help shepherd them.

Matt Loehrer (16:29)
And they have and

and you get drama and you get horror and you get quirky stuff and you get stuff like this that probably like mainstream studios probably wouldn't touch. And these guys are like, give me more. So ⁓ they probably they produce around 18 to 20 movies a year. Their successes have included Uncut Gems with Adam Sandler, The Whale, which was an Oscar award winner for ⁓ Brendan Fraser.

Tug McTighe (16:39)
wouldn't even do. Yep. Yep. Yep.

That was that Brendan Fraser, I think.

Matt Loehrer (16:54)
Hereditary, so there's some horror there and many others. This one was released in March and April of 2022. They had a launch at South by Southwest, I think. And then they had a full rollout the next month. Right. It's their highest grossing film to date, and it won seven of the eleven Oscars it was nominated for, including Best Picture. Best Actress was Yo, Best Supporting Actress was Quan, Best Supporting Actress was Curtis.

Tug McTighe (17:06)
gotcha. And then it went wide.

I can't express how hard that is to win, to get nominated for 11 and then win seven.

Matt Loehrer (17:26)
for sure. It's I had a list of how has that ever happened, and I don't think it has or it hasn't happened many times. Best director and best original screenplay for the Daniels and best editing, which well deserved because that was crazy. And then the Russo brothers, who, as you said, directed the four biggest they did a Captain America Civil War, Captain America Winter Soldier and the two infinity infinity wars.

Tug McTighe (17:38)
No kidding.

End game, the Infinity War.

Matt Loehrer (17:51)
As well as a bunch of TV stuff and you name it and Mike Larocca who I don't know him, but he's done a bunch of TV shows and movies. So I think a 24 just greenlights a project and then Ocean's 11 styles goes out and finds directors and producers. They put the team together. ⁓ In the past, we've gone, you know, deep dives into production notes and I don't feel like we need to do that here because the movie is so you take us 20, you know, 20 years to do it.

Tug McTighe (18:04)
Assembles the Avengers. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah

Matt Loehrer (18:17)
The most important thing about the production of this movie, I want to emphasize this. I said to you earlier, we're in the Wild West now. Filming was done in January to early March of 2020, primarily in Simi Valley. So two months of filming. Post-production and special effects were done by a total of eight artists working in Adobe Premiere and After Effects. And these guys, to my knowledge, didn't have a lot of formal training in

Tug McTighe (18:39)
Jesus Christ.

Matt Loehrer (18:46)
animation or any of the stuff they watched. They watched tutorials and they watched YouTube. Similarly, Andy Lee and his brother, Brian, they were the two guys in the infamous trophy scene. If you've seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about. And Andy was also Keekon's stunt double. Sometimes they they have this group called Marshall. And they're just self-taught.

Tug McTighe (18:49)
They watched Adobe tutorials and YouTube videos.

It is infamous.

Matt Loehrer (19:11)
Like it's not like they went to a dojo for the last 20 years and got black belts and did all this stuff. They just saw stuff on the Internet and they learned to do it and they learned to get do it themselves and get better at it and have their own style. Yeah. And they're making movies. So all the times I'm like, I can't do this or this is going to take, you know, I can never figure this out. These guys figured it out with the same tools that we have. So. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (19:24)
And they wanted to right they had want to Yeah

Yeah, literally on the computer.

On the computer I'm on, as are those tools.

Matt Loehrer (19:41)
Yeah, it's a computer and software and the will to do it. So it's pretty amazing.

Tug McTighe (19:44)
The will to do it,

So, right, let's talk about the tomato meter. 93 % on the critics, 407 reviews. 79 % on the popcorn meter, which I don't, that doesn't surprise me. And 10,000 ratings. No. This is, take this the way I mean it. This is a,

Matt Loehrer (20:00)
Me neither. Like some people were never gonna, some people were never gonna get this.

Tug McTighe (20:12)
difficult movie You're not this is not an episode of CSI where you sit down Something happens and 50 minutes later. They've solved the crime. There's a lot in this. There's a lot of layers There's a lot that they don't tell you that you just have to go with and figure out yourself And and a lot of people don't like that frankly

Matt Loehrer (20:32)
You gotta commit. Yep.

Did you ever see the movie Primer? ⁓ Time travel movie Shane Carruth. It was his first movie. It was on a budget of like a million dollars. It's about two guys that are. So trying to build our jeez, they're trying to build something and they end up accidentally building a time machine. ⁓ But it almost broke my brain. And my dad was with me and I watched it and 10 minutes and he's like.

Tug McTighe (20:40)
Mm-mm.

Primer, it sounds familiar.

Add it to the list!

Great. Love it.

Right.

Matt Loehrer (21:04)
this movie. I get it.

Tug McTighe (21:05)
No, I had to read probably

after I watched Interstellar, I probably had to read 200 Wikipedia pages to try to figure out what was going on.

Matt Loehrer (21:13)
Right. ⁓

well then let's not do an inception because you don't have that kind of time.

Tug McTighe (21:17)
Because

yet it's But again grossed 143.4 million on a 14 million dollar budget.

Matt Loehrer (21:27)
It was for they confirmed later it was 14. They said they said 14 to 25 and you know it wasn't. They weren't spending that money on salaries for the. It's not like Leonardo DiCaprio's in this movie.

Tug McTighe (21:29)
Which is a-

No, that is a lot of money so well done Little bit no little bear. Haha. We're doing little burn a sec. It became a 24 is highest grossing film so Lots of cool shit speaking a little bear Let's talk about our Esteemed sponsor little bear graphics, you know how and everything everywhere all at once Evelyn jumps through the multiverse trying to find the version of herself that can do it all

Well our sponsor Little Bear Graphics already lives in that universe. Whether it be logos, websites, merch, ads, social, Matt and the Little Bear team of auditors, designers, do it all, everywhere, all at once. And that's part, you don't have to master Kung Fu or even Bagel Fu to work with them. So if your brain is feeling a little scattered across the multiverse, let Little Bear pull it all together beautifully, cohesively, and with way fewer hot dog fingers.

Matt Loehrer (22:29)
Awesome, I love it. getting back to it, you talk about the universe that Little Bear lives in and that I live in. I live in the movie. I live in the universe. This movie was created. So you and I love David Lynch's or Alan Smithy's 1984 Dune. Love it. I've talked to so many people that are like, I didn't get it. I don't understand this. Whereas I the first time I saw it, I'm like, I get it. And what I don't get, I'm confident I'll get there. But just give me more. So this.

Tug McTighe (22:42)
Yep, yep, yep, yep.

That's correct.

They're gonna tell ya. Right? And again, some movies and books tell you better than others, but they're gonna tell you. Like, I saw you talk about this every week, it feels like. I consume a shit ton of sci-fi and fantasy books. I read a lot. I love fantasy and sci-fi literature. Every time you start a new series, the first hundred pages they're setting up the road, you're like, I don't know what the fuck is going on. But...

Matt Loehrer (22:59)
Yeah.

Tug McTighe (23:22)
I'm just gonna keep rolling with it to see they're gonna tell me what this planet is. They're gonna tell me how the spaceships work They're gonna tell me why it's all happening or they don't have a book so again that

Matt Loehrer (23:31)
Yeah. Right. I know there's an

end to the roller coaster ride. I'm just enjoying the ride and I'll worry about the end when I get there. So anyway, and it's not to knock people that don't like that, but I love it. I this is just an aside. Are you familiar with Alan Tutic?

Tug McTighe (23:37)
That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Nope, everybody, there's plenty of stuff for everybody. So do I.

Of course I am.

Matt Loehrer (23:51)
All the things I've loved the best. The weirdest, coolest, most bizarre stuff that I'm like, yes, I love this. Give me more. He's always involved in it. I mean, I can give you a list of like 20 things that I'm like, I love this. This is insane. And he was in it.

Tug McTighe (24:00)
Hi, I'm Tonya.

He's hovering around it somewhere, right? So we got an amazing, let's talk about the cast here, Matt. Michelle Yeoh is Evelyn. She's the dissatisfied and overwhelmed and disappointed laundromat owner. She is a famous martial artist, crouching tiger, hidden dragon. She's a Star Trek actor, character. She's Marvel. She was in Supercoppa Jackie Chan. ⁓

Read this this was originally conceived as a Jackie Chan vehicle this everything everywhere But they've been they then thought it'd be more interesting if it was a woman and boy were they right? So I thought that I thought that was really interesting Stephanie sue is joy Wang Evelyn's daughter and cheese jobu to Baki Who's the bad guy the big bad the omnicidal daughter? Who's growing nihilism is a threat to the entire multiverse?

Matt Loehrer (24:40)
would not have enjoyed that.

Tug McTighe (25:00)
The aforementioned QHU Kwan as Waymond, Wang, her meek, Evelyn's meek and light-hearted husband, who's got a real sort positive outlook that runs contrary to the existentialism and the nihilism of Evelyn and Joy. He also plays Alpha Waymond when he turns meek, he takes his glasses off, puts him in his fanny pack and then he's Kung Fu master. ⁓

Matt Loehrer (25:20)
He went to

a he consulted a couple of consultants for this. One was to get him back into the habit of reading lines, because after he dropped out of after like 2002, he dropped out of acting. ⁓ There were no at the time he felt like there were no roles for Asian actors like himself. So he was just doing stunt stuff. So all this martial arts that you see in this, a lot of it's him doing his own stunts.

Tug McTighe (25:36)
He just quit acting out.

Right, because he was

the stunt coordinator and stunt actor.

Matt Loehrer (25:50)
For sure. So that was pretty cool.

Tug McTighe (25:52)
Now I know the listeners know who he is, but let's remind them that he was a very, very, very famous kid actor. He was short round in Temple of Doom. You call him Dr. Jones doll. He was data in Goonies. Very funny, very funny. And then like you said, he didn't work in front of the camera for a long time and made his way behind the scenes, behind the camera doing.

Matt Loehrer (26:06)
Johns.

Tug McTighe (26:18)
stunt coordinating and stunt work and that sort of thing. So really, really interesting. And if you recall his Oscar acceptance speech, he talked about a lot of this and really heartfelt and really, I think an important moment in time.

Matt Loehrer (26:33)
Well, the way he got back in there was, if you remember, Andrew Yang was contemplating a presidential run. was. Right, so there was a meme going around that showed Andrew Yang and said, you know, short rounds all grown up and he's running for president. So the Andrews saw this and they thought, I wonder what Ki-Hee Kwan is up to. And they do a little research and they find out that he's still kind of.

Tug McTighe (26:39)
a momentary presidential run.

That's funny.

Wonder what happened to that guy. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (27:00)
Because he had come back in. He had started acting again in 2016 ⁓ after Crazy Rich Asians was successful. He was like, hey, maybe I can get back into this. So he had he had done another acting. He'd done a film role since since then. And they said, you know, he's just the right age to do this. So that was what it was. They happen to see a meme and memes. Yeah.

Tug McTighe (27:05)
and then quit.

Right.

The internet is undefeated, Matt.

So we need to take a moment to talk about Gong Gong, who is Evelyn's father and Gong Gong is Cantonese for grandfather, played by the great, and I don't mean great like great, I mean it like great James Hong. He is an all time that guy. Everybody listening knows who James Hong is.

Everybody listening has seen James Hong. You've heard his voice in animated stuff. He is unbelievably awesome. He is in the Mount Rushmore, I swear of all of that guy. He has appeared in 600 films, TV shows and video games. He was born in Minneapolis in 1929. He started his career in the 50s dubbing soundtracks for Asian films. He was Hannibal Chu in Blade Runner.

He was David Lo Pan in Big Trouble in Little China. He was Shifu in Milan. He was Kung Fu Panda's father. He was Cassandra's father from Wayne's World. He has been in everything.

Matt Loehrer (28:31)
That's right.

Yes, he had four or five other because he's 91 years old or he I think he is now he had four or five other actors to stand in for him at times. And there was one who said he was honored to shave his own head to be bald to play his stand in. ⁓ Yeah, one of the all time greats. He's amazing and so funny. He had that line. He says he says your Chinese gets worse. He's talking to his granddaughter. He said your Chinese gets worse every time I talk to you.

Tug McTighe (28:45)
to stand in for James, yeah, 100%, yeah.

His daughter,

Unbelievable. So great.

Matt Loehrer (28:58)
That's great.

Tug McTighe (28:59)
gave

Matt Loehrer (29:00)
Jamie Lee Curtis as Deirdre Bo Beardra in IRS. That's how you say it, like the banana fan of Fofana name game thing. She plays in IRS agent and other versions of Deirdre across the infinite multiverse. Her the image for this and you can find it is from a Getty stock image library of

Tug McTighe (29:04)
deer droop-o-beard-ra!

That's right.

Matt Loehrer (29:22)
an actual IRS person. And I Googled it or named something like.

Tug McTighe (29:26)
Yeah,

if you Google it, you see an image, it's exact. Yes.

Matt Loehrer (29:30)
It's the haircut. It's the outfit. It's

exactly the same. Her name's like, you know, Kate Malone or something from the Cincinnati office. So that was crazy. At the premiere, Daniel Kwan said this. The moment the film finished and we were walking backstage, I felt this deep contentment and fulfillment. And because we were backstage and Jamie Lee Curtis had never seen the whole movie, she had just seen she knew, you know, she'd seen the dailies and she knew her parts. But she'd never seen the whole movie.

and she looked at me and she was bawling. There were tears on her face and she said, okay, I finally understand

And both of, by the way, both of Jamie Lee Curtis's parents were nominated for Oscars, but she was the only one to win one. So she said she said she wanted for them.

Tug McTighe (30:07)
That's nice. Her,

her mom was Janet Lee. That's why she's Lee. Janet Lee was famously murdered in a psycho. She was in murder the shower and Tony Curtis. That's why she's named Curtis. ⁓ it was a, just a famous musical comedy, probably in a hundred movies, Tony Curtis, you know him if you saw him. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (30:13)
Mm-hmm.

Yes, that's what she was nominated for.

Yes.

Using a million things.

OK. Tally Medell as Becky Sreger, Joy's girlfriend. So I thought, was it necessary for her to have a gay relationship or not? And not that it's good or bad or wrong or right or whatever. Why that? And I think it makes sense that that's one more potential. All of this deals with communicating and feelings of is this right or is this wrong? And then that's

Tug McTighe (30:57)
Yep.

Matt Loehrer (30:58)
like her needing to hide it from the grandpa.

Tug McTighe (30:58)
And Yep. Traditionalism versus modernism, right? He's a very old set in his ways conservative man. She's a young lesbian. her, Chinese sucks. She's American. She's like got all these strikes against her in Gong Gong's eyes.

Matt Loehrer (31:17)
And also with Michelle Yeo being, you know, I'm not ashamed of you, but it'll appear I'm ashamed of you because I want to keep this from your grandfather who was ashamed of me. So there are just all these layers of God, you talk about the gumbo, but all these layers of different conflicts, right? Different kind of hard edges that just keep kind of. Absolutely, so. ⁓

Tug McTighe (31:27)
Right. Yeah. Yes.

Yep. If it weren't for disappointment, we wouldn't have any appointments. Right? Everybody.

Matt Loehrer (31:42)
So that was a choice and I think it made sense Jenny Slate who I love she's been in so many things ⁓ She is Debbie the dog mom the laundromat customer that ends up using her dog as weapon later in the movie ⁓ They called her big nose in the movie the Michelle Yeoh referred to as big nose and I don't think they which I think is something that a lot of Asians mate For yeah, I'm a buddy of mine

Tug McTighe (31:46)
Adore Jenny Slate.

Really funny.

Michelle Yeoh referred to respect knows.

That may be an Asian thing, right?

Matt Loehrer (32:08)
went to work in China after college and they he said they called him round eye big nose. And also he was six, four. And he said people would would ask to take their picture with him just because he's so tall. So I don't think they realized the or initially recognized the Jewish stereotype that goes with big nose. So when they re-released it, when they put other media out, they changed that to dog mom, which is very smart.

Tug McTighe (32:13)
Right.

Yeah, just, yeah, sticking out like a sore thumb.

If you want

to see Jenny Slade at her peak, it's in Parks and Rec as Mona Lisa Saperstein. Fantastic character.

Matt Loehrer (32:41)
Yeah, and her brother's great in that Ben. John Ralph, you in shorts and wrapping it up is Harry Shum Jr as Chad, a teppanyaki chef working alongside an alternative Evelyn in another universe. He was also in. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Sword of Destiny with Michelle, you know, so they were together in that which.

Tug McTighe (32:43)
Jean-Ralphio Benchworth.

Okay, so he's another one

of these martial artists.

Matt Loehrer (33:04)
Yeah, Anna Dancer. So I know him as Mike Chang from Glee because my daughter Eve was just obsessed and probably still is with that show. So he'd pop on. She'd say, it's Mike Chang because he was an amazing dancer in the show. He's currently, I think, in the 30 or 40th season of Grey's Anatomy. So you can find him there. And that's every.

Tug McTighe (33:11)
⁓ We watched a little bit of Glee back in the day when it was on.

Thank God so many seasons, you've gotta be kidding. If you thought you were

joking at 30 to 40, you're not.

Matt Loehrer (33:29)
No, I'm not. I'm not kidding. And evidently, Daniel Radcliffe was approached by the Daniels to appear in the film, which I think I love him and everything he's in. He's been in so many. Crazy things. Because he's got trillions of dollars and doesn't care. Yes, so that would have been he couldn't do it due to scheduling conflicts. It would have been their second collaboration after Swiss Army man in 2016. He said that the Daniels are the.

Tug McTighe (33:40)
Interesting. Yeah.

Yeah, he's got Harry Pot- he got Harry Potter money.

Matt Loehrer (33:56)
the only people in the world that I would say yes to doing a movie of theirs without even seeing the script. So high praise.

Tug McTighe (34:01)
All right, well, let's jump into the plot here, my friend. Evelyn Kwan Wang is a middle-aged Chinese immigrant. She runs a laundromat with her husband, Waymond. Two decades earlier, they eloped to the United States and had a daughter, Joy. In the present day, Evelyn is enduring multiple struggles, the laundromat's being audited by the IRS. Waymond is trying to give her divorce papers. He wants to spark a discussion about their marriage. Her father, Gong Gong,

is visiting for the Chinese New Year. She has a difficult relationship with her daughter Joy, who herself is battling depression and has a American girlfriend, Becky, who Evelyn is reluctant to accept because grandpa won't accept her. It's too much for Evelyn.

Matt Loehrer (34:45)
Right. That was a funny line, too. Like you're and she's white. She said, well, she's Mexican. She's half Mexican. So the name Waymond, I think I think movies are funny or I think names are interesting in movies because they're in books because they're chosen for a reason. If you've seen a Harry Potter movie, you know the value that a good name can bring. But Waymond, I feel like as likable as he is, I think that helps us think of him as.

Tug McTighe (34:50)
She's half Mexican, yeah.

Weird.

Yeah, everybody,

Matt Loehrer (35:13)
kind of a silly person or an immature person. In a way that Raymond wouldn't do it right. I thought that was interesting.

Tug McTighe (35:16)
It doesn't, yeah, it doesn't have a lot of gravitas or weight. Correct. Correct.

So what I, what I thought as we were talking about this and just sort of setting it up for a, a movie that delves as deeply as this does into these sort of fantastical elements, these are super real conflicts, even like Monday, like day to day bullshit.

Your dad doesn't like your girlfriend. Your mom is upset. You're not adhering to the way she grew up with, right? If you are not hetero, you have to deal with that in whatever way you have to deal with it. So just a lot of realism, I thought, in the conflict, in the plot points. Relatability, yeah. And I thought, again,

Matt Loehrer (36:06)
Yeah, relatability for sure.

Tug McTighe (36:10)
You know, this is nothing anybody doesn't know, but the more specific you make these details, the more universal they become. And I just think everybody can see themselves. I remember when I had a bad time with my mother because I was dating the wrong person or I didn't want to go to the college you wanted me to go to or whatever, right? They don't seem like these giant things, but they're, they're real. I might just, and I really liked that.

normalcy in a quote unquote fantasy or sci fi setting.

Matt Loehrer (36:41)
It really grounds it. Yeah, I agree. And I also think calling this a fantasy movie or a sci fi movie is like calling the Star Wars Star Wars a show about orphans. Like it doesn't begin to get there. But the fantastic elements, as much as I love them, aren't what it's about. This it's about relationships and it's about communication. I'll talk more about that later. But it's just it's it's a way that they can present the story. They help us tell the story. But the story is really about these people and their

Tug McTighe (36:49)
Right, yeah, right. Doesn't quite catch it.

Correct.

It's a human

family story complicated by the fact that they have to battle these multiverse problems.

Matt Loehrer (37:12)
Right. And

I agree, it completely grounds it.

Tug McTighe (37:16)
Yeah. So they had a tough meeting with IRS agent Deidre Bobidra. ⁓ and at this moment, Wayman's body is taken over by Alpha Wayman. The version of him from the alpha verse. So Alpha Wayman.

Matt Loehrer (37:22)
You

Now we

we'd seen a little bit of that on the close and the security cameras in the laundromat in the background. He turns into Alpha Wayman on the screens and he starts doing this parkour thing. Right. And then when and she misses all of it. And then when she turns back and looks, he's doing a dance.

Tug McTighe (37:34)
If you're watching, yes, yes.

around the laundromat. Yeah, like.

Right. He's back to himself. Right, right,

right. So he shows up and tells Evelyn, hey, the multiverse exists because every life choice creates a new alternative universe. But in the alphaverse, the now deceased alpha Evelyn is the one who created this verse jumping technology, which enables people to access the skills, memories, and bodies of their parallel selves.

performing bizarre I had to write this down by performing allows her to access the skills memories and bodies of their parallel selves by performing bizarre actions that are statistically unlikely okay

Matt Loehrer (38:29)
Which was the foundation for a lot of the humor in this. ⁓ And we did get a big kind of exposition dump there. But also, so what what they paired it with is like, like, you know, you put these earbuds on that. We don't need to, we just need to accept that's how they. That's how they get information, so he's telling us how this works. Meanwhile, she is getting kind of a slideshow of her entire life up to that point.

Tug McTighe (38:32)
Correct.

We just accept that that's how you do this.

in all these multiverses and in her. this is when she just first, yeah.

Matt Loehrer (38:59)
Well, this is her, this one was her life.

This is the first time she does it. So she sees and we see all the choices that she made like, you know, marrying Waymond and having her dad, just remember the scene where the doctor says, it's that you see a young James Hong and the doctor says, it's a girl, I'm sorry. And his face just falls. So that was funny. But,

Tug McTighe (39:12)
leaving China.

I'm sorry! Right. Right.

Matt Loehrer (39:24)
It basically goes through all the choices that she's made to get to the life that this universe is her. Evelyn has, and then he finishes exposition at the same time. So now we're caught up. We know how we got here. I thought it was a pretty clever way of kind of giving us a bunch of info. ⁓ But yeah, I was really impressed by Michelle Yo's comic chops. I thought she was really funny.

Tug McTighe (39:40)
pretty tidy. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Yeah, doesn't...

Yeah, quite quite good in this.

So the whole multiverse is threatened by Jobu Tupac. Who we learn is the is the alpha joy her daughter whose mind was splintered after Alpha Evelyn pushed her to verse jump beyond her ability and her endurance to do so. So Evelyn created verse jumping. Joy was really proficient at it, but Evelyn pushed her too hard and broke her. And then Jobu Tupac.

is sort of a person out of time and out of space. She exists everywhere, everything, all at once. She's in every universe. She's across the multiverse, all at the same time. And she can verse shump and manipulate matter at will. So that's again, what gets to be a little like Neo. She's also, Matt created a black hole like device called the everything bagel. That is a,

Singularity that could destroy the multiverse. It's just like sucking in all the multi all the universes, but it isn't everything bagel It's an everything bagel. Yeah

Matt Loehrer (40:53)
Right, it's a black hole, but it's also in everything bagels. She put poppy

seeds on it and also everything. ⁓

Tug McTighe (40:59)
Yes, so that

made me laugh That it wasn't everything bagel and again, like you said Matt. I mean piggyback on what you said I liked the verse jumping tech Right these little like you guys you have to imagine like the 2005 Little earpiece with a little microphone coming down Right that that you just stuck in your ear when you in it hooked to your cell phone or your flip phone But they just

said it and showed it to us, didn't explain why, didn't tell us how it worked, didn't care. I'm fine. That's how it works.

Matt Loehrer (41:33)
Yeah, the light turns green,

light turns green. You do something crazy or statistically improbable, which ends up being visually something nuts. And then the light turns green. If you do it right, you push the button and then you can access. Yeah, I like that. Everything bagel apparently was just a throwaway joke. And they thought, why not? Because the absurdity of all this.

Tug McTighe (41:40)
Right, like pull a nose hair or give yourself five paper cuts. Right.

And you did it right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Matt Loehrer (41:59)
Kind of the silliness. That's the point for JoBoo that nothing matters. ⁓ So they they kept it in and that was kind of the the MacGuffin. Would you call that a MacGuffin? mean, that's like the existential threat of the movie that.

Tug McTighe (42:02)
100%.

Yeah,

it's the big bad. It's gonna eat us if we have to stop that thing.

Matt Loehrer (42:15)
But okay, hypothetically, go with me a little bit here. If everything that's fantastic in this movie, and I don't mean great, I mean fantasy, fantastic, is not really happening, that it's a metaphor, that everything bagel could be suicide. It could be death for joy, right?

Tug McTighe (42:16)
Let me, I'm happy to go.

It could for sure. could be

your yes, it could be afraid of death. It could be depression, right? All that.

Matt Loehrer (42:38)
Right. All these

and people that they're encountering and fighting may be just those people in real life or their own problems or her relationship with their dad and whatever. So if you want to, you can see all this as kind of a metaphor. Maybe none of it's happening. And this is just how they're telling a story about people, these people.

Tug McTighe (42:50)
Yes.

Yeah, we've seen films where someone's at an office and they get hooked in to the fantastic, to the fantasy by whomever, like Alpha Wayman hooks Evelyn in. And then you see a 90 minute movie and then we cut to the end and they wake up and none of it happened. Right, we've seen those kinds of stories.

This isn't portrayed as that, but you could probably write a five page paper about that. That's what your take is on it. I'm always always going back to the literature tonight. So Evelyn is given this these earpieces so she can fight job was minions who are now they said in that alpha versa, like you got to go get this woman. She's going to jobu. Tabaki said she's going to fuck it all up for us. So we need to go get her. So she's in the IRS building and she

uncovers all these different universes where she has made different choices and flourished. Remember, she's depressed that she's failed. So she sees herself as a famous kung fu martial arts actress, like lavish famous. She sees herself as a singer. She sees herself as these various versions of herself and a lot of them

or all of them were triggered when she didn't leave with Wayman.

Matt Loehrer (44:17)
right. Even the sign spinner and teppanyaki chef and but they all have but they all have abilities that she can use for her for her needs.

Tug McTighe (44:18)
So that part is really sad.

Yeah, right. The science better. I forgot about the science better.

that she can use later, that's right. So,

so.

Wayman Okay, so Wayne and alpha Wayman wrote What the instructions on hey meet me at the end of the hallway? I got something big to tell you do this do that he wrote that on the back of the divorce decree That he wanted her to sign So now she learns that Wayman intends a file for divorce. So everything like everything has fallen apart It really in the first act for her and then she

She learns from Alpha Waymond that he believes she's the most powerful Evelyn. This version of Evelyn is the most powerful Evelyn in all of the multiverse because she has failed so badly.

that she possesses the untapped potential of all those other Evelyn's and that might be enough to defeat Jobu. in my words, she's so bad, she could actually be good. Right?

Matt Loehrer (45:25)
Right. And this is when she

and so many things like so much about this movie is about communicating like miscommunication or inability to communicate. There's a scene where Joy is going to her car and she runs out. This this is earlier. She runs out to the car and says, Joy, I have to tell you something. She says, what is it? She says, you need to eat better. You're getting fat. It's like that's not what she wanted. Obviously not what she wanted to tell her. ⁓ So even here when she's he's

Tug McTighe (45:47)
You're getting fat. She wanted to tell her, that's right.

Matt Loehrer (45:54)
showing her the divorce papers or she shows it to him because she's talking about the instructions that Alpha Wayman wrote on the back and she says she said you gave this to me and he said yeah and she said in the elevator he's like uh-huh but she was talking about Alpha Wayman and not regular Wayman and this is right before by the way the the Alpha Wayman comes back and has a big fanny pack martial arts fight with the security guys after she punches she poaches

Tug McTighe (46:01)
Correct.

Alpha Wayman, not Wayman Wayman, right?

Right.

Matt Loehrer (46:22)
punches Deidre in the face.

Tug McTighe (46:24)
Right, and the weird statistical, the statistical anomaly is he has to eat a big thing, a chapstick. He rolls it all the way up and just eats the wax.

Matt Loehrer (46:30)
Yeah, he has to pull it all the way out.

Tug McTighe (46:35)
Okay, so.

Matt Loehrer (46:36)
It was fun

for me to watch her get better at what she was doing as it went on. Like she's figuring it out. Yeah, and it's clearly based on the Matrix, but it's not a ripoff of the Matrix. It's I feel like it's a tacit acknowledgement that we all have seen the Matrix and we know how this works. So so just go with it. ⁓ Yeah, I feel like it does with this for this movie. What if you watched Avengers Endgame, which I know you did?

Tug McTighe (46:40)
As she gets she levels up. Yeah, like a video game. She starts to level up.

Yeah, you. Yeah, I'll take it. I think so too.

Matt Loehrer (47:05)
and they talk about back to the future. They're like, it's basically back to the future rules. They, they, we've all seen it. We get it. They've seen it too. I think that's great.

Tug McTighe (47:11)
Yes, so that's right. They've seen it too. That's right

So gong gong now we get to meet alpha gong gong who I really like he tells Evelyn to kill joy his daughter her and And that will prevent jobu from using her joy to access Evelyn's current universe Evelyn refuses the sides of face jobu by acquiring these powers weyman alpha women had said look the more you jump

the better you get to your point about leveling up. So she starts jumping like crazy and they're like, it's gonna break her brain. not, it'll break her brain like it broke Jobu's. And Alpha Gong Gong believes that she's been compromised. Like Jobu sends all his soldiers after Evelyn and then they fight and Jobu kills Alpha Waymond in the Alphaverse. So he's like in a van driving around to try to.

hide from her and so he gets killed. So he dies. Sad.

Matt Loehrer (48:10)
Yeah, this skips now there's some great scenes that skips over the Racka Cooney. The Racka Cooney scene was amazing. Again, her she's talking about, you know, no, they control us like in that movie with the raccoon Racka Cooney and the right hand, the daughter, even though she's tied up to the chair and their mom's about to kill her with a they just laugh and laugh because it was so fun.

Tug McTighe (48:28)
You mean Ratatouille? Yeah. And then there's

a, and then we cut to a verse where she's a hibachi chef and the guy next to her is really good. Turns out he does have a raccoon on his head. Voiced by Randy Newman, by the way.

Matt Loehrer (48:43)
That was Voice by Randy Newman, you're right.

Evelyn is jumping uncontrollably versus jumping alongside Jobu. So she's better at it and can start to do the things that Jobu does. ⁓

Tug McTighe (48:48)
Yep.

And she's also

learning a little bit of JoBoo's motivation, because they're talking.

Matt Loehrer (48:59)
Right,

that's good point, because Alpha Wayman said, you know, she doesn't have any any motivation. And nobody knows. Yeah, nobody knows why she's doing any of this. ⁓ I. Yeah, she she has been looking for an Evelyn who can see everything that she sees, all the things.

Tug McTighe (49:05)
She doesn't care, she doesn't, yeah. Why she's doing this. So now we start to find out.

She wants

a person who is like her to see what she sees, to see how bad, how hard it is, and to agree. Yeah, correct.

Matt Loehrer (49:27)
Yeah, and then none of it matters. Right.

She teleports Evelyn to the everything bagel. We see that she wants to use it to end herself and Evelyn too. Right. And everything else. And Evelyn is initially persuaded back in our universe, the mainstream universe. She's it's the party, the night of the party, and she's getting drunk and she says she's going to sign the papers. I think she actually does. She signs the divorce papers.

Tug McTighe (49:36)
and herself and everything else, that's right.

Yeah, the divorce papers,

the IRS shows up, the cops show up to arrest her because she's lost her business. Right.

Matt Loehrer (49:55)
throws a chair through the window.

Yeah, so we're at the of the second act, right? All is lost. ⁓ She's basically being a jerk and she's about to enter the bagel with JoBoo and just...

Tug McTighe (50:04)
Yes. Yeah.

And it's like a black

hole that they start to get sucked into.

Matt Loehrer (50:15)
It is. It's very it's exactly a back black hole that looks like a bagel, like a really dark goes pretty cool. But she hears Wayman in her universe pleading with Deirdre to forgive her. And can we have a you know, and this is why and. Right. And. Where she is fighting all the agents of.

Tug McTighe (50:19)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, can we just, yeah. Another day, another week, right?

Matt Loehrer (50:36)
of Jo Bu or of Alpha Gong Gong that they sent after her, Wayman saying, be kind. Why can't we be kind to each other?

Tug McTighe (50:39)
Right. We've got to stop fighting.

Can we just stop fighting? Right. And because she's just killing all these people. Right. And Wayman is like, we've got to stop. We've got to be kind to each other.

Matt Loehrer (50:49)
She is an envi-

Yeah. And, she takes a turn right there, like at that moment. And this was really cool. Cause now she starts not only like using Joe boost same powers, like the reality altering power, ⁓ instead of love, instead of anger, open hand, instead of a closed fist, she's bringing the people together and creating it. You know, she, she,

Tug McTighe (51:12)
Yes. Yes.

Matt Loehrer (51:18)
She is in the universe with Rekka Kooni where they've taken the raccoon away. She helps him.

Tug McTighe (51:21)
She helps him, He's in the,

yeah, animal control is taking him. And she helps him, helps him get the raccoon back.

Matt Loehrer (51:28)
Yeah, there was another one too. She does something to make a guy happy and I forget what it is, but she's not fighting. She's kind of yeah, there's so much there. Yeah, I I really thought her they playing up her English as a second language was really funny. There are four or five different ways that she mispronounces job who to buggy. Is it Juju Chewbacca Jobu Tabaki?

Tug McTighe (51:34)
Me too. She's just being nice and kind.

Jo- Chubbacca, Chubbacca.

Matt Loehrer (51:54)
And she asked Alpha Wayman, what do you know about gross necklaces? Because she'd been threatened with gross negligence. ⁓ So for me, this movie was really about communicating and not communicating or miscommunicating.

Tug McTighe (51:57)
Gross necklaces, yeah. Right.

Yeah, and back to the Magic Pebble, I just loved the scenes where they were just two rocks sitting on the canyon and they just had text on screen. was no talking and they were talking about.

Matt Loehrer (52:23)
Yeah, it was a

universe where life never evolved and it's just rocks.

Tug McTighe (52:26)
never evolved and

she goes and by the way they throw this existentialism in there she goes where are we and she goes we're one of the universes where life never evolved she goes actually most of them are like this

Matt Loehrer (52:40)
Is that what she said? Wow. That was, but Michelle Yeoh and Stephanie Shue in separate unrelated interviews said that that was their favorite scene. Yeah, I don't think.

Tug McTighe (52:41)
Right, most of them are like this. ⁓

That was their favorite scene. Yeah, it's really interesting.

So as she listens to Waymond and starts to practice kindness, she starts to repair damages in all these other universes. She starts to repair everything. She neutralizes Alpha Gong Gong and JoBoo's fighters in her home universe. She reconciles with Waymond, accepts Joy and Becky's relationship, tells Gong Gong this is her girlfriend. And then Waymond, right?

The failure, the silly one convinces dear Jobo Beardra to give them some more time to redo their taxes. They become friends at the party and yeah, they do. Yeah. I think they're well, they're hitting up their very, at the very least they were vaping. Right. but Jobu is like, look, I can't take it.

Matt Loehrer (53:29)
Yeah, Deirdre and Evelyn have a nice moment. think there's, don't know if they're smoking dope together or something.

They're vaping something.

Tug McTighe (53:44)
You're clearly not gonna come with me, but I'm gonna go into the bagel by myself. I've got to get out of here. And so she's at the bagel simultaneously in the real universe. Joy, please. Joy says, Evelyn, you just got to let me go. And then Evelyn says, I could be everywhere. Everything she doesn't say it. I wish she did everything, everywhere all at once. And even if none of it makes sense. And even though I could be anywhere else, I want to be here with you.

which again, finally said the things she wanted to say when she told her she was fat. That I just want you.

Matt Loehrer (54:13)
You know what's amazing?

This movie took place in the space of an afternoon. Right? It's the same day as the party. Yeah, we got to. It's just nice. It's just nice to see character development work so quickly. Usually got to wait for it.

Tug McTighe (54:19)
Yeah, right. And just in the office. Yeah.

100%. They were talking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One day. Yeah.

Right, right, right.

So Evelyn grabs Joy, Wayman grabs Evelyn, Gong-Gong grabs, and they all pull Joy out of the everything bagel. But I did want to mention to our viewers and our listeners that Matt got another version of something that he loves, which is for some reason,

Matt Loehrer (54:41)
Yeah, they're all pulling together. That was pretty great.

Tug McTighe (54:53)
Gong Gong, Alpha Gong Gong was in a motorized wheelchair that then turned into a mech suit that he was in. So we got a mech suit, Matt. You've got to be happy with that.

Matt Loehrer (55:01)
You know, I love mech suits.

Love it. And then later the relationships are improved. It's a couple days later and Becky drops everybody at the IRS office. They're going to refile their taxes. Joy goes with them this time.

Tug McTighe (55:15)
Because she said earlier, Deirdre says, I thought you were going to bring your daughter to translate. So yeah, so right, right, right.

Matt Loehrer (55:20)
Right, see communication, it's that again. It's.

You know, so many levels. Deidre is talking and Evelyn's attention is drawn to her alternate selves and she's called daydreaming or she's still in connection or whatever. ⁓

Tug McTighe (55:34)
They use this

visual trick a lot where if it's on her face, you would see a sliver of her face looking right and a sliver of her face looking left. And that was this indicating that she was splintered in different places. And you see that, and Deirdre asks her question and then she zooms back and says, no, I'm right here.

Matt Loehrer (55:53)
I'm sorry, what were you saying? But it's it's a call back to an it's a call back to the first time she was at the IRS. But then she was distracted and splintered and fractured in so many different ways. And now she's she's locked in. She's it's it was a great ending. I really liked it.

Tug McTighe (55:58)
Yeah, that's right.

Correct. And now she's locked in.

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and turn chaotic multiverse energy into clean, confident, everything marketing. After all, in this universe and in every other one that Matt and I know of, good design always wins.

Matt Loehrer (56:50)
Nice. All right, so what do we think? Closing thoughts?

Tug McTighe (56:54)
⁓

Okay, yeah, so I really liked it But I'm gonna tell you it took me about four days of thinking it through to discover that so Similar to Jamie Lee Curtis like I finally get what it's about. She said right I Was I watch I was like on that what is it don't pay for the whole seat cuz you only need the edge

I was on the edge of the seat. I didn't know what was going on for the two hours. And then I saw it and I went upstairs and I kind of had this face. So everybody I'm just making the like stupefied. was like, Sarah's like, how was it? go, it was a lot. There was a lot and there was a lot. And then I told her, I got to read a few reviews. I got to look at some Wikipedia and I do that.

to get perspective and then you and I will always like see the movie and then text or chat for five seconds. And just as I had a little distance from it, really, I'm like, I fucking like that. It just took me a second to process, know, to use.

Matt Loehrer (58:01)
Well, and I saw it for the first

time a year ago or more. So, I mean, it's been percolating my brain the whole time.

Tug McTighe (58:04)
Right, right, right.

And I gotta tell ya,

I love the Chinese only casting. If it were white, just awful. It just doesn't work. And again, why would you do that when you've got Michelle and Ki-Hoo? Let them do it. They were fucking, well, they both won Oscars. You know, like, so I love that it was made differently than a lot of these movies.

A lot of these movies would have been bullied by the studio and would have tanked and not been right and way to go a 24 Way to go Daniels. Yeah, you know, I just way to go

Matt Loehrer (58:47)
I agree. I'm trying to think of an alternate universe where this has like Mark Wahlberg in it. I don't know who's who's in this Scarlett Johansson or like Gwyneth Paltrow. There's just a level of. There's so much. Complexity in these relationships that I don't know. I'm not saying you wouldn't have it with white people, I'm just saying that cultural.

Tug McTighe (58:53)
Right, kill me, right, kill me now, like.

Yeah, like, I don't want that.

I mean, it just wouldn't be...

Matt Loehrer (59:12)
that cultural

understanding wouldn't be there. It would be a missed opportunity. And it wouldn't be as good a movie.

Tug McTighe (59:16)
Yeah, if it's me and my mom

and my brothers and it's set in Overland Park fucking Kansas, no one cares. It doesn't have the, thank you Matt for caring, but it doesn't have the gravitas and it doesn't have the And if you write that story, then cast that story, the weight needs to be cast, full stop.

Matt Loehrer (59:21)
Well, I...

Yeah,

that's just a different movie. I loved it. Extremely rewatchable for me. I bought it. It was one of these and I'm finding this happens more and more. Whatever movie we're doing happens to be something that I can't find in any of the streaming channels that I'm buying. So it's like, I could rent it for 24 hours for five bucks or I could buy the Blu-ray and, you know, a digital version for 10. So, of course, I'm to do that, especially with this movie.

Tug McTighe (59:58)
For 10 bucks, literally. Yeah, right.

Matt Loehrer (1:00:01)
I know

some people will hate it. I love my dad, but I'm sure he would hate this movie. It takes, as you said, work to get to the place where I start from. Like I'm like Dune. like, I get that. Yes, there's a universal super being. That's fine. I get the water of life. That's fine. If I don't get it, we'll figure it out. So the same thing here. If you told me, if you came to me and said, hey, there's this really good movie about

a Chinese American. She's trying to reconcile with her family and they own a laundromat. I'd be like. Yeah, I'm probably not going to watch that. And then if you said, and it also has martial arts and universe jumping and I'm like, why did you not start with that? Of course, I'm going to watch it. You're very the lead. So I was gratified. It won so many awards and was recognized by so many people as being good. It's 100 percent.

Tug McTighe (1:00:33)
No thanks.

You're buried the lead, you dumbass!

Me too.

Matt Loehrer (1:00:48)
a product of the age right now. Like this is self-taught people with an idea and a computer and software and a good story can express a vision and create it and come to fruition so fully and so correctly. You know what I mean? This is what they dreamed about.

Tug McTighe (1:00:51)
Yes.

You can just go to the

Apple Store and buy everything you need at the Apple Store.

Matt Loehrer (1:01:15)
We've talked about, and I feel like it might have been Carpenter who said, oh, I wanted to do all this stuff and this is all I could do with the budget I had and the time I had. I mean, I don't feel like these guys left anything on the table. I don't feel like there's anything about this movie that's like, oh, it would have been 10 % better if they'd only done this.

Tug McTighe (1:01:23)
Mm-hmm.

No.

No,

no, if you didn't know it was them doing it on a Macbook, you would think ILM did it, or Weta.

Matt Loehrer (1:01:41)
Yeah. And it all comes from story. I thought it was great story. So this one for the fences hit a Homer.

Tug McTighe (1:01:45)
It all comes from story. And again, I do want to harp

on this. Story and casting. If you cast the right people in a commercial, in an industrial video, in a movie, when you cast the right people, the whole thing is 25 % better immediately. And you cast the wrong people and it falls in the shitter. It really does.

Matt Loehrer (1:02:01)
I agree.

And I would also say there's

there's a movie like this with Glenn Powell in another universe and give me an actress. I don't know somebody Dallas Bryce Howard. And it's a sci fi movie. Because that's all it can be. It can't be this. It can't be this movie. So I loved it. I thought it was fantastic.

Tug McTighe (1:02:18)
Correct.

That's correct. So, so you know what that,

you know what that is? because of the choices that they made.

This is the universe that this movie exists in. And it's the only version of that exact movie in this universe because of the choices they made. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (1:02:37)
Yeah, and this is the one I want to see the the

the other one the sci-fi one that doesn't have any of these nuanced layers and backstory and and bigger issues than time jumping because anybody can time jump but not everybody can navigate these difficult relationships. I don't want to see that movie. I don't think it'd be very good. I probably who am I kidding? I probably see it, but I wouldn't I wouldn't love it.

Tug McTighe (1:02:59)
You would, but

it wouldn't have affected you like this has. This is why we watch movies. It's why we're making a dumb podcast, to get to this kind of a thing.

Matt Loehrer (1:03:04)
Absolutely. All right, so.

Yeah, no kidding.

Well, I can't wait to see what 824 and Daniels do next and whoever they get to produce, because this is for me. This is all coming together and they're putting out good stuff.

Tug McTighe (1:03:12)
Always. Yeah.

Yeah, this is sort of a Matt

fastball down the middle of this kind of movie. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (1:03:22)
Yeah, they're swinging for the fences.

They've got a niche that says, this is the stuff we do, and the stuff they're doing is stuff I love, so let's do more. So, Tug, dumb question, but CineHit? CineHit, Yeah, I'll probably watch it on the plane in a couple hours. I'll watch it again. I find new stuff every time. All right.

Tug McTighe (1:03:32)
That's it. Check the box. Yep.

Dad's just watching it on the plane.

That's right. Yeah, I

don't know if I said it, but I definitely think this will be a regular, you can watch this one every couple years at the very least. You pop it in or, everything's on. Let me see what scene it is. Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful.

Matt Loehrer (1:03:56)
Well, and it's visually so beautiful. know, the effects are great. There are so many,

there's a scene where it zips through like her face in, yeah, they just, you know, very kind of Gen Z style, because they don't have the tension spans, but it's all these different treatments to just the same visual image. And it's just beautiful.

Tug McTighe (1:04:05)
Let's go to the movie.

Yeah, it's.

Hey, and in that

Jackie Chan way where he uses the stuff in the room to fight with, they do that a lot in this, is great, including, like you said, Jenny Slade is fighting with her little Pomeranian. That's like a mace. ⁓

Matt Loehrer (1:04:33)
that was, that poor dog.

and Joju Pataki at one point is like beating a guy up with phalluses. Remember that? And I was like, they could have just made those nunchucks, but would not have the same thing.

Tug McTighe (1:04:41)
Yeah, yeah, yes.

No dildos. Nope, nope.

All right, well thank you again everyone for listening to Cinema Mrs. If you like what we're doing here, please help us grow the show by subscribing, sharing some episodes or writing a review. It really does help and even better tell somebody that you think might like it to give us a try and tell someone that you like it. That's the best way.

Matt Loehrer (1:05:07)
Yeah, and we do want to hear from you. You can follow and comment on socials, Instagram. We I do a pretty good job of staying on top of that. am not on Twitter anymore, so I think it's a cesspool. Yeah, it's garbage, but.

Tug McTighe (1:05:15)
Yes you do.

You're right, it shouldn't be there. We're gonna do TikTok,

we're gonna, during this next little moment before season three, which we'll talk about in a sec, I'm gonna open up a Cinemas as TikTok and just start TikToking. So we'll be sure to share that.

Matt Loehrer (1:05:32)
Yeah, so we do want to hear from you

and drop us a line like email us just for kick cinemases at gmail.com. How can we make the show better? What do you like? Would you not like we do actually listen to people? Because we are, as we've said many times to each other, like Labrador retrievers. ⁓ We just want we just want to make people happy.

Tug McTighe (1:05:48)
We just wanna do what you want us to do.

We want to chase the stick.

Matt Loehrer (1:05:54)
Absolutely. Alright, what's the next cinemass buddy? And what do we think we know?

Tug McTighe (1:05:55)
Alright.

Alright, we made a big list when

we met and had beers the other day. a confirm, I believe you haven't seen this movie either. But our first movie of season three is going to be another long one. And it's all going to be our first movie by Christopher Nolan. We are taking on the World War II story of the creation of the Atomic Palm. That's right, everyone. Season three, episode one is Oppenheimer. Yeah, a big juicy one.

Matt Loehrer (1:06:21)
Hmm.

Tug McTighe (1:06:25)
But by all accounts, a terrific film. My son, Sean, is very interested in our conversation about Oppenheimer, which I went the summer, Barbenheimer was out. He and Sarah went and saw it. And I have since watched Barbie, but I never watched Oppenheimer. So again, love Nolan. ⁓ Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the two sides of the same coin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Dreamhouse figures, the Dreamhouse figures prominently.

Matt Loehrer (1:06:40)
But they're like the same story, right? Barbie and Oppenheimer, it's basically... ⁓

Tug McTighe (1:06:50)
in the at a naval base in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Yeah.

Matt Loehrer (1:06:50)
I'm sure. That's

what it is. I think my mom said it was really good, so and so she said it. You know it's true. Yeah, and it's it's not. This does not involve time travel and it's not based on a comic book, so some people like it for sure.

Tug McTighe (1:06:55)
Yeah, people really, and she's very smart.

Right, right, right. So the people that don't like this thing we just watched probably liked Oppenheimer.

Matt Loehrer (1:07:10)
Yeah. All right.

that's Cinemass's season two in the can. I am Matt.

Tug McTighe (1:07:15)
I am Tug, and while this is a wrap, we will see you in a couple weeks for season three.

Matt Loehrer (1:07:21)
Thanks guys.

Tug McTighe (1:07:22)
Bye.