It's not every awards season that we get an Oscars Best Picture frontrunner that has a true, unabashed sense of goodwill about it. There've been the odd few, like Moonlight's iconic surprise win in 2017 and Parasite's victory being the last good thing the world experienced in 2020, but they're few and far between (the less said about Green Book's win in 2019 the better). But now, as we edge close to the big day, it looks like the path towards another punch-the-air moment is narrowing in the shape of an almost inevitable Everything Everywhere All At Once sweep.
The sensory overload of a film about a Chinese immigrant (Michelle Yeoh) who gets swept up in a multiversal action-adventure caper to save life as we know it swept the board at the SAG Awards, hotly considered one of the actual best indications of who and what will nab Oscar glory. Michelle Yeoh and co-star Ke Huy Quan made history as the first Asian actors to take home acting gongs at the (Yeoh for Lead Actress, Quan for Best Supporting Actor), while Jamie Lee Curtis nabbed Best Supporting Actress. As the cherry on top, the film then took home the top award of the night, Outstanding Performance by a Cast, breaking the record for most wins for a single film at the ceremony.
The actors' guild awards come hot on the heels of the director and producers' guild awards, where Everything Everywhere All At Once also triumphed. In the history of the Oscars, only one film that has nabbed all three honours hasn't gone to win Best Picture and that was Apollo 13 in 1995.
Unless the Oscars 2023 decide to shift gears dramatically and pull the wool over our eyes with a surprise underdog win (which they did to great effect in 2016 with Spotlight and less great effect in 2006 with Crash's yikes victory over Brokeback Mountain), Everything Everywhere All At Once looks like a clear lock. Its victory would not only make history as a film with a predominantly Asian cast for an award show not necessarily heralded for its historic handling of diversity, but it would be a win for weirdo-bonkers films everywhere.
Watch the trailer for Oscars 2023 frontrunner Everything Everywhere All At Once
Its concept alone is revolutionary, a massive-budget superhero-scale epic based on zero existing IP. It also gives due screentime to legends like Yeoh and James Hong, one of the most prolific actors in history, who've been staples of the silver screen but never given the dues earned. It also, crucially, takes you on a whistle-stop tour of some of the most insane set pieces you've ever seen.
To name but a few, there's a fight scene initiated by a butt plug, some hand-to-hand combat that quickly morphs into dildo-to-dildo combat, a tender pastiche of romance between Yeoh and co-star Jamie Lee Curtis where they have flaccid hotdogs for fingers and one of the most emotionally affecting portrayals of a fractured mother-daughter relationship being mended set against a purely static image of two rocks. It's everything Hollywood has struggled to put its weight behind in recent decades, favouring A-list stars and regurgitated IP, and everything the Oscars has failed to champion in its oft-narrow view of what's prestige.
The Oscars has never quite decided where it wants to sit within the swirl of awards season discourse, as an award show feeding off the vibe of its preceding ceremonies or as a purely standalone arbiter in what is the official best of the year. Though Everything Everywhere All At Once's fairytale run this season more or less makes the decision for it, the Oscars would be good to make sure they don't try to be a contrarian for the sake of it. We undeniably need more diverse stories with depth being told on screen, but we also need more films doing the work to be absolutely, unequivocally, stark raving mad and Everything Everywhere All At Once kills two birds with one dildo.
