A Multiverse Made by Many Hands: The Innovative ‘Swarm Editing’ Behind ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” is intentionally overwhelming on every level — visually, sonically, and structurally. It combines storylines as varied as an IRS audit, a romance between women with hot dogs for fingers, a nihilistic supervillain’s quest to destroy the universe in response to parental abuse, and some rocks being rocks.

The bombardment of different universes, the seriously silly connections between them, and the compelling action sequences all help the film create a blend of tones and elements that makes The Daniels’ film overwhelming without being exhausting. And thanks to editor Paul Rogers weaving together method and madness, the emotional journey and relationships that are core to Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) never get lost in the narrative cacophony.

“The visual flourishes and the kind of aesthetic experimental stuff that we were doing was the candy that we got to eat. Like, that was the fun stuff we got to do,” Rogers told IndieWire. “The stuff that we banged our heads against the wall was, ‘Are these characters likable? Who are you empathizing with? Can you track the emotional journey that Evelyn’s going on while also tracking this insane supervillain daughter across multiverses?’ And then throw in Jamie Lee Curtis’ character and the love story in another universe between her and Evelyn — it gets to be a lot. And they all held each other up. So if one wasn’t working, the whole movie didn’t work. That was a lot of what we thought about.”