Sequels have become an almost inevitable trend for any entertainment franchise achieving commercial success these days, but Michelle Yeoh holds a different perspective when it comes to her latest film, Everything Everywhere All At Once.
During her conversation with Variety, Michelle Yeoh, the Academy Award-winning actress who brought to life the character of Evelyn Wang, a laundromat owner and mother caught up in a multiverse battle with a formidable adversary, opened up about the remarkable success she has achieved with the film. When asked about any potential future plans for the movie, this is what she had to say:
There are mega films that suffer terrible losses, yet they still go and keep doing the same thing. It's the studios thinking that's their comfort zone: these movies, the budgets get bigger and they feel more violence, the more CGI will make it better – but the truth of the matter is it's not. It's really storytelling. In Everything Everywhere All At Once, even though we traveled the multi-verses, the main theme was love.
There's no sequel. You know, it's one of those movies where it's - we would just be doing the same thing. We already fought the biggest enemy, which is sometimes ourselves, within ourselves. And we brought out the message of how we're going to do it, and reminded every one of you is a superhero, because we all inherently have the superpower of love, compassion, and kindness. We don't need a cape to be a superhero. We can do it every day, anytime we choose to. So, no [sequel].
Thankfully, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the creative minds behind the acclaimed A24 film, share Yeoh's standpoint on the development of a sequel. While they playfully entertained the idea of a follow-up film where the parents get radicalized by social media, they swiftly dismissed it as a joke, emphasizing that a sequel was not necessary for the story.
At any rate, the history of sequels to remarkable films has proven that they can turn out to be colossal failures. Case in point, the 1994 action film Speed. The Keanu Reeves film was a massive hit for the studio, raking in over $350 million in box office revenue despite a modest production budget of $37 million, and was lauded by critics and audiences as one of the best films of the year.
However, three years later, the decision to make a sequel proved to be ill-fated when Speed 2: Cruise Control turned into a box-office disaster. The film faced scathing criticism from both audiences and critics, with some labeling it the worst sequel ever made. This instance is not an isolated one, as numerous other films have also fallen victim to Hollywood's obsession with sequels, prequels, spin-offs, and reboots.
With its current status as the most-awarded film in history, the best course of action for the Daniels regarding Everything Everywhere All At Once would be to allow it to achieve a cult following among devoted film enthusiasts and be forever immortalized as one of the greatest films ever made.
