‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ Director Tells His Fans To Chill Out

Boasting a blend of earnest optimism and multidimensional madness, Everything Everywhere All At Once has cultivated a deeply dedicated fanbase who are aggressively defending the film online, to the point where the film’s director felt the need to step in, and tell them to “cool it.”

The drama started on Twitter (where else?), as fans of the film swarmed two New York Times critics who wrote a top ten movies of 2022 list, and dared to leave out Everything Everwhere All At Once. Fans directed personal insults at the critics, calling them “pretentious” and “out of touch,” and scoffing at the other choices on the list.

Everything Everwhere co-director Daniel Kwan tweeted that the algorithm had brought the offending tweets to his attention, and he called out his fans, pointing out that “best of” lists are inherently subjective and always spark arguments. Kwan wrote:

“I know the end of year discourse on film twitter can be toxic af with all of the ‘Best of’ lists that come out, but this really needs to stop. The act of ranking any piece of art is so absurd and should only be seen as an incredibly personal and subjective endeavor.”

“This was an incredible year for movies and there is so much to celebrate, why waste your time on anger?… I know for many, this story and characters mean a lot so any slight towards the film feels like a personal attack, but lashing out does everyone a disservice (and is counteractive to the film’s message). Next time you see something about our film that makes you angry, take a step back, remind yourself why you fell in love with our movie. Those feelings are infinitely more important to you than any list from some critic who has a completely different lived experience from you.”

Kwan ended his thread by writing a tongue-in-cheek template designed to be retweeted at overly enthusiastic fans, which read: “Hi, I’m Dan Kwan, one of the directors of EEAAO. I appreciate your love of the film, but maybe next time you can try to cool it on the aggression. This place is filled w/ shitty discourse, don’t add to it (what would Waymond do?). Don’t feel bad, its tough to keep ur cool here.”

As soon as Kwan tweeted the thread, his “cool it” template was being pasted in response to hyper-enthusiastic fans.

While telling their own fans to stop stanning so hard is quite a dramatic step for a director to take, at least Kwan was practicing the values his movie preached; kindness, empathy and understanding.

Other commentators had fun mocking the fanbase for doing the exact opposite, their unhinged behavior having been a running joke on Twitter for some time.

Positive, affirming film and television starring good-hearted characters that reject cynicism, such as Ted Lasso, Abbott Elementary, Rings of Power and Everything Everywhere, is known as “nicecore.” Nicecore emerged in opposition to the “grimdark” story trends inspired by shows like Game of Thrones, where optimistic characters die cruel, grisly deaths and only the selfish survive.

Nicecore tends to be mocked by more cynical viewers, and has, ironically, become associated with toxic fandom, as fans feel the need to aggressively defend their chosen franchise by hurling insults and swarming critics, in stark contrast to the gentleness of their stories.

As Kwan reminds his fans, film criticism is not “a personal attack on your identity.” It’s just a conversation about movies.