Everything Everywhere All At Once: The Daniels Told Us How They Design Fight Scenes

The directors of Everything Everywhere All At Once talk about how they design a fight scene and what it was like to work with Michelle Yeoh to make some of the best martial arts fight scenes in recent memory.

In our Everything Everywhere All At Once interview, we talked to Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (better known as the Daniels) about the best fight scenes in movies and what particular movies inspired them. Before we knew it, the conversation quickly turned to Keanu Reeves and The Matrix as well as Jackie Chan. The Daniels were inspired by some of Jackie Chan best fight scenes, like the ladder fight in First Strike.

For the climax of the movie, they talked about how they worked hard to make kindness as exciting as a John Wick fight scene.

Beyond the inspirations for Everything Everywhere All At Once, the Daniels also talked to us about designing the Everything Everywhere All At Once fight scenes. They worked with the Le brothers—the martial artists behind the MartialClub YouTube page—to help choreograph the fights and teach them to Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan. We even feature some Everything Everywhere All At Once behind-the-scenes video showing how the actors trained.

A24 isn’t known for making big-budget movies. But it means that they allow their filmmakers a ton of creative control. In order to say in budget, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert had to lean on the lessons they learned on the sets of their low-budget shorts and music videos to shot some of the best movie fight scenes in recent memory on a $25M budget. But they did it, and the Daniels go in-depth on how exactly they did it.

This video was originally published on CineFix - IGN Movies & TV on June 8, 2022.

Be sure to check out the short films of the Martial Club:
https://www.youtube.com/user/MartialClub

If your looking for an Everything Everywhere All At Once Explained type of video, this isn’t it. But for a review, be sure to check out IGN’s Everything Everywhere All At Once Review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deS4dxRv_ZU

Cinefix’s Top 10 Movie Fight Scenes of All Time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_nML1CNDDA

Kill Bill Vol.1: Where Does Homage End and Originality Begin? | Art of the Scene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XNyA-GLnUk

And for all things A24, be sure to stay tuned to IGN Movies & TV (Cinefix).