Talk about underlying themes in sci-fi movies; what on the surface appears to be a time-travelling, dimension-hopping storyline populated by body snatchers is little more than a plot device for a compelling story of the relationships between parents and children, particularly mothers and daughters.

I know I’m a little late to the party reviewing this movie, considering it won a whopping seven Oscars in the 2023 Academy Awards, but I honestly just got the chance to watch it recently. 

At first, I didn’t know what to make of the story, where in the first scenes we see Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan as a seemingly ordinary couple struggling to balance a marriage with business ownership and familial relationships with a daughter and estranged father for Michelle’s character.  Yeoh is facing the struggles of most modern women; her life pulled in multiple directions at once by various demands on her time and emotions. 

Suddenly, though, that changes as another reality version of Quan takes over, warning Yeoh that she’s in danger, and suddenly fighting it out with Jamie Lee Curtis in a scene that could have almost come from a Bruce Lee movie.

It’s later revealed that Yeoh is the original version of herself in a persona that has branched out into infinite dimensions, each with different strengths and weaknesses, and that she is responsible for the creation of the being trying to destroy them all. The heartbreaking revelation of exactly who is the Jobu Tupaki, and her relationship to Yeoh’s character, as well as her response to this, is what makes this movie worthy of Best Picture. 

Yeoh, or Evelyn, is encouraged to stop the Jobu Tupaki at all costs, by her other-version husband and father, but decides that is not acceptable.  Instead she decides to learn to relate to her by becoming more like her and dissuade her from her chosen path of destruction.

In the end, friendship and love are the only tools able of stopping the universe from imploding, as well as preventing a catastrophe in Yeoh’s “real” life.

I would recommend this movie to everyone who hasn’t already seen it; it has everything from sci-fi to kung fu action, as well as romance and family feels.