Can we find originality in our universe?

Last week, Daniel Kwan’s Everything Everywhere All at Once swept up seven Academy Awards. For those who haven’t seen the film, the premise is quite straightforward: Michelle Yeoh’s messianic character, Evelyn Wang, goes from working in a Californian laundromat to fighting the ‘Agent of Chaos’ across every ‘Alphaverse,’ everywhere, all at once. This includes (*skip this sentence to avoid some ridiculous spoilers*): a world where fingers are frankfurters; a place where our protagonist is a pinata; or a reality where Pixar’s Ratatouille is replaced in real life by ‘Raccacoonie.’ It’s good, you should watch it. As Danny Leigh explains in the Financial Times, the ingredients for such success are simple: ‘just make a wildly ambitious, furiously original miscellany of martial arts, existential panic, human connection and miniature pigs’.

Broadly speaking, Danny is correct. But aside from these miniature pigs, does the description of this ‘furiously original’ piece differ from say, ‘Avengers Endgame’ – another film based in a multiverse? Either way, the reality is that film and TV studios have realised that multiverses are an immensely profitable and infinitely pliable form of film. As Joe Russo, co-director of ‘Endgame’ has cautioned, multiverse movies could become merely a ‘money printer’ for studios in Hollywood and elsewhere.

So, on the subject of Everything Everywhere All at Once, a swift ‘versejump’ to the metaverse unveils similar possibilities. Both flexible and familiar, the metaverse quickly emerged as fertile environment for brands to engage and entertain audiences, to encourage interaction and spending on ‘original’ content.

In her article for The New Yorker, Stephanie Burt asks ‘Is the Multiverse where originality goes to die?’ Cynics might ask the same question of brands and the metaverse. Indeed, many brands are using the metaverse to recycle content in a virtual form. But plenty of brands are also finding creative ways to ‘unlock new kinds of storytelling’ – and maybe this is something we crave, both in film and in branding.

Sure, it might seem that finding originality within the confines of the real world is a bigger challenge. But as the Oscars also showed, quality original content is not exclusive to alternate universes. The same can be said in branding.

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