In a world full of contentious principles, thoughts, and beliefs, each and every day, there is always a

possibility that the principles and beliefs we hold onto will be challenged and can be changed indefinitely. It is
intrinsic to the world we live in for it is filled with inherent ideologies and philosophies that human beings choose
to accept, reject, or just ignore. With this being in the natural course of human existence, one can say that there is
no single world or universe in the realm of existence. This idea or belief is the central theme of the film Everything,
Everywhere, All at Once (2022) which I will be discussing in this paper together with another film that I will discuss
afterward.

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once is a fiction movie that tackles the theory that beyond the observable
universe, there are potentially multiple other universes that comprise the entirety of everything that exists as well.
This group of hypothetical universes is called the multiverse and it is the main concept explained in the film
alongside the possibilities of human capacities in the observable multiverse. It is particularly an interesting movie
because behind the drama, comedy, and action that the movie encapsulates, there are certain philosophical
concepts applied in the movie which I found worthwhile to discuss. At the beginning of the movie, Evelyn, the
protagonist, believes that nothing in her life is successful. In almost every decision that she made, she feels regret
and currently just doing every piece of her routine all at once to keep her stress together. But her life peaked when
she had an uncanny discovery at an IRS meeting that she can link her consciousness to another version of herself in
an alternate universe in which she can consequently access all their emotions, skills, and memories. At that turn of
events, she met Jobu Tupaki, the antagonist and a version of her daughter, Joy, who has seen, felt, and
experienced everything in every version of herself in the multiverse. With this supernatural ability, everything in
this realm became meaningless to her and became completely nihilistic. The concept of nihilism is one
overwhelming theme that I have observed in the film. Hypothetically, having seen, felt, and experienced
everything in life and knowing that we will always die at the end, can make us insane or worse. We can be insane
in the sense that we contain a magnitude of infinite events, emotions, pains, and traumas but all of it will be
worthless because, in the end, we know we are all just going to die and I can only imagine that for Jobu Tupaki. It is
the specific reason why Jobu Tupaki believes in nothing, and I can clearly see the sense of her building the
“everything bagel” as a means to escape, to see what will happen next, and to discover herself in a new realm. I
may have not experienced every bit there is that life has to offer but sometimes, I have existential epiphanies that
make me want to accept nihilism because I stress myself a lot over a lot of things that most of them are the ones
that I cannot even control, and it makes me drained and empty that sometimes I quickly entertain the thought or
saying, “Why bother to be the best if you are just going to die?”. I am not nihilistic but I just can see the sense of
why Jobu is feeling that way, especially since she already experienced everything in this realm. After all, in the
grand scheme of things, we are just a speck of dust or a drop of water that has no matter in the universe. The
world does not stop and the universe would not vanish if we die or if we are born, everything is just the way they
are whether we are alive or not. This may be absurd to say this but we are just like puppets placed in a universe or
world that is independent of us just to play along with the course of life: be born, eat, sleep, study, work, play,
party, and then die. We are just like dolls in a doll house wherein whether there are dolls or none, that doll house
is still a doll house and those dolls did not affect the doll house in any sort of way just like our relationship with the
universe. At one point in time, we were told to believe that life has full of meaning and then there is Nietzsche
whose philosophical school of thought is that objectively and inherently, life is nothing at the totality of existence.

However, on the other side of things, nihilism is not the only concept that I associated with most in the
film. I think the greatest lesson that the film wants us to imbibe is enclosed in this concept, which is the concept of
absurdism. Towards the end of the film, Jobu Tupaki chose not to go inside the “everything bagel” when Evelyn
convinced her not to. Evelyn has also seen what Jobu Tupaki is seeing or experiencing and she almost resorts to
going inside the “everything bagel” as well not until she realized that submitting oneself in a singularity is not the
solution to deal with this crisis but to just keep living the moment, keep being with our loved ones, and keep
pushing through even if life itself is meaningless. For Evelyn, it is being with her family loving and cherishing them
for the rest of her life is the most important thing to her at that point. Evelyn herself is not happy with her life as
she regrets almost every decision that she made, and she regrets those even more when she gained access to the
lives of her other versions. That is also the reason why she was believed as the only “Evelyn” to defeat Jobu Tupaki
as she is the most unhappy and unaccomplished one thus, Alpha Waymond believes that she is the most driven
Evelyn to defeat Jobu Tupaki because of her need to prove that she can accomplish something, if not everything.
But towards the end, she chose an alternative way to deal with Jobu and that is when she realized that we do not
need to accept the whole pessimistic point of nihilism. This sudden realization made by Evelyn came from an
absurdist point of view in the sense that Evelyn just embraced the absurdity of life, that there is no “true meaning”
of life but it does not conclude that we cannot create a belief structure that can impair the such strong idea that
there is absolutely no inherent meaning of life. It was a radiating thought from Evelyn considering that she is
already on the verge of her life yet she still found beauty and happiness in the absurdity of everything and that is
something that I want to imbibe for myself. As I said earlier, I am not nihilistic, I believe in a supreme being, and I
believe in God, but just so I can grasp the essence of absurdism, I would remove religion from the equation for the
meantime in this whole analysis. If hypothetically I do not believe in God and there is no God, I would believe that
there is no objective meaning of life, but I cannot be fully pessimistic about it. In fact, it would seem like I started
off as a nihilist, floats towards being an existentialist, and ends with the clarity of being an absurdist. I somehow
considered existentialism because humans are rational beings which means that we can create our own “true
meaning” of life within our reference frame even if it has the same premise as nihilism and absurdism, but I
disregarded it too soon because I did not want to disregard the fact that there is still no cosmic objective meaning.
Life has no objective meaning and it is absurd for life to be that way however, instead of resorting to suicide just
like what a nihilist would do to deal with this meaningless life, we can live subjectively by pretending to have a
“true meaning” that generates joy in life. I am not saying that we should trick or fool ourselves into thinking that
there is really a true meaning but embrace the absurd condition by maintaining a distance between the created
meaning and the knowledge of the absurd. I know that no matter what I do in life, I am still going to die with no
impact on the cosmic reality and that is my destiny as well as everyone’s, but the question is, how would I spend
the limited life I have? Would I just choose to end it or experience everything that life has to offer? Ending it is not
my solution because I would rather live a subjectively meaningful and fulfilling life just like Evelyn and Jobu/Joy
decided to deal with the absurdity of life.

Moving on to the next film, I think it is probably the most impactful film I have ever seen and this movie is
titled Fight Club (1999). There are many themes that this movie has tapped that even after 23 years, remain
relevant to society. It is one of the influential movies that made viewers rethink the authenticity of everything and I
am not an exception. The story of the film revolves around the relationship between the two main characters
which are The Narrator (protagonist) and Tyler Durden (antagonist) including the belief structure that they share in
a conformist living environment they belong with. Fight Club is basically a representation of Nietzsche’s nihilistic
philosophies in one frame and this is most evident in Tyler’s character, which is also the split personality of The
Narrator. Tyler is a character in the film depicted as the exact opposite of The Narrator. He is an anti-consumerist,
a non-conformist, and a fearless individual who does not believe in any supreme being such as God, making him
reject any meaning or purpose that the people in this world blindly constructed. With such ideologies, it makes him
a nihilistic being, and his solution to this lack of inherent purpose of life is becoming who we really are. This is what
he wants to instill in The Narrator throughout the film and I think this process of becoming who we really are is
greatly symbolized by their creation of a fight club. The fight club that they created is not about fighting with the
concept of winning and losing, it is about inflicting pain on ourselves that are out of our comfort zone. If we get out
of our comfort zone by experiencing near-death pain, what worse thing could still be out there? I think this is the
point of Tyler and The Narrator building a fight club, which is to train oneself to become brave enough to challenge
the status quo and this idea credits to Tyler. Throughout the film, the dynamic between the two is negatively
correlated. One depicts superiority and the other one is inferiority. This characteristic can be analyzed using
Nietzsche’s philosophy of master morality and slave morality as a framework. As claimed by Nietzsche, the noble
type of men are principled and perceive themselves as a determining value of what is good and bad. They do not
need anyone’s approval in whatever standard they set for themselves as they are the standard of themselves. They
judge what is good and harmful for themselves wherein they value something for as long as it is helpful for them
being strong-willed men. This is the character that Tyler Durden embodies, he has the full recognition of himself
being the measure of all things and it became problematic once he had a slave which was The Narrator. Slave
morality is a response to master morality because conversely, slave morality characterizes itself as the oppressed
and it originates from weakness thus, they always know that there is someone higher than them. Unlike master
morality, slave morality weighs acts of good and evil not by its consequence but by intention which is why in most
instances in the film wherein Tyler would threaten innocent individuals, perform terroristic acts, and do
impulsively dangerous activities, the clear image of hesitation and forceful submission can always be seen on the
face of The Narrator. Between the two main characters, Tyler has always had a superiority complex in which he
would repugnantly judge people being consumerist and conformist and preach to the members of the fight club
and to The Narrator the inauthenticity of everything, which is why he challenges them to do something brave, to
be brave, and to become masters of their own selves. Over the course of this analysis, from discussing nihilism to
master/slave morality, it will all boil down to Nietzsche’s concept of ubermensch. As defined by Nietzsche,
ubermensch can be achieved if we take responsibility of our actions and values and attempt to surpass our old
selves by bravely taking risks. This is what Tyler has been entirely preaching to The Narrator while philosophically
evaluating his passive and pathetic lifestyle (denotes master morality). Fight Club is a timeless film that as time
passes by, becomes more applicable to the society we live in because of the philosophies that it inherits. I agree
with Tyler on some points but I do not agree with his whole framework. It is true for me that we should not let
things that we consume own us but I am not at the extremity of it wherein I would not consume anything at all. If I
would apply to be an absurdist again hypothetically, I am on good terms with Tyler being an anti-consumerist
because in the end, none of these things matter, but at the same time, not consuming anything would be
contradicting for me being an absurdist because I still want to live my life based on my own terms. I like to eat
delicious foods, buy useful things, and wear good fashion but I always need to draw a line for me not to be owned
by these things, because, in the end, it would not matter, I will still die and just leave all these things behind. It is
also worth noting the characteristic of Tyler being a nonconformist, especially in today’s setting where almost
every member of society is expecting everyone to behave based on invented societal constructs. This trait of Tyler
is something that I want myself and everyone to inherit but not his being an extremist. I believe it is good for the
society if everyone would just let go of the pressure to conform to invented societal norms such as having a house
and car at the age of something which the society indicates as success and becoming a doctor or lawyer or any
other profession that the society denotes as a respectable job. I agree with how Tyler wants everyone to eradicate
distractions in becoming who we really are, but it is extreme to be an anarchist and resort to destruction and
violence just to force that ideology on everyone.

Overall, both films are eye-openers to reality and inspire people to converse intelligently with
philosophers and think deeply about existence. They both share nihilism as one of their themes, but they have
distinctions in terms of emphasis on the concept. In Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, the emphasis on nihilism
is centralized on the nothingness of life itself in the grand scheme of things while in Fight Club, the emphasis is
centralized on how to find a solution to this nothingness. They both exhibit a great representation of concepts that
remain contentious even up to this point, but I think I was able to converse more with Everything, Everywhere, All
at Once because it made me comprehend the main concept of nihilism and absurdism which became easy for me
to converse with Fight Club. On the other hand, Fight Club made me think critically about the various information
the media wants to present, which refers to most of the concepts that Tyler talks about. It made me selective
about the thoughts and concepts that I want to dwell on because if not, I may put myself in a delicate position.
Both films are great to watch if we want to attain some sort of personal metamorphosis, but in my experience,
these movies changed nothing in my views about existence. It was very interesting to me to perceive things using
an absurdist lens but upon reflecting, I still and will always believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-present
God. I always believe that there is a God who orchestrated everything in this realm and that everything has a
purpose behind the preciseness of the universe. It may be a subjective way of perceiving things, but some things
are just beyond reason. Both films are substantial resources to get a grasp of the meaning of life in a creative and
entertaining way, however, we should not just absorb everything that these movies present us and apply to our
lives. As I said, the world is full of contentious principles and beliefs, which is why we must keep solidifying our
belief structure yet be open to improvements when we have the opportunity to do so.