The Best Action Scene of 2022 Was the Butt-Plug Fight in ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’

In search of the right, very specific type of martial-arts background and comedic flair, the Daniels turned to the internet and found brothers Andy and Brian Le of Martial Club, self-trained martial-arts fanatics who gained a huge following on YouTube making parody videos. The siblings had a difficult time conceptually grasping the film just from reading the script, but the brothers knew one thing after meeting the Daniels: “They were passionate,” says Brian. “They had heart. They were kind of goofy. We looked at each other and were like… Yo, they are just like us… We should work with them.” 

At the time, Andy and Brian had never worked on a Hollywood set, and the producers paired the talented, albeit green, duo with stunt coordinator Timothy Eulich to choreograph the action. “They brought a very raw energy and passion to the set. If they were happy with their performance, everybody on set knew it,” Eulich says of the Martial Club, whom he described as “amazing encyclopedias of Hong Kong cinema.” The energetic duo spent years teaching themselves martial arts by watching the same classic Hong Kong films that the Daniels referenced in their original pitch deck, including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with Michelle Yeoh. Stephanie Hsu, who plays Evelyn’s daughter Joy and emerges as the film’s antagonist Jobu Tubaki, says “One of the Daniels’ special skills is finding people on the internet who genuinely inspire them outside of name and celebrity.”

The Daniels loved the Le Brothers so much that they wrote the fight scene for them to perform in the film. Their sheer enthusiasm for the opportunity to showcase their love for this specific style of martial arts led them to go above and beyond, initially mapping out a nine-minute version of the butt-plug scene in a previsual. “We pulled out everything in our arsenal,” says Brian. “For us at the time, it was like… oh, this is our first movie and we got a fight scene with Michelle Yeoh? We gotta go in.”

Although this was their first time working with the martial-arts legend, the brothers have been acquainted with her for a long time. “She’s probably known now by American audiences from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, or Crazy Rich Asians. We’ve known her since [1985’s] Yes, Madam,” Brian gushes. “I’ve seen every film she’s done,” Andy adds. “I’ve studied every fight sequence. I know what she can and can’t do. The first day on screen though…” He trails off, getting visibly emotional thinking back to their first day shooting with her. Even two years later, the nerves and joy from that day are still apparent. “It’s like a 180 turnaround you know? We grew up literally freeze-framing her movements on VHS and now we are across from her. It’s such a surreal moment.” said Brian. “It was hard to function because you don’t want to mess up in front of Michelle Yeoh.”

The iconic moment comes when Michelle Yeoh and Andy are jostling for position, and a pantless Brian soars over them in slow motion, gripping his knees to hold his legs in a cannonball position as he lands directly on top of the trophy-turned-sex-toy. When the Daniels initially presented the stunt idea to them, the brothers thought it was a joke. “They were straight faced,” remembers Brian. “Like, ‘Yeah Andy is going to have a cool scene fighting with Michelle and then Brian is just going to jump over and land in the squat position on the floor,’ and we’re just like, ‘Oh dude… they are serious.’”