I'm watching the motion picture Everything Everywhere All At Once and just grunting and clapping like an amused baby every time another of the titular Things appears onscreen.
That is to say, "if you could see eight million different versions of yourself that are completely unrecognisable people, what does it mean that you can already find eight million unrecognisable people outside your bedroom window every day?"
This question kind of wants me to see a sf work that pursues it even further, to ask "if your self is so malleable as to be capable of becoming completely different people from one life choice, what does it mean to distinguish "you" from any other person on Earth?"
One other thing I got from this: a major theme here is the question "if you could, assuming free will, have studied any possible subject, pursued any occupation, met any possible other person, lived any life, what does it mean to be "you", the person behind your nose right now?"
I guess I'll say that the structure of acts 1 and 2, and the ways act 2 inverts and complicates each character's role pretty seamlessly, and making the central conflict three-sided, is maybe my most satisfying part of the film. It was basically the direction I was hoping for.
The filmmakers talk about this being a story unique to an era of information saturation… but honestly, this is already familiar enough to me that I'm caring more about execution (pretty good) than anything else.