Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die Overview

This evaluate relies on a screening which passed off on the 2025 Fantastic Fest Film Festival. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die will obtain a theatrical launch within the United States on January 30, 2026.

The Terminator franchise actually had us believing the AI apocalypse could be much more fascinating than it in all probability might be; there aren’t Skynet bots beginning cyberwars, simply brain-rotten social media algorithms that repress our crucial pondering expertise. Gore Verbinski’s Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is a way more lifelike tackle AI’s apocalyptic implications, albeit through a zany journey involving time vacationers and mystical creatures. Matthew Robinson’s outside-the-box science fiction screenplay is a complete lot of enjoyable, even contemplating its bleak commentary on synthetic intelligence; nevertheless, what it so saliently says about our present society’s expertise fixation ought to chill you to the bone.

Sam Rockwell is unbelievable because the movie’s bonkers lead, both a conspiracy crackpot dressed like a junkyard astronaut or a hero despatched from the long run. His mission is easy: to put in security programming into a synthetic intelligence mannequin presently being constructed by a 9-year-old genius. To achieve this, he should recruit a random assortment of strangers consuming inside a Norm’s Diner in Los Angeles to develop into his superteam…however he does not know exactly who. He’s endured 117 failed makes an attempt, every time with a distinct configuration of patrons. Hopefully, the roster of a techno-allergic princess (Haley Lu Richardson), a heartbroken mom who misplaced her son to gun violence (Juno Temple), and two lecturers who’re being hunted by their college students (Michael Peña and Zazie Beetz) can lastly save our future Earth.

There’s a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy high quality about Rockwell’s efficiency, enjoying an exhausted and considerably perturbed group chief caught in his personal Groundhog Day time loop. He’s effortlessly charming and instantly grabs our consideration when bursting into the diner. There’s an enthralling bluntness as he tries to persuade Boy Scout leaders and frat boys to hitch his journey whereas recounting failed makes an attempt the place diners have perished (hilariously calling one man as ineffective as an albatross). It’s the proper function for Rockwell, permitting him to be assured, snarky, and gleefully unhinged with a smile. He’s both civilization’s savior wrapped in plastic sheets and rubber tubs, or essentially the most convincing, unkempt vagrant this aspect of Skid Row, and that looming query helps maintain us on edge.

However, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is not a linear story. We reduce to vignettes that reveal the backstory of every major character accompanying Rockwell, which periodically stunts momentum and turns into the movie’s greatest downside. Switching between pre-diner and post-diner timelines may be daunting, however that is additionally the place Robinson’s script ranges its darkest commentaries and pummels us within the intestine. Verbinski strives to make Rockwell’s time-hopping weirdo appear to be the unusual outlier in trendy America, when the nation has already devolved right into a wi-fi-powered jail. Humans have been became content-munching zombies by smartphones and digital actuality headsets, college shootings are as common as espresso breaks, and the American authorities and Silicon Valley billionaires alike have discovered methods to revenue off all of it whereas we’re all glued to screens. It’s so immeasurably darkish, however it represents the closest simulation of a plausible AI apocalypse that we have seen.

Verbinski’s course and Robinson’s phrases are so painfully direct, but in addition method the entire AI debate from a priceless angle; AI is not simply inevitable, it is right here. Rockwell is not making an attempt to blow a small baby and his supercomputer to smithereens, he is simply making an attempt to implement correct rules. For as peculiar and grandiose as Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die can develop into, it is talking to the core of rational AI utilization with each urgency and tact. Despite Rockwell’s look being that of the particular person in Times Square with an “The End Is Nigh” signal, Verbinski’s movie is hardly the ramblings of a lunatic. It’s empathetic sufficient to induce a greater tomorrow, whereas nonetheless leveling ample servings of devastation and paranoia in regards to the world because it exists at the moment.

That stated, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is entertaining in its AI satires. Peña and Beetz dare interrupt their college students’ screentime and are pressured to make use of do-it-yourself Mars Attacks! “guns” to “brick” units. Temple falls down a rabbit gap of despair and finds herself in an Apple Store-like facility that “helps” dad and mom of faculty capturing victims (an agonizing farce that works too properly). Then there’s Richardson, the youngsters’s social gathering host who will get nosebleeds round any type of expertise. It’s all so delightfully weird whereas making simply digestible factors, all fashioned across the false promise of AI-driven kingdoms that do their greatest to supply us “perfection.” Yet, it is all simply barely askew lies based mostly on “shitty prompts,” because the group finds out when ultimately combating off waves of AI-generated enemies, the biggest of which is a visible showstopper.

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