Make the AI Apocalypse Fun

It has been a decade since Gore Verbinski directed a film, and I’m so glad that his return is with the movie Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. A grasp of working throughout a wide range of genres, he’s the right director for Matthew Robinson’s script, which blends comedy, motion, and a sci-fi dystopia into one thing designed for the second we live by.

This time-loop movie opens with The Man From the Future (Sam Rockwell) strolling into Norm’s Diner in Los Angeles. Dressed in a toddler’s backpack, a transparent raincoat coated in tubes and wires, and coated in grime, he enters this dingy diner and declares that the world is about to finish, and with the assistance of some mixture of the folks seated right here, he can save everybody from the approaching horrors. For this mission, he gathers Janet (Zazie Beetz), Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), Mark (Michael Peña), Susan (Juno Temple), Scott (Asim Chaudhry), and Doctor Marc (Stevel Marc), hoping that issues end up in another way than they did the earlier 116 occasions he tried. But if they’re to defeat the cheese puff-eating AI Boy (Artie Wilkinson-Hunt), they must battle monsters past their creativeness. Or perhaps precisely like their creativeness.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die shouldn’t be a delicate movie. Robinson’s script has very sturdy, very unfavourable emotions about AI, and this film is not shy about that. There are moments when it does really feel a bit “kids these days and their phones,” however for probably the most half, it simply exhibits how simply we give up what makes us considering, artistic folks to the convenience and comfort of a digital world.

So a lot of what makes this film work is Rockwell’s completely devoted efficiency. He so totally commits to the function that the movie opens with a 10-minute monologue and exposition dump that ought to by no means work, however in some way does. Balancing that’s the extra staid, however nonetheless intense displaying from Richardson. Where a lot of the different characters are extra archetypal than totally fleshed out, Ingrid is somebody who has a backstory and a cause for wanting to hitch Rockwell’s loopy band of misfits.

The visuals in Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die add to the story. This movie is darkish, however it’s punctuated by shiny, vibrant colours that hold it from feeling heavy. The costumes are unbelievable and provides nice perception into the characters at only a look. And there are some CGI moments that shouldn’t be spoiled, however take the third act someplace I wasn’t anticipating.

We simply watched a Super Bowl the place so many advertisements had been for AI, and a few had been created by AI prompts. I’ll be sincere, my views on AI align very intently with these of the movie. I believe it’s a harmful expertise that grew approach quicker than we had been ready for, and the guardrails in opposition to it are non-existent. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die echoes plenty of these considerations, however with sufficient silliness to make the apocalypse appear a little bit extra entertaining.

Rating: 4/5

Check out my interview with screenwriter Matthew Robinson about Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die!