AI has been an inevitable enemy in science-fiction for decades now. As it became more and more prevalent in recent years we could all make nervous jokes about Skynet, quietly hoping something or someone would step in and slow it down. And now that it's rearing its awkward head into our everyday life with weird-ass social media profile pics, slightly wrong search results, and somehow worse customer service chatbots than ever before, it’s time to get serious. Or is it?
Before, with film franchises like The Terminator, the AI revolution was treated with apocalyptic dread. But now that it might be real, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (hereafter simply referred to as Good Luck) presents it with apocalyptic humor. AI is inevitable, so why not have a little twisted fun while the world ends?
Just like The Terminator, Good Luck (Gore Verbinski’s first film in nearly a decade) starts with time travel. A crazed Sam Rockwell, dressed in apocalyptic future-chic plastic and electronics, walks into a diner at 10:10 P.M. and tries to start a revolution. He claims to be from the future. A future in which our addiction to our screens has turned the human race into full-on technology addicts unable to take off our VR headsets as we choose a manufactured reality over the actual one. Of course, Rockwell just seems insane, and he pretty much is. According to him, he’s already tried this nearly two hundred times, trying and failing to pick the right combination of unwilling diners to save the world by making it to the house of the child who created the AI program that dooms the world and installing software from the future that will alter it enough to allow humanity to come back to reality.
This isn’t a mission to destroy AI. AI is inevitable, but with the right safeguards the world can continue to exist. None of this sounds very fun on paper, but Rockwell’s future man is fed up after so many attempts, so while he tries to recruit the unbelieving diners he also gets to point out how terrible some of them have been on past missions, telling certain diners how many times they have died in previous attempts. He’s like a video game player at the end of his rope attempting an impossible level.
Rockwell isn’t the only player in this particular video game. Through flashbacks scattered throughout the mission, we learn about his ragtag group of world-savers. There’s Mark (Michael Peña) and Janet (Zazie Beetz), teachers who live in constant fear of their phone-addicted zombie students. Susan (Juno Temple) is a mom who recently lost her son in a school-shooting, which is such a common occurrence that a company has now begun cloning victims (and the shooters), allowing grieving parents to tweak their new children by picking their personality, hobbies, and beliefs. And there’s Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), a birthday party princess who is so allergic to wi-fi and phones that it causes nosebleeds, who recently lost her boyfriend to AI (he left to go to a facility that will take care of his body while he stays plugged into the VR world that he finds better than the real one). There are a few others, but just like in video games, they’re just there to be bodies as the core group advances.
This still doesn’t sound very funny, I know, and the school-shooting element is sure to ruffle plenty of feathers. It’s satirical, but people have a harder time accepting satire when it seems like something that could really happen in our lifetimes. Satire is easier to laugh at when it takes place hundreds of years in the future like Idiocracy. But when a movie acknowledges that school shootings are so commonplace that we don’t even treat them as major events anymore, then suddenly that satire becomes more scary than funny to some.
And that’s the balance that will tip people one way or the other with Good Luck. How funny do you find our current path to dystopia? Beyond the school shooting aspect, many people might not find the humor in the film’s commentary on technology and AI, especially with AI starting to take jobs away (they’re even giving away free tickets to the film to anyone who has lost their job to AI).
Some people, like myself, will find the humor in Matthew Robinson's lively script acceptable and welcome in a genre that is often too serious. Others will either find the film too accurate for comfort or too exaggerated to laugh at. It might be a generational issue, though I can’t stand lumping people into individual generations that all agree on things. I’ll put it this way: if you look around at people, especially younger people, glued to their phones and think the world was better before phones and the internet, then this might be frighteningly on point. Or: if you grew up with social media and phones and everything, this might come across as “old man yells at cloud,” and it could be distractingly alarmist. People like me (millennials, if a generational tag is necessary), who grew up as phones and the internet became more prevalent and adapted along the way, might be able to see the current world with equal parts amusement and fear. And that’s the sweet spot to enjoy this film.
Rockwell is another key to enjoying Good Luck. He keeps the film going even if you don’t find the subject matter comedic. He’s perfect at playing a crazed asshole who seems to be annoyed that he has to save the world. The film is at its best when he’s talking to shit to his reluctant team. Aside from that, the pure chaos of the film is fun if you’re just willing to go with it. Once you accept that insane shit is going to keep happening, it’s a fun ride. It’s a long ride, though. There’s no reason for this to be over two hours long. I complain about this too often, but if a film has a character constantly checking a timer on his wrist, it’s going to make the viewer check the time, too. It doesn’t ruin it, but a film with this tone and pace should keep things as brief as possible, especially when the main character seems to be in such a hurry from the get-go. All of these aspects don’t matter one way or the other, though, depending on your fear of technology.
I think we’re all, young and old, on our screens too much, but I also don’t think it’s the end of the world. Every generation hates advancing technology because it’s just another example of our impending deaths. But death is inevitable, and if AI is going to end the world, that’s probably inevitable, too. So why worry so much? The film’s title says it all. In the film it’s a saying used in the VR world that will eventually end life as we know it. But it works for the real world, too. What can we do but hope for some luck, try to have fun, and put off dying as long as we can?
If that sounds too nihilistic, then Good Luck probably isn’t for you. But if you’re willing to laugh a little at our possible impending doom (because what else can you do) then this overlong, chaotic film can be a good time.
Random Thoughts (SPOILERS)
Since this is the rare movie I had a chance to watch and write about before wide release, I tried to keep my review as spoiler-free as possible. But there’s a lot I want to get into in spoiler-territory, so here goes.
This film is dark, but I think the darkest element is that the whole film takes place in the VR world, meaning no matter what happens, the humans lose. The film doesn’t acknowledge this, though, as the ending seems almost hopeful with Rockwell seemingly having things figured out because of his mom’s allergy to technology. But the film clearly doesn’t take place in reality. Ignoring the time travel, there are the zombie teenagers and the school shooting clones. Okay, maybe this is an alternate reality. But what about the giant centaur cat that pisses glitter? And the impossibly large room the AI-creating kid is in? That shit means everyone is in a video game. And there’s a reason the title of the film comes from the VR game: they’re in the VR game.
When you think about this as a video game film, a lot of it falls into place. Rockwell talks shit to the diners so much because he’s the main character, and they don’t realize that they are NPCs, to use a gamer term. For the record, I believe everyone in the diner is an actual person with a VR headset on somewhere; but, like in life, some people don’t know that they’re unimportant.
“AI’s gonna try and give you everything you ever wanted: constant distraction, memorable characters, challenges and obstacles to overcome, exciting stakes that matter, and a satisfying ending. But in the end, it will all be a lie. And you’ll live in a cage.”
This quote is repeated as Ingrid realizes they didn’t complete the mission. I took it to also mean they’re all in the VR world. Once again, the film makes it seem like there’s still a chance they can beat the AI at the end. But that’s not possible within the VR world. Or maybe it is? The ending really has me torn. I just wish there was an acknowledgement that they are in the VR world, but now they’re looking for a way out of it.
More evidence that they’re in the VR world: the existence of time travel, the clientele of the diner at 10:10 at night (especially the boy scouts), the stuffed animals in the claw game foreshadow future issues (a robot, a rat, etc.), the police response, and the general otherworldliness of it all.
This is not the best movie to watch right after you got your kid a VR headset for Christmas, and he’s pretty obsessed with it. The battery life is shit, though, so I’m sure it’ll all be fine.
Rockwell’s character is fun because he’s equal parts grizzled vet who knows everything and clueless bystander who doesn’t know what’s going on half the time. And Rockwell is so good at both sides.
Rockwell punching the kid really got me. Best surprise kid punch since Due Date.
John Carpenter vibes, mainly during the school segment. The score is an obvious homage, but I also found the zombie-like teenagers to be reminiscent of the homeless in Prince of Darkness.
I bitch about movie length a lot, but in this one it just felt like things dragged on a bit too long near the end. Case in point (thanks to getting a digital screener I could check the time stamps because I’m fucking crazy), when Rockwell checks his timer near the end, it reads 5:20. This happens at 1:42:12, but instead of it reaching zero at 1:47:12, it gets to its final seconds at 1:52:12, and then time slows to a crawl as Ingrid is sucked into the machine to talk to the evil AI boy. By the time she comes out and the clock actually reaches zero, it is 1:57:32. Five minutes takes fifteen minutes in this movie.
By the way, it’s just a nitpick. I had a lot of fun with this one.