Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die
Could this be the mainstream SF film of the year?
Jonathan Cowie thinks it might just be….
Reasonably spoiler free review.
There's some shιt that's about to come down.
That I can't prepare you for.
It's gonna try to give you everything you ever wanted.
But in the end, it'll all be a lie!
…Are any of you listening to me?
Last year I raved over Sinners and fortunately I was not the only one in our team and so it made our annual bit of fun top films of the year. This year we are just a couple of months in and we have Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die and it is an SFnal cracker: a comedy adventure that is gritty, a little dark and wrapped up in a solid SFnal conceit. What's not to like?
The premise is straightforward – and not something we are all totally unaware of: we are sleepwalking into a technology dominate future and ceding our humanity to it in the process. Yes, I often remind folk that the machines are taking over but no-one ever listens. Well, perhaps not quite: director Gore Verbinski and screenstory writer Matthew Robinson seem to have gotten the memo.
If the name 'Gore Verbinski' rings a bell then maybe it is because he also directed The Ring (2002), the first threePirates of the Caribbean films (of which Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, 2007, which almost got short-listed for a Hugo but a miscount meant that it was dropped from the short-list – but as of 2026 Wikipedia has not acknowledged that), and The The Lone Ranger (2013). Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is Gore's first feature film he has directed for nine years!
Sam Rockwell bursts in on a fast-food joint (yes, it has to be fast-food) declaring that he is from the future and that he has come to prevent an apocalyptic future where technology has taken over due to our acquiescence of technology that gives us what we want when we want it along with a dopamine hit every time we 'like' or 'heart' something or a post we make is 'smiled' or 'shared' by others. This is a utopia we embrace with open arms, which we tell ourselves is environmentally friendly compared with an analogue approach (despite the rare-earth elements consumed, lack of recyclability, the exponentially increasing energy demand of data stores and rest of the list you all know so well but which the sheep are happy to skate over). He warns the fast-food joints 'diners' that the end begins with engaging with our smartphones but soon becomes full-blown addiction and we enter a world we cannot escape. In the future, we are warned, half the population dies, but the other half are oblivious to this being wrapped up in virtual reality of their own making. Humanity has lost, except that our traveller has come from the future to install safety software into a nascent super artificial general intelligence due to go online a few blocks away. But to install it he needs to get there and help. There is a combination of diners of those present who can do it with him… It is just that he has yet to find the correct combination as this is his 117th attempt to do so, but he is not giving up as humanity's fate is at stake!
Because he is of the future, and because this is his 117th time-travel attempt to recruit the right team, he knows things about the diners present and this is just enough to convince a few of the diners to join him. He quickly weeds some volunteers out as they patently failed on previous attempts, but finally he gets a group together. Now, there only (well, their 'first') problem his how to get away from the police that one of the 'cooks' (apologies to chefs everywhere) has surreptitiously called…
The film is told in a number of acts.
The main story arc follows the traditional three-act story structure but in act two we get three separate recaps of some of the 'volunteer' team members and finally one of the time traveller himself. The three volunteer vignettes each have their own exploration of an SFnal trope (no spoilers sweetie).
Mark (Michael Peña) is a supply teacher and his partner Janet is also a teacher at a school in which the pupils are obsessed with their smartphones… It is inevitable that there will be tears…
Susan (Juno Temple) is a single parent whose son, Darren, is killed in a school shooting and is comforted by a group of other mothers who ask her whether this was her first time? They have a solution for her.
Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson) has an allergy to electronic devices and Wi-Fi and this gives her nosebleeds when she is near such technology. She works as a Disney type princess hosting kids parties.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is the sort of film that I used to enjoy back in the day – the 1970s to '80s – at SF conventions' film programme streams. Back then, many cinemas just had one screen unlike today, and back then here in Brit Cit we only had three television channels, no streaming and so forth, so getting to see films was not nearly as easy to see general-release films early on as it is today. (These days the films I like to see on conventions' film programmes are independent, art house, SF offerings that don't get a general release, are hardly ever on TV and are not usually taken up by the major streamers: thank God for the rise of specialist SF film fests. And hooray for those SF conventions that still know how to curate a programme and have a film stream.) As an independent film with an art house riff, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die also makes a change from the franchise eye-candy offerings we are continually fed. (OK, I admit to the guilty pleasure of enjoying the occasional cinematic slop, but it is really great when something different, and thoughtful comes along as that makes a valued change.)
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die's genesis was a long one in that ideas were kicked around for a couple of TV series but it was thought there was not enough mileage in these. But when Gore Verbinski and Matthew Robinson got the green light they made this offering in under ten months and with a reported budget (modest by today's Hollywood standards) of just US$20 million (£15m).
The film's conclusion is a great one in that there are at least two possible SF worlds being portrayed so there is ambiguity to discuss with your fellow local SF group members over a beer after. As said, no spoilers sweatie. Also as said, what's not to like?
All that remains is for me to wish you good luck and to have fun. Oh, don't die… you only get to do that once…
Jonathan Cowie
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