GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON'T DIE (2026)

Genre: Sci-fi/Adventure
Director: Gore Verbinski
Cast: Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Asim Chaudhry, Tom Taylor, Juno Temple
Runtime: 2 hr 14 min
Rating: M18 (Coarse Language and Some Violence)
Released By: Shaw Organisation
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 23 April 2026

Synopsis: A dark night. A crowded diner. A man with a detonator bursts in proclaiming to be from the future. This is the 117th time he's returned with the same imperative. Before time runs out, he must recruit a group of distinctly unqualified diner patrons to stop the impending AI apocalypse and save humanity from the perils of social media. The problem? Everything is stacked against them – from skeptical strangers and brain - rotted teen agers, to algorithmic monstrosities beyond their control. But if this unlikely group can pull it off, the world might just turn out okay.... Or not, I dunno!

Movie Review:

Unfortunately for director Gore Verbinski, two bombs in a row – that’s Disney’s ‘The Lone Ranger’ and Regency’s ‘A Cure for Wellness’ – meant that Hollywood would not be prepared to take a gamble on him for a while. This latest therefore marks Verbinski’s return to the director’s chair after a decade long hiatus, and although it has its own peculiar gonzo charm, we fear that it is not quite enough of a knockout to give Verbinski a boost back into the mainstream.

That ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’ doesn’t land as impactfully as it could is both the result of Verbinski’s tendency for length over concision (each of his past few movies have lasted longer than 2 hours), as well as writer Matthew Robinson’s interestingly high-concept but relatively under-developed script. Oh yes, at two-and-a-half hours, it is not fresh, funny or clever enough to sustain its dystopian sci-fi premise about the perils of an artificial super-intelligence that has completely taken over our world because we failed to put on any guardrails during its development.

It will take about one hour in before we are told of Sam Rockwell’s man-from-the-future’s mission. Before the otherwise unnamed man reveals his purpose, all we know is how he bursts into a Norms dinner on La Cienega Boulevard one night saying: “This is not a robbery. I’m from the future and all of this is going to go horribly wrong.” In a tearing hurry, he tells the group of bewildered diners that he needs to put together a team of people to save humanity, and that this is the 117th time he has been in this diner giving this speech.

Among the first to volunteer is single mom Susan (Juno Temple), whose motives will be revealed later on in one of the story’s timeline-rewinding vignettes. Another who wants in is Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), a bedraggled punk dressed in a ratty princess costume whose backstory is another one of these vignettes. And last but not least, there is a pair of disillusioned high-school teachers – Mark (Michael Pena) and Janet (Zazie Beetz) – the former of whom had unwittingly unleashed a mob of students upon them when he had touched the phone of one of his students and thus disrupted the constant stream of short-form Tiktok-like videos that has gotten everyone of them in a trance-like state.

Each of these vignettes is intended as a reflection of today’s modern-day society – cautionary tales, if you will – of what would happen if we simply let technology, social media and AI advance without any form of safeguards on its development, use and impact. Susan’s story in particular will no doubt set off a raw nerve in the US, where it envisions a society in which high-school shootings are so normalised that parents not only resort to cloning their dead children multiple times, but also have little qualms customising their clones just for fun.

These stories turn out to be more intriguing than the mission itself, which meanders through a bunch of encounters including an extended pursuit through a parking garage by apair of gunmen wearing pig masks who had been paid to kill them, a swarm of mind-controlled teens who try to stop the bunch from reaching the house of the 9-year old boy responsible for developing the AGI, and finally the showdown with the AGI itself whose creator turns out to be less than human. Verbinski’s bravado is unmistakable – indeed, the virtuoso never settles for predictable and safe in his creative choices, and often fires on every off-kilter cylinder; what proves less satisfying though is Robinson’s scattershot storytelling, which tries to be ‘everything, everywhere, all at once’. 

That said, for its flaws, there is still sufficient gonzo energy to keep this propulsively chaotic ride going from start to finish. For that, Verbinski has Rockwell to thank, the latter bringing his welcome eccentricity to the role, even though the dialogue lacks the spark to make his role truly pop. It does also have some wise words of advice for the zeitgeist of our times, i.e. AI, especially about how it is prone to offer “constant distractions, memorable characters, challenges and obstacles to overcome, exciting stakes that matter and a satisfying ending.” Life itself is seldom neat, but we wish there was more shape, form and substance to this raggedly plotted adventure. 

Movie Rating:

(Gore Verbinski’s 'Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die' is a wildly imaginative and energetically chaotic AI satire, but its overlong runtime and underdeveloped storytelling blunt the impact of its best ideas)

Review by Gabriel Chong