AI is obviously an evil technology designed to rob us of critical thinking skills and encourage the enshitifcation of the current online zeitgeist. It’s something we can all agree on! And yet, it’s so hard to come across art that gets to the heart of what the real problem is. Something that rings true, looks good, is smart and insightful, and doesn’t feel like an old man screaming at the sky, desperate for someone to believe him. Many of these projects include images of gaunt teens, wandering aimlessly, staring at their phone as the endless scroll lures them down a dark path. Nefarious tales of young men lost to online gaming worlds where they are bigger and stronger and better only to let their physical bodies rot. Or stories of young women lost, staring jealously at the photo shopped models they so desire to be. These stories often wind up feeling broad, unoriginal, and grating, even if they are things that I agree with!

It’s unfortunate that every one of those warnings ring so true, and yet when seen on screen, or read in a book, they feel more obnoxious than they do omniscient. Black Mirror hasn’t been able to stick the landing in years, The Twilight Zone lacks the vocabularly for the tech nightmares that we have wrought, and now we have Gore Verbinski’s post apocalyptic sci-fi action picture Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die that’s even more heavy handed than the former, and less artful than the latter. One of the main issues at the heart of the film are a determination to avoid distinct politics; to put the onus of the world we live in on the users rather than the tech companies that churn these horrors out. Obviously blame can be placed somewhat at the feet of the general populace, but it’s hard to take a movie seriously when it ignores the techie ghouls that used to work out of garages (that now work out of Hawaiian bunkers) ignoring the warning signs of the monsters they’re creating. The film seems to want to be a warning shot, but also enables the very sinners that it rallies against.

There is certainly fun to be had in Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. Sam Rockwell brings a swagger we haven’t seen in a Verbinski film since Jack Sparrow. He is the centerpice, a man from the future (his full character name is Man From the Future) sent back again and again to a diner in downtown Los Angeles to put together the exact combination of random citizens to destroy the AI before it destroys humanity. Alongside him are Ingrid, a children’s party princess (Haley Lu Richardson), married high school teachers Mark (Micahel Peña) and Janet (Zazie Beetz), and grieving mother Susan (Juno Temple). Each character gets their own flashback, a story that portends the grim truth about the society we inhabit. While the AI hasn’t destroyed us yet, it is activley leeching off of us in ways we don’t even realize. These vignettes serve as stand alone short films in a Twilight Zone manner, albeit considerably broader than even the Jordan Peele version of the program.

So much of this is something I should be fully in the bag for to the point that I’m frustrated with myself. But it has to be said the lack of subtlety is more than felt throughout the film. From a student being unable and unwilling to read Anna Karenina because it’s “busted”, to a manifestation of CGI slop being created because of a “bad prompt” it often feels like Director Verbinski took the first pitch at almost every turn. Perhaps it’s the evangelizing that’s the primary issue. Maybe the way to lead people out of the darkness of AI slop, social media, and the other torrents of useless tech garbage the incels of Silicon Valley want to shove down our throats is to simply ignore it. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning was after all, about taking down an AI entity, and that movie fully ripped. It was centered around being present in the real world, about moving through physical space, using your body to defy the world that big tech wants us trapped inside of. That story centers itself outside of tech, whereas this one centers itself within the belly of the beast.

But even after picking all my nits it’s good to see an original sci-fi script at the box office. Rockwell and Richardson epecially give two worthy performances. It’s got action, time travel, cautionary tales, humor, and is trying to get that AI bubble to pop just a little bit sooner, so even when it feels like it’s so oversweet with zealousness it could rot your teeth, it does deserve some amount of respect. And while the movie’s runtime overstays its welcome a little, there are occasional moments that make me hearken back to a time when we would get enough original sci-fi works to fill a decade of movie going, and this brings us closer to that dream than further away.

3/5