Evelyn Rose is a junior and a reporter for the Fishers Tiger Times. Her views do not necessarily reflect those of the newspaper.
In 2024, Gore Verbinski announced his brand-new film, ‘Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die,’ a science fiction comedy featuring Sam Rockwell. He is a time-traveling agent trying to stop the Artificial Intellegence (AI) revolution with a ragtag group of misfits. They each have their own story of why they want to stop AI.
Verbinski’s last film, ‘Cure for Wellness,’ released in 2016 and ended up being a box-office flop. It lost $14 million with a $40 million budget according to IMDb. This flop led to no studios wanting to work with Verbinski when he came up with a project named ‘Cattywumpus.’ He was behind such classics as ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ and ‘Rango,’ which led to him trying to create a film himself.
When the film started, I realized how fun this movie was because of Rockwell’s ability to move fluidly on the screen, where he always had a stage presence. His performance works because he knows how to deliver dialogue at the right moment, which helps the movie move along.
The first half is a bit of a confusing ride, where we learn each character’s motives. The writers made each character unique in their own way, such as a girl who is allergic to technology and a mother who tried to clone her kid after losing him tragically.
The second half of the film is a complete blast, with satirical jokes about how wacky AI prompts can get, and the film never feels like it is losing steam in the comedy part. I laughed at almost every joke.
The most interesting thing is in the second half; this movie is a celebration of human-made art. The techniques used to make the film were beautiful, such as stop motion for robots instead of using CGI or building practical sets so they could use less VFX work leading to the movie being more visually distinct than any other modern film.
It also had a unique feeling of scale because the extras were real people instead of poorly made 3D models, and the set of the final fight was visually stunning. It gave me hope for the future of cinema because this film proves that real passion will always be better than Darren Aronovsky’s AI show ‘1776’.
An AI could never replicate the feeling the film gave me because it has humanity. This did, however, feel like a goodbye from Verbinski in the same way ‘Songs from a Lost World’ by The Cure is a goodbye where they reflected on their career during the album.
He put his heart into the film and reflected on the beauty of humans working together while telling the audience they can support better content, but until audiences evolve, he is saying au revoir (goodbye until we meet again) to his career.
Overall, I give the film 5/5 stars because it told an original comedy science fiction story, the energy of the film never stops, and it is the perfect final movie for a man like Gore Verbinski.
