Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (2026)
Directed by: Gore Verbinski
Premise: A time traveler (Sam Rockwell) from a dystopian future arrives at a diner and recruits a group of strangers to assist him in saving the world.
What Works: Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is a wild ride and the filmmakers keep this story moving apace while also working in a lot of character detail and world building. The film opens with a time traveler arriving at a diner and recruiting a crew of strangers to save the future from an unbound artificial intelligence. The story has just enough exposition to create clarity in mission and direction. As the heroes set on their journey, the story flashes backward in vignettes that establish each character’s backstory but also give clues to what’s happening in the world and leading to the apocalypse. The storytelling structure has high fictional economy and everyone in the movie is distinct but with a grounded look. For almost two decades the sci-fi and fantasy genre has been dominated by superhero movies in which elite heroes save the day. The characters of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die are much more proletarian which fits the movie’s goofy pitch. The cast is led by Sam Rockwell as the time traveler and it’s an excellent use of Rockwell’s fast-talking talents. This movie is very funny in a bizarre, unpredictable, and off the wall style.
What Doesn’t: Time travel movies have an inherently tenuous logic but Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is especially strained. Aspects of this movie come across random and haphazard. The team of heroes is chased by a crew of masked gunmen but who these killers are and how they figure into the bigger picture is unclear. The story is initially set in a recognizably real world, setting our expectations for the action to follow, but by the climax, the filmmakers discard the rules of the story world with some silly and bizarre reveals. The absurdity of the movie is inextricable from the fun of it but the story also feels unmoored from any internal logic. The very end of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is frustrating in the way it refutes the character’s sacrifices. The ending reveals an emptiness about the picture. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die initially seems poised to say something about our current historical trajectory but the end of the film reveals it to be an entertaining trifle.
Bottom Line: Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is a blast. This is Gore Verbinski’s best film since Rango. It’s a messy movie but the unruliness mostly works for it.Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is so fast and so fun that it smooths over the movie’s flaws.
Episode: #1087 (February 15, 2026)