Photosensitivity Warning: The climax of the film includes an extended sequence of flashing that may prove triggering for photosensitive individuals. Take precautions.
Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead … only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon boy: There is no spoon.
Neo: There is no spoon?
Spoon boy: Then you’ll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.– The Matrix (1999)
As a senior in high school, I stepped into Regal Starlight in order to learn the mystery of The Matrix and walked out a changed person. I would take a new person to see the film each weekend for another three weeks, so profoundly had it griped me. Because of this experience, I would go on to study philosophy in undergrad, earning a minor in the subject, which has come in handy in graduate school, as a teacher, and, now, as a film critic. While few films have exploded my mind since as the Wachowski Sisters did then, stories that opt to incorporate and grapple with the notion of truth and reality almost always manage to hook me as they tickle the parts of my brain that enjoy a little Simulation Theory with my fiction. The latest Gore Verbinski (The Cure for Wellness) project, written by Love and Monsters scribe Matthew Robinson, the aptly titled Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, is one such story as it melds comedy, horror, science fiction, and philosophy together into a captivating, adventurous ride that also asks its audience to ponder big questions. Released in theaters in February 2026, Verbinski’s Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is now available on physical formats, bringing with it a brief featurette that offers few answers to any burning questions.
If you’re interested in learning about the film in a spoiler-free context, head over to EoM Founder Douglas Davidson’s initial theatrical release review. Consider yourself warned.
On a night like any other, the random assemblage of Norm’s, a diner in Los Angeles, find their entire evening upended when a man claiming to be from the future (Sam Rockwell) bursts in through the front doors and proceeds to declare that the end of the world is nigh and he’s assembling a team to stop it. Stating that this is his 117th attempt, he pulls together seven skeptical and, frankly, reluctant volunteers to aid him in getting across town on foot in order to halt the total awakening of an artificial intelligence (A.I.) that will lead to total human subjugation. Questions of what’s real and what’s not swirl through their minds, the answers to which none are prepared to fathom.
The following home release review is based on a 4K UHD Blu-ray retail copy provided by Universal Pictures via Allied Vaughn Entertainment. This edition does not include a digital code nor does the edition artwork suggest it should (which doesn’t align with the provided artwork for the home release), so no discussion of the digital edition will be explored. But, again, everything else is on the table, so if you’re still here, it’s time to go on an adventure.
Still here? Alright, I got six words for you: good luck, have fun, don’t die.
It’s. All. Bullshit. From the start of the film, it’s all bullshit— not in a “it’s a movie with a script and actors” obviousness, but in the way that Robinson’s script establishes that the world the audience is diving into, as well as Rockwell’s future man, is nothing but ones and zeroes. As the camera pans downward across a cityscape to show us the diner sign, we also get typical billboards with one prominently placed on the right size of the screen that features an elegant femme-presenting individual drinking a green drink from a triangle-like shaped glass with text that states “Your New Realty. Embrace the Change; Shape the Future.” As we come to learn, the A.I. The Man from the Future is trying to stop has a pyramid for an icon, and the battle he wages is to stop said A.I. from taking over the world and crushing humanity. Meanwhile, as we also come to learn through the film, the A.I. is already everywhere and the task The Man is given doesn’t work in his 117th time around and, from the eye-opening dead rat he plops down at the start of his 118th, it isn’t going to work on any other attempts because he himself has yet to realize that he’s not traveling to the past but is yet another figure caught in the A.I.’s grip. He’s Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), desperate to wake up those The Matrix has confined. Except, he’s completely unaware that he’s jacking in to a computer system design to confuse and control you. It’s properly tragic in a film that’s loaded with tragedy as it delves into notions of tech addiction via dopamine cycles, school shootings, parental grief, big tech’s lousy answers to real problems, and the concept that humanity will almost always go with what’s easiest over what makes sense.
Unlike the battle for attention that overtook humanity with the switch from in-person entertainment to radio to television to portable entertainment systems to mobile phones to all-access everywhere at all times, this A.I., who goes unnamed, offers absolute freedom at the cost of your autonomy. We don’t know what the A.I. gets out of enslaving humanity, out of providing a world of total pleasure and joy for the housed, but we do know that they don’t have humanity’s best interests in mind. So, it takes advantage of humanity’s hubris, ensuring that those plugged in think they are in control while everything around them suffers a growing creep of absurdity until a giant kitten spewing glitter ejaculate doesn’t seem any stranger than parents being offered clones of their murdered kids at a government subsidized price. Why actually solve the problems of school violence when we can offer a tech solution that make both businesses and the government money? Even in the real, non-cinematic world, normalization of the absurd is the first step to getting a populace to accept something and welcome it. No matter how much the likes of Sam Altman might declare the development of technological consciousness, he deliberately forgets that A.I. is a program operating on a program. It’s pulling from data and regurgitating that. It’s not thinking it through, arguing it, verifying validity, or any of many steps researchers, authors, creators, and artists must go through when synthesizing for distribution or (in the uglier, capitalistic sense) consumption. A.I. is a lying machine that offers answers off of prompts, often in defiance of its intended use, resulting in psychotic breaks of its users which have resulted in murder and suicide. To call Robinson’s script a poorly executed episode of Black Mirror speaks more to the absence of timeliness in the arrival of GLHFDD and less the concepts within it when one considers the reality the average consumer faces when it comes to prompt A.I. services and the facsimile of intelligence its propagators push. It’s why The Man is desperate to get people to unplug, even if his desperation is grounded in a sense of personal responsibility and moral failing of his own (which is outrageous because it all started when he was just a kid, but that’s also Bruce Wayne’s story and we let that slide). The mere fact that The Man misses how he keeps teleporting into a system and not backward in time only adds to the tragedy. When one considers that the title of the film is taken from the world of video games as an acknowledgement before gameplay among competitors and that voices jump in each time to tell us the title of the film, this theory starts to feel far more concrete.
However, if my reading is off and The Man knows he’s jumping into a simulation (some dialogue could be read that way), then the film grows even more tragic as that means he’s trying to rescue the idea of humanity and not humanity itself because some of the people in the simulation are merely copies. Perhaps, if a sequel is greenlit, the answers will come.
Until then, the only concrete thing that the home release offers is a five-minute featurette. It’s a mix of on-set and behind-the-scenes footage with the central cast (sitting in chairs individually) sharing their thoughts on the film. Coming off more as a marketing tool than a means to provide insight, it spends time on summarizing the film before diving into the individual characters. They each offer their own interpretations of who they play, with a highlight being Haley Lu Richardson (Columbus; After Yang) telling us that Verbinski described the film as a “psychotic opera.” Then it jumps over to talk about sets and costumes and ends with the cast talking about working with Verbinski. Even though there are some interesting tidbits shared, it’s not particularly deep by any stretch of the imagination, but at least it’s better than nothing.
Unless, of course, you’ve already watched the entire featurette as it was made available online by Briarcliff Entertainment ahead of the theatrical release. In that case, there’s nothing new offered that fans of the film can really sink their teeth into. In lieu of that, be sure to check out EoM Senior Interviewer Thomas Manning’s brief chat with Verbinski on the making of the film.
As a 4K UHD was provided, a bright spot of this is that the majority of the film rests in the 70-80 Mbps bitrate with the occasional rise into 100s during less digital-laden sequences. The press release provided by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment (handling the home distribution for Briarcliff Entertainment) states that the 4K UHD disc is a BD 100 and the Blu-ray is a BD 50, meaning that the 4K UHD disc can hold 100 GB of data, allowing for the 2 hr 14 min film to have as much space as it needs to offer the best picture and sound. There’s no obvious change in the picture when the bitrate changes, but this is good to know merely because there are instances wherein a 4K UHD home edition barely manages to get above the max for a Blu-ray (40 Mbps), thereby making one wonder why even upgrade. There’s impressive depth of color and range (both important in the night or day sequences, whether grounded or absurd in tone). As there are several action set pieces, the sound is immersive with gunfire and explosions robustly delivered; though the highlight is the swirling confrontation between Richardson’s Ingrid and the A.I. that has wind just whipping around us through the 5.1 audio track. And, yes, if you have Dolby Atmos at home, the 4K UHD disc will provide.
I’ll be the first to admit that GLHFDD doesn’t necessarily say anything new about A.I., consumer habits, tech bros, or government that hasn’t been said already. That doesn’t mean that (a) it’s not worth restating as the use of ChatGPT for writing and images has proliferated and normalized globally and (b) it’s not entertaining as hell with depth for days. As a satire, it perhaps goes too far on some elements, which creates a distraction from other portions worthy of attention, but satire pushes things because that’s the only way to get people to sit up and take notice. Most impressively, the film not only still plays on a rewatch, it offers additional surprises that make one want to jump right back in. Perhaps trip 119 will be the one? Doubtful, but one can still hope.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die Special Features:
- The Making of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (5:07)
Available on digital March 10th, 2026.
Available on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD April 21st, 2026.
For more information, head to the official Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die website.
To purchase, head to the official Universal Pictures Home Entertainment Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die webpage.
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Categories: Films To Watch, Home Release, Recommendation
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