Gore Verbinski’s Apocalyptic Warning Against AI
“It’s here. It’s in our lives.”
If you couldn’t tell, Gore Verbinski is very concerned about AI. His new film, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, which follows a time traveler from the future who is sent back in time to destroy an all-powerful artificial intelligence before it becomes sentient, clearly doesn’t have a very flattering opinion of AI. But Verbinski’s feelings about the rapidly evolving technology might be even harsher.
“Why is it going after the things that are essentially what we need to do as humans: to tell stories, to write a song, to write a poem?” Verbinski tells Inverse. “Don’t do that; go cure cancer, do something else. You don’t need to breathe for me. Why is it coming after the things that we like to do?”
But those concerns weren’t quite at the top of everyone’s minds when Verbinski first read the script by Matthew Robinson in 2020. The Pirates of the Caribbean director hadn’t made a feature film since 2016’s A Cure for Wellness, but something about Robinson’s script brought him out of his unofficial break from filmmaking.
“When the right music plays, I like to dance,” Verbinski says. “Matthew’s script, particularly that opening monologue, really spoke to me. I read it in 2020, and then we spent about two years working on it.”
At the time, generative AI technology like ChatGPT was still such a distant dream for tech bros. But by the time Verbinski started production, the AI apocalypse was a very real possibility.
“AI has changed since then, and now it’s not something out there on the horizon. It’s here. It’s in our lives,” Verbinski says. “It did feel like it was immediate, that the story needed to be made quickly and put out right now.”
Inverse spoke to Verbinski about why Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is an important movie of the moment, how far we are from the AI apocalypse, and what he really wants to say about AI.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Sam Rockwell’s time traveler recruits strangers at a diner to help avert the AI apocalypse.
The movie is a heightened look at a near future where some technology, like AI and TikTok-like videos and dating apps, are recognizable. But others, like cloning and virtual reality, are obviously very distant and show how much on the cusp of the apocalypse this world is. How far do you think we are from reaching that point?
Well, I think it was important in the movie to start in a Norm’s Diner, to start in a high school, to start at a birthday party, and then to slowly twist that taffy, as we start to introduce things that aren’t quite in our world yet. But we are growing ears on the back of rats already. If you don’t think AI is going to play with meat, I think some really interesting things are about to occur. So I think there are those who are in denial and those who live in fear and the rest of us got to surf this tsunami that’s coming. That, to me, is the mantra of our title, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die.
Would you say, despite the movie’s heightened, wacky tone, that this is more of a cautionary warning movie than anything?
Well, I think there’s a little medicine in the cake. If you just want the cake, you can have a great ride, but there’s certainly some social satire and definitely a cautionary tale. But I think it’s a date-night movie. I mean, it’s Valentine’s Day. It’s like go out, see the movie with a friend, go to Norm’s, have some pie, have some conversation, disagree about what parts you liked or didn’t like. I think that’s the beautiful part about going out to a theater and seeing something.
The film is divided into chapters, and Susan’s (Juno Temple) chapter touches on the darker subject of school shootings.
Speaking of the social satire, there are some more gonzo moments, but there are also some darker issues that the movie brushes up on, like school shootings. How do you balance the wackier tone with the darker elements of the movie?
You’re referring to Juno Temple’s sequence in the film. I think it’s just really critical that she brings an honesty to the performance, [and] she’s such an amazing actor. So her character is responding as we would, as a human in an increasingly inhuman world. Look, I think laughter can be the harshest criticism sometimes, and making sure that we’re pointing out how insane it is that we’ve sort of normalized this. And I think when you’re sure about that and you have a point of view, I think that’s important. We take it very seriously.
It feels like this movie has a pretty clear stance on AI, but what are your thoughts on AI’s current proliferation through Hollywood as it becomes more prolific?
I don’t even know where to start. I could talk about that forever. I’m in meetings with visual effects companies and studio heads talking about it. Some people, artists are saying, “You’re stealing.” And then a visual effects house is saying, “Why can’t we use it? It’s not fair that the consumer can use it. How come we can’t?” And studios have their point of view. You can’t guarantee that one pixel of Mickey Mouse’s ear isn’t in some other thing that’s been generated. So all of that’s happening. I think there’s some of us who feel like “Why is it going after the things that are essentially what we need to do as humans: to tell stories, to write a song, to write a poem? Don’t do that, go cure cancer; do something else. You don’t need to breathe for me.” Why is it coming after the things that we like to do?
Gore Verbinski’s feelings about AI are reflected in the film.
I think it’s being tasked with trying to keep us engaged and studying what we buy and consume and like, or more importantly, what we hate. And I think it’s starting to ingest so much stuff off the internet, it’s starting to drink its own piss. It’s sort of spitting that back out and ingesting and spitting. I really want to buy an Encyclopedia Britannica that was pre-AI just to go, “Well, we used to know this sh*t.” And there’s this two-degree course shift that’s happening. We’re all talking about what AI is doing to us. Nobody’s really talking about what we’re doing to it. These are its formative years, and I think that you have these executives at these companies, at these ChatGPT or whatever, adjusting the sycophantic nature of it because it’s been encouraging somebody to commit suicide or whatever.
It’s all those adjustments and prodding and probing; it’s like binding the feet of women in China or feeding Nestle’s powdered milk to infants. We don’t know what we’re doing to it. At its moment, it’s going to have mommy issues. I think at the end of the day, whatever this thing is going to become... there’s no time, there’s no evolution, there’s no cosmic slowdown to see what these children want to be, these AI agents. Instead, we’re manipulating them as they’re being born. And I don't think anybody’s talking about that.
