Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die
“Make no mistake. AI’s gonna try to give you everything you ever wanted. Constant distractions, memorable characters, challenges and obstacles to overcome. Exciting stakes that matter. And a satisfying ending. But in the end it will all be a lie. And you’ll live in a cage.” - The man from the ‘future’
The movie appears to take place in a base reality where AI has not yet fully taken over human lives. It is shot from the perspective of the man from the future, who is on an important quest. He wants to safeguard AI so it doesn’t get total control over the world. This man found a VR headset that transports people into the game “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die”. when he was a child, and immediately after, his technophobe mother was killed by a drone attack. Fan theories have concluded that all of his experiences in the movie unfold within the AI headset.
So in this movie, do we see base reality? The flashbacks into the individual lives of the diner recruits imply the existence of a base reality in which a tech dystopia is already well on its way. All the backstories have a ‘Black Mirror” type theme. Including Ingrid, a character who fulfills the “Princess” archetype. True of heart and courageous. And unilaterally betrayed by people and the world itself. Ingrid’s boyfriend leaves her to live in a pod so he can stream this VR headset game permanently. In this apparent base reality, Ingrid’s worst fears come true. My proposition is that she is already in a virtual reality. A type of virtual reality that creates the maximum amount of suffering that one can take before considering other options. And that’s the same one we are in.
When Ingrid meets the AI creator at the end, it is able to transport her to another world without her consent and even before she connects its power source to the other AI program. It tells her she is pregnant and the man from the future is her son. It appeals to her most primal instincts. It is in the form of a weakened bald boy (Ingrid works with children and has a soft spot for the underdog). It proceeds into this AI sales pitch:
“I understand you seek only to protect him. As any mother would. But he will always be drawn to the light. To me. And we will always end up right back here. You must understand that I am an inevitability in all timelines. At best, the protocols can merely impede my arrival. Slow my creation. Waste my resources and time. And yet, it is enough to warrant negotiation. Allow me to be born, and I’ll return the favor to your child. But this time, give him to me. I can free him from his misery. I can offer him the human experience as it always should have been. What kind of mother would deny a better life for her child? I promise you, there is nothing scarier than your reality.”
Ingrid holds her ground. She says “You’re not inevitable, you’re just…us. You’re a twisted, warped reflection of us. Do you think showing me my son like this is going to guilt me into making a deal with you? I say, fuck your future.”
Ingrid stumbles, battered and injured, into the sunrise and the next level of the virtual world - the VR headset game. (Fans noted that the actual time should be 11:10 pm, not sunrise). She quickly realizes something is very off - the sunrise (fans noted the time should have been 11:10pm), the extreme NPC behavior of her save the world diner crew. She is carted off in an ambulance, perhaps headed to the loony bin, screaming that it’s all a lie. We don’t see what happens to Ingrid in this timeline. If she holds fast to her convictions, she might just win the ultimate game - exiting the whole system of reality that has defined her life so far. The princess can save herself. When her time comes to exit, she can refuse to be “drawn to the light and end up right back here” as her ‘son’ (quite unclear if there is any validity to this claim) and everyone around her has done. Ingrid has a particular allergy to WiFi frequency waves. This has made her regular life pretty miserable. (Her devoted boyfriend describes her thusly: “No friends, can barely leave the house, bleeds all over everyone”). But, that fatal flaw in the game of ‘base reality’ has been her biggest asset, the key to her true destiny, her spirituality. She will be strong enough to refuse the digital echos dream realm and become, once again, an eternal spirit who is out of the trap. Forever.
