The main narrative of the team’s escapades is interspersed with flashbacks of the teammates’ pasts. While the central story remains thrilling and enjoyable, the flashbacks vary in quality, initially causing concern. The first flashback centers on Janet (Zazie Beetz) and Mark (Michael Peña), a teacher and substitute, respectively, depicting teenagers as TikTok-obsessed zombies in a lazy and harsh stereotype. Although Verbinski and screenwriter Matthew Robinson appear to share concerns with editorial pieces about modern youth culture, these issues require empathetic handling rather than dismissive portrayals.

Fortunately, the second flashback offers a more heartfelt narrative, focusing on Susan (Juno Temple), a grieving mother mourning her son, a victim of the earlier school shooting. Rather than criticizing today’s youth, this segment situates the film’s events in a future not far removed from our own, with technological twists reminiscent of “Black Mirror.” Here, the satire is sharper and more darkly comical. Ingrid’s backstory, the subject of the third flashback, strikes a middle ground between the lackluster first and the excellent second. Although somewhat absurd and underdeveloped, by this point, the film’s tone is so delightfully over-the-top that it becomes effortless to embrace its eccentricity.

“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” opens in a diner, where an unnamed man (played by Sam Rockwell) wearing a plastic-wrapped explosive vest rants about cell phone addiction and announces himself as a time traveler from a post-apocalyptic future. He’s seeking volunteers to join him on a mission to stop an advanced artificial intelligence from ending the world this very night. This isn’t his first time doing this, so he proves he’s a time traveler by sharing his knowledge of everyone in the diner — some “Groundhog Day” mixed in with “The Terminator.” To succeed in his mission after many failed attempts, he needs a new combination of team members. The team’s wild card this time around is Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), a lonely woman in a princess dress who, unlike everyone else in this diner, does not have a phone.

The main story following this team’s adventure is interspersed with chapters giving backstory on the individual teammates. Where the main story stays exciting and enjoyable throughout, these flashbacks are more inconsistent — and the first one got me worried I was in for a bad time. Focused on Janet (Zazie Beetz) and Mark (Michael Peña), a teacher and a substitute respectively, this sequence is a lazy and mean-spirited caricature of teenagers as TikTok-addicted zombies. I’m sure I’ve read the same worried op-eds as Gore Verbinski and screenwriter Matthew Robinson, and yes, they also get me worried about how younger generations are handling this crazy world, but these are issues we need to approach with empathy rather than condescension.

Thankfully, there’s more empathy to be found in the second flashback sequence about Susan (Juno Temple), a mother grieving her son killed in the first flashback’s school shooting. Where the first flashback could have been a rant about “kids these days,” the second puts into focus that the film’s “present” isn’t exactly “these days” but some time in our future, with big high-tech twists that play like a combination of multiple “Black Mirror” episodes. The satire here is more pointed and darkly hilarious. The third flashback, explaining Ingrid’s whole deal, falls somewhere in-between the annoying first and brilliant second — it’s ridiculous and not particularly clever or well-developed, but by then, the story has already reached such a pitch of absurdity that you can roll with it.

While “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” oscillates between highs and lows, the comedic energy and madcap conviction of Sam Rockwell’s performance never wavers. It’s the actor’s best work since “Moon,” and a standout within an overall impressive ensemble. The adventure story keeps you on your toes; even in moments where I guessed a twist ahead of time, the film would take enough other wild turns in the meantime that when my predictions finally came true, it felt mind-blowing again.

In its anti-AI messaging, “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” falls somewhere between a classic robot apocalypse story and a commentary on what’s actually being developed today. The latter results in the film’s funniest action sequence, wherein the enemy misunderstands a “prompt” and our heroes find themselves fighting a spectacular brainrot slop monster (animated, it must be made clear, by actual human VFX artists). Some AI critics might criticize the film’s set-up of singularity super-intelligence as an “inevitability,” arguing that the real problem with AI isn’t that it’s going to become smart, but that despite all the hype, it’s going to remain dangerously stupid. But that reality doesn’t exactly lend itself to a high-stakes action thriller. The film’s ending addresses this and most other logical critiques one can make of its story with a clever self-aware twist that works equally well as a brutal self-contained punchline and an opening for potential sequels.

The movie I find myself thinking about the most in comparison with “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” is “Idiocracy.” Both are very funny sci-fi comedies making earnest satirical points that get close enough to the truth of major social issues to earn cult favorite status — while also being off the mark enough in other ways that some people will find them annoying. To be clear, the whiny Boomer-y bits of “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” aren’t quite as problematic as the accidentally-endorsing-eugenics backstory of “Idiocracy,” and Gore Verbinski’s filmmaking is more visually exciting than Mike Judge’s, but the mix of mostly righteous but sometimes off vibes is similar between the two. “Idiocracy” got its more humane counterpart in the form of “WALL-E;” for a similarly superior animated counterpart to “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die,” look at “The Mitchells vs. The Machines.”

“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” opens in theaters on February 13.