Sam Rockwell says his Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die character has Jack Sparrow energy

Even in a movie that depends on science fiction elements like time travel, most filmmakers will ease you into the world of their film with mundane, grounding details. Consider how in Back to the Future, we see a lot of Marty McFly being a typical teenager before we even get a glimpse of the DeLorean, allowing us to settle into the story. It’s like slowly testing out a pool when you aren’t quite sure how cold the water is. But the opening scene of Gore Verbinski’s new time-travel movie Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is the cinematic equivalent of throwing the viewer into the pool’s freezing-cold deep end. We’re able to manage the shock of it, though, thanks to Verbinski’s casting of Sam Rockwell as an unnamed “man from the future,” a character who echoes Verbinski’s best-known breakout character, Jack Sparrow.

“Yeah, there’s a little bit of Jack Sparrow in there,” Rockwell tells Polygon. “He’s selfish and Jack Sparrow is selfish, and becomes heroic in spite of himself.”

Verbinski, who directed the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films, agrees. “They’re both rogues,” he says.

Image: Briarcliff Entertainment

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die begins in the present day in a typical Los Angeles diner, where people are enjoying their meals. Rockwell’s character busts in, wearing tattered clothes topped with a clear raincoat strung with tubes, wires, and circuit boards. He shouts,“I am from the future!” and demands volunteers to help him prevent a nightmare AI apocalypse.

From the moment he bursts through the diner doors, Rockwell’s character is explosive and hilarious. He uses a bomb threat to keep the diners in their seats as he tries to bully them into joining his quest — but he also says he’s delivered this speech many, many times before. Rockwell helps convey the weariness of endless time travel with a mixture of desperation, frustration, and even a bit of boredom. Dozens of time loops have shown his character how this scenario goes, which gives him a unique combination of high energy and low expectations.

jack sparrow and hector barbossa standing on the deck of a ship

He also spends much of the movie insulting his eventual volunteers, and seems entirely willing to sacrifice them or abandon them and return to the time stream at the slightest sign of trouble. He’s both heroic and cowardly. He cares about saving the world, but not about the people helping him do it, which isn’t too different from how Verbinski describes Jack Sparrow. “I’m a fan of the picaresque hero that might sell out his crew,” he says. “Jack Sparrow would not be betraying his character if he sold out his best friend to get his ship back.”

Johnny Depp’s pirate persona isn’t the only character that informed Rockwell’s performance. The actor also cites “Robin Williams in Fisher King, Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future, and then Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis in 12 Monkeys.” Even comedians Don Rickles and Richard Pryor were sources of inspiration; the former, presumably, for the way Rockwell’s character constantly peppers his recruits with insults. As for Pryor, Rockwell says, “Pryor’s always playing an anti-hero who’s kind of in over his head, like in Bustin’ Loose.”

Finally, Rockwell says his character is “a bit of a misanthrope, like a Walter Matthau kind of archetype. Then occasionally there was some Kurt Russell in there, maybe. But not too much. He wishes he was Kurt Russell.”

Verbinski sees yet another famous film comparison that might offer some insight into the movie, and particularly the larger motivation behind his protagonist’s struggle to save the future. “Sam’s character has this deeper pain and this guilt and this sense that there’s a cost to curiosity,” he says. “It’s there in the same way Sonny in [Sidney Lumet’s 1975 heist drama] Dog Day Afternoon has a reason that he’s robbing that bank. When you anchor something like that, you can have a great picaresque narrative, a great rogue character. You need [grounding motives] to keep it dangerous and to keep it true. Without that, it’s just silly.”

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die opens in theaters on Feb. 13.