I had to use chat gtp and actually had a fun response!

Birth year: 1980-ish. So our modern Forrest would be in their mid-40s today. Coming-of-age moments smack in the middle of analog childhood, digital adolescence, and Millennial-level disappointment.

Childhood arc: • Saturday morning cartoons that were basically toy commercials. • A parent explaining what “long distance charges” are while the cordless phone antenna pokes someone in the eye. • An earnest montage of the kid failing miserably at pogs, Tamagotchi care, and learning to rollerblade.

Adolescent arc: • AOL dial-up screeching every time the plot needs tension. • Our hero earnestly misinterpreting song lyrics they downloaded from some sketchy Geocities page. • Accidentally becoming a footnote in the dot-com bubble. Maybe he creates a website called “MyFaceBookPlace” without realizing it has value, gives it away for a sandwich, and moves on.

Early adulthood: • 9/11, because a modern Forrest Gump would absolutely Forrest his way into a Big Serious Moment. Maybe he’s delivering office mail one floor below a key meeting and ends up helping people out down the stairs. • The early Iraq War years, navy or army maybe, lots of sand, a couple surprisingly sincere friendships. No politics, because the studio will not risk Twitter flaming them alive.

Midlife: • The 2008 crash wipes out all his money except for the small amount he accidentally invested in “some app with a bird on it.” • Viral fame from a YouTube clip of him trying to fix an office printer. • He stumbles into the creator economy and accidentally becomes an early influencer before ghosting the internet for several years because it’s noisy and people keep asking about his skincare routine.

Romance subplot: Cue the Jenny-equivalent: A complicated, brilliant woman who bounces in and out of his life. She runs off to Coachella, survives a decade in marketing, and eventually finds Buddhism. Their relationship is a slow-burn heartbreak-fest the studio will pretend is “epic.”

Soundtrack: • Smashing Pumpkins • Alanis Morissette (the part where she screams her soul out makes at least three scenes “emotional”) • The Cranberries • Tupac • Rage Against the Machine for that one 2003 montage where everything sucks • A needle drop of “Mr. Brightside” when the story wants to feel nostalgic and devastatingly generic • Something by Coldplay right when you least want it

Cultural beats the studio will absolutely abuse: • A cameo where he wanders into an Apple Store and accidentally inspires the Genius Bar system • A moment where he saves someone at a music festival by knowing how to work a CamelBak • Pokémon Go summer, where he just walks. For weeks. Across an entire state. News anchors love him for it. • A deeply manipulative montage of him raising a kid in the age of iPads.

The vibe overall: A little wistful, a little sarcastic, a little “please god don’t make millennials think too hard about their knees.” And of course the character remains lovable because he’s oblivious to all the nonsense the rest of us marinate in.

Some studio exec is probably drafting this right now, and honestly, it’s only a matter of time before someone tries to cast Timothée Chalamet as a soft-spoken dude who trips into three historical events and invents the concept of TikTok dances by accident.