back. Cast Parry Shen as Ben Manibag, a straight-A student who commits petty crimes to express himself in other ways Jason Tobin as Virgil Hu, Ben's friend since the fourth grade Sung Kang as Han Lue, Virgil's cousin Roger Fan as Daric Loo, the violent, self-centered, senior class valedictorian John Cho as Steve Choe, Stephanie's boyfriend Karin Anna Cheung as Stephanie Vandergosh Jerry Mathers as The Biology Teacher Development Justin Lin said that the title "Better Luck Tomorrow" refers to how the film explores "the whole youth culture of today, specifically Asian-American, but also just the general mentality of teenagers today. I mean, I work with teenagers, I grew up in the 80s, and already it's very different, the mentality. You go to suburbia, you look at upper-middle-class-kids, and through the media they've literally adopted an urban-gangsta-mentality." While writing the script, he found inspiration in his work as a youth basketball coach and teaching high school students how to make community documentaries. Originally the film was going to be shot in digital-video, but within two weeks, after Fujifilm and later Kodak proposed deals with the director, the filming switched to 35 mm. Sung Kang had originally wanted to play Ben Manibag. Lin's original investors had wanted the entire cast to be Caucasian. Lin objected and continued to fund the project with his credit cards. He said knowing the film "potentially could’ve been the last film I ever made" he wanted to make it "about issues that were very important to me.” After those funds were depleted, finishing funds equivalent to one third of the film’s budget were provided by Cherry Sky Films for post-production, preparing the film to submit to Sundance, after producer Joan Huang reconnected with Lin at the LA Asian Pacific American Film Festival. Lin also brought in an additional $10,000 from artist MC Hammer, whom he had met while working at the Japanese American National Museum. Connection to the Fast & Furious franchise Director Justin Lin later directed multiple films in the Fast & Furious franchise, with Kang reprising his role as Han Lue. Better Luck Tomorrow was subsequently recognized as Han's origin story, retroactively connecting the film to the Fast & Furious franchise. Reception Critical reception The film was rated "certified fresh" with an approval rating of 81% by the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 106 reviews with an average rating of 7.03/10. The