'Pirates of the Caribbean' Director Gore Verbinski Says Unreal Engine Reason Why Movie CGI Looks Worse Now

Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski has identified a possible reason why movie CGI does not look as good today compared to before. Verbinski attributed the use of Unreal Engine as a reason why the CGI in many films made today does not look or hold up as well compared to films whose visual effects still look good despite being made decades ago.

Verbinski, who also directed the US remake of The Ring and Rango, said that the use of the Unreal Engine in film is what contributed to why visual effects in media now do not hold up to media before. 'I think the simplest answer is you've seen the Unreal gaming engine enter the visual effects landscape,' said Verbinski. 'So it used to be a divide, with Unreal Engine being very good at video games, but then people started thinking maybe movies can also use Unreal for finished visual effects. So you have this sort of gaming aesthetic entering the world of cinema.'

Becoming More Widely Used in Visual Effects

Unreal Engine emerged as a promising tool after it was used for the visual effects of The Mandalorian in 2020. Productions have used this tool more over time in the past few years. The most notable films that have made use of Unreal Engine include The Matrix: Resurrections and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

According to the Pirates of the Caribbean director, this may not be a positive development. He described it as a step down from the technology that was originally used for visual effects. 'I think that Unreal Engine coming in and replacing Maya as a sort of fundamental is the greatest slip backwards,' said Verbinski, who still noted that using Unreal Engine is not necessarily a bad thing for films such as those under the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

'It works with Marvel movies where you kind of know you're in a heightened, unrealistic reality. I think it doesn't work from a strictly photo-real standpoint,' said the director. 'I just don't think it takes light the same way. I don't think it fundamentally reacts to subsurface, scattering, and how light hits skin and reflects the same way. So that's how you get this uncanny valley when you come to creature animation, a lot of in-betweening is done for speed instead of being done by hand.'

Epic Games Responds to Verbinski's Criticism

Epic Games VFX Supervisor Pat Tubach defended the use of Unreal Engine in Hollywood following Verbinski's critique. 'It's inaccurate for anyone in the industry to claim that one tool is to blame for some erroneously perceived issues with the state of VFX and CGI. It's true that there are a lot more people making computer graphics than ever before, and with that scale comes a range of successes and failures,' said Tubach. 'But aesthetic and craft comes from artists, not software.'

'Unreal Engine is primarily used for pre-visualisation, virtual production, and in some cases, final pixels,' Tubach continued. 'I can guarantee that the artists working on big blockbuster VFX films like "Pirates of the Caribbean" 10-15 years ago could only dream about having a tool as powerful as Unreal Engine on their desks to help them get the job done – and I should know – I was one of them!'