Why Gore Verbinski Thinks Unreal Engine is Killing Cinema

If you go back and watch Gore Verbinski's Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, you'll notice one thing right away: The CGI looks fantastic. I mean, all of the characters pop off the screen, and it's hard to believe the movies came out around 20 years ago.

At the time, the graphics felt revolutionary. The tactile, wet textures of Davy Jones’ skin made me think anything was possible.

But when I watch modern movies, they look like they haven't taken many leaps forward. In fact, some of them look much worse than what we had way back when.

According to visionary director Gore Verbinski, the culprit isn’t just a lack of time to shoot these films, it’s the tool itself.

In a recent interview, Verbinski called the industry’s shift toward Epic Games’ Unreal Engine the “greatest slip backwards” for movie CGI.

Let's dive in.

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What's Unreal Engine?

Okay, so if you are unsure what he's talking about, Unreal Engine is a complete suite of creation tools used to build real-time 3D experiences. Developed by Epic Games (the creators of Fortnite), it is one of the world’s most popular and powerful "game engines."

Think of it as a massive digital workshop. Instead of building every single piece of technology from scratch to make a game or a movie, creators use Unreal Engine as a foundation that provides the physics, lighting, and rendering tools they need.

And once Hollywood figured out it could be used for movies, they became obsessed with it.

The Real-Time Trap

The rise of Unreal Engine in Hollywood was sparked by the success of The Mandalorian and its "Volume" technology.

It was a great showcase for the tech because it gave us a world we were familiar with, but showed it to us in a very new way.

It was shot using a massive LED screen that renders backgrounds in real-time.

While this was revolutionary for production speed, Verbinski argues that this "gaming aesthetic" is bleeding into the final frames of cinema, and not in a good way.

The problem, according to Verbinski, is fundamental physics. While Unreal is a miracle of modern software for interactive media, it handles light and texture differently than traditional VFX software like Maya or Houdini.

"I think the simplest answer is you’ve seen the Unreal gaming engine enter the visual effects landscape," Verbinski said. "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."

Speed Over Soul

Hollywood budgets are run on days. You'll always hear about productions trying to trim days or things getting expensive because they're adding days.

And post-production is no different.

In the world of high-end VFX, "subsurface scattering" is the secret sauce that makes digital skin look alive rather than like plastic. It’s why Davey Jones still looks more "real" than many other CGI characters we've seen in modern movies.

In Verbinski's point of view, that's because movies use game engines for finished shots. To do this and save days, they often rely on "in-betweening" (automated animation) for speed.

But when they did Pirates, every nuance of a creature's movement was adjusted by hand to ensure it had weight and presence. Now, that craftsmanship is being traded for the efficiency of a real-time engine, which fills in blanks a different way than a human might.

Can We Go Back?

The answer is complicated. Studios will always want to save money through shortcuts. So, we're in this sort of frozen state where acceptable, okay CGI trumps expensive, great CGI most of the time.

Unless you have a director willing to budget for it...and you do. It's Verbinski.

Verbinski isn't a Luddite, and he uses CGI extensively in all his movies. But, for his upcoming film Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, he’s implementing a strict rule: at least 50% of every frame must be photographic.

By using real props as a reference for light and texture, he hopes to keep the digital elements "honest."

That mix is what made Pirates look so good, and I think it's something you might see other directors latch onto in the future.

The Rebuttal

Of course, Unreal was not going to go quietly into the night. they snet me this statement:

"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 – but aesthetic and craft comes from artists, not software.

Unreal Engine is primarily used for pre-visualization, virtual production, and in some cases final pixels. 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!" –Pat Tubach, VFX Supervisor at Epic Games

Summing It All Up

This is such an interesting problem because it's one we have the solution for, it just costs more money. We want cinematic visuals, and with the debate over how to get people to the movie theater, it feels like making these movies look as good as possible could really pay off in the end.

What do you think? Is modern CGI getting worse, or is this just the growing pains of a new era?

Let us know in the comments!