Pirates of the Caribbean director knows exactly why movie CGI is getting worse – Unreal Engine: "You have this sort of gaming aesthetic entering the world of cinema"

Update: On January 22, Epic Games VFX Supervisor Pat Tubach reached out to GamesRadar+ and made the following statement in response to Gore Verbinski's comments:

"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!"

The original article starts now.

It's no secret that CGI has seemingly gotten worse over the years, and no one knows this more than Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski, who says that the decline in effects quality comes down to filmmakers trying to copy the aesthetic of video games.

"I think the simplest answer is you’ve seen the Unreal gaming engine enter the visual effects landscape," said Verbinski in an interview with But Why Tho?. "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… I think that Unreal Engine coming in and replacing Maya as a sort of fundamental is the greatest slip backwards."

Unreal Engine is a powerful 3D creation tool created by Epic Games, used by game developers to build high-fidelity video games such as Fortnite, Gears of War, and Hogwarts Legacy, just to name a few. However, Unreal Engine can also be used on film and TV too, with Star Wars show The Mandalorian and Marvel's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania being just two titles featuring CGI generated by the software.

So what's the issue? In using a tool created for video games, movies are starting to feel more like RPGs than films. However, Unreal's visual effects aren't necessarily bad, but when used on projects based in reality, it can feel cartoonish. "It works with Marvel movies where you kind of know you’re in a heightened, unrealistic reality," added Verbinski. "I just don’t think it takes light 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."

Verbinski has seen firsthand how CGI has declined over time with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Verbinski directed the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Dead Man's Chest, and At World's End, which were praised for their stunning use of CGI, especially when it came to Davy Jones. However, the CGI in the latest movie in the franchise, Dead Men Tell No Tales, seemed to be a lot worse, which is surprising as that movie came out 14 years after the first installment.

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