Director Gore Verbinski says Unreal Engine is 'the greatest slip backwards' for movie CGI

The visual effects in films like Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park set a high bar for CGI that still holds up decades later. In contrast, modern movie CGI often draws criticism for appearing less convincing, with a perceived overuse of digital effects over practical ones. Veteran director Gore Verbinski (The Ring, Rango, the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films) has a specific culprit for this perceived decline: the Unreal Engine.

In a recent interview, Verbinski was asked why contemporary visual effects often fail to match the impact of classics. "I think the simplest answer is you’ve seen the Unreal gaming engine enter the visual effects landscape," he explained. "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."

The use of Unreal Engine in filmmaking has grown significantly since its high-profile debut on The Mandalorian in 2020, where it powered the revolutionary virtual sets. Its adoption has since spread to major films like The Matrix Resurrections and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Verbinski views this trend as a regression. "I think that Unreal Engine coming in and replacing Maya as a sort of fundamental is the greatest slip backwards," he stated.

His critique isn't that the technology is inherently flawed, but that its strengths are mismatched with the demands of photorealistic cinema. "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," Verbinski noted. The core issue, he argues, lies in the engine's rendering of light and material properties. "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 in the same way."

This technical shortfall leads to what he describes as the "uncanny valley" in creature animation. He also points to a workflow issue: "a lot of in-betweening is done for speed instead of being done by hand." The efficiency of the engine can come at the cost of the nuanced, hand-crafted detail that sells the illusion of reality.

For his upcoming science fiction comedy Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, scheduled for a February 2026 release, Verbinski is implementing a strict rule to maintain visual integrity. "We try to be really strict with making at least 50% of the frame photographic," he said. "I think that keeps you honest. You can use props as a reference, and when you see the CG replacement, you know how to replicate the real thing."

Verbinski's perspective highlights a growing tension in the VFX industry between the pursuit of photorealism and the efficiencies offered by real-time rendering engines. While Unreal Engine provides unprecedented speed and flexibility for virtual production, his comments suggest that for certain applications—particularly those requiring the subtle interplay of light and organic materials—traditional offline rendering pipelines may still hold an advantage. The debate centers on whether the industry is trading a certain quality of light and texture for the ability to iterate faster, and whether audiences will notice the difference.