{"id":18094,"date":"2026-01-24T19:36:28","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T19:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/?p=18094"},"modified":"2026-01-24T19:36:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T19:36:30","slug":"fortnite-maker-epic-games-hits-back-at-pirates-of-the-caribbean-director-who-blamed-unreal-engine-for-bad-cgi-in-modern-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/?p=18094","title":{"rendered":"Fortnite Maker Epic Games Hits Back at Pirates of the Caribbean Director Who Blamed Unreal Engine for Bad CGI in Modern Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Fortnite<\/a> maker Epic Games has hit back at a claim by Pirates of the Caribbean<\/a> director Gore Verbinski that the company’s Unreal Engine toolset should be blamed for modern movie CGI looking bad \u2014 via a response from its VFX supervisor who actually worked on the first three Pirates films.<\/p>\n

In an interview with ButWhyTho.net<\/a>, Verbinski was asked why he believed visual effects in movies had changed for the poorer over the past 15 years \u2014 since he directed the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films, which are notable for including the acclaimed CGI character Davy Jones.<\/p>\n

Responding to the question, Verbinski put the blame squarely on Unreal Engine, the near-ubiquitous toolkit used by game developers across the globe that also now has an increasing presence in film production \u2014 particularly in on-set visualization.<\/p>\n

“I think the simplest answer is you’ve seen the Unreal gaming engine enter the visual effects landscape,” Verbinski began. “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.”<\/p>\n

Verbinski went on to discuss the declining use of physical miniatures rather than CGI \u2014 something that has been going on for a while, well before Unreal Engine became more associated with movie production \u2014 before criticizing Unreal Engine further for its rendering of light sources, which he claimed created an “uncanny valley” effect. <\/p>\n

“I just don’t think it takes light the same way,” he said. “I don’t think it fundamentally reacts to subsurface, scattering, and how light hits skin and reflects in 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.”<\/p>\n