Epic rejects Gore Verbinski's claim that Unreal Engine is to blame for worse movie CGI

Pcgamer reports that director Gore Verbinski was "pretty blunt" in pinning the blame on Epic's Unreal Engine for a perceived decline in movie CGI quality.

Epic responded through Tubach, saying, "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." Tubach added, "Unreal Engine is primarily used for pre-visualization, virtual production, and in some cases final pixels," and said artists 10–15 years ago "could only dream about having a tool as powerful as Unreal Engine on their desks"—a claim they support by noting personal experience, "I should know—I was one of them!"

The exchange follows questions many fans have pondered about whether CGI looks worse now, and comes amid wider adoption of Unreal Engine in the past several years, including on the Fallout TV series; the two sides frame the debate around tool availability, scale, and the role of artists versus software.

Key Topics

Tech, Gore Verbinski, Epic, Unreal Engine, Visual Effects, Virtual Production