Gore Verbinski calls Unreal Engine a “slip backwards” for movie CGI

Unreal Engine may be transforming how films are made, but Gore Verbinski isn’t convinced they’re improving what ends up on screen. While promoting his new movie Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, the director has sharply criticised the growing reliance on Unreal Engine for movie visual effects, calling it “the greatest slip backwards” for cinematic CGI (in terms of replacing 3D software like Maya) and perhaps a reason VFX don’t look as good as they used to.

We’ve seen how Unreal Engine 5 is reshaping modern pipelines, merging old and new film techniques on Amazon’s Fallout and in indie films like The Voice in the Hollow, where entire short films are built inside the engine. For many studios, UE5 represents speed, flexibility, and a new level of creative freedom. Verbinski’s argument cuts directly against that optimism, but it's not the first time I’ve heard filmmakers say the tech should be used sparingly.

Speaking to But Why Tho?, the issue isn’t with technology advancing or even with Unreal Engine itself. Instead, it’s with how a tool designed for real-time interactivity is increasingly positioned as a replacement for traditional offline VFX pipelines, and what that trade-off costs in realism and craft.

Good luck, use UE5?

Lighting is a particular sticking point for Verbinski and is blunt about Unreal Engine’s limitations. He says in the article: “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. 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."

There’s also an aesthetic critique running through his comments. Verbinski argues that Unreal Engine brings with it a recognisable visual language shaped by decades of game development. “You can spot it immediately,” he says, alluding to video game lighting that can feel too clean.

That look, he believes, is fundamentally at odds with the messiness and imperfection that cinematic realism depends on. Traditional film VFX tools were built to chase physical accuracy at almost any cost. Real-time engines, by necessity, are built around approximation, a strength in games, but a limitation when the goal is believability.

It's not all bad

Verbinski is careful not to dismiss Unreal Engine outright, acknowledging its value for certain kinds of styles and filmmaking, saying: "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."

It's why in the new film Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, he says they tried to make at least 50% of the frame photographic. "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."

That concern echoes a broader industry tension. I’ve covered films like Babiru, where Unreal Engine 5 was used to push animation in new directions, embracing the engine’s strengths rather than fighting its limitations. Verbinski’s warning is that applying the same mindset to live-action VFX risks lowering expectations rather than expanding them.

When tools dictate aesthetics, art style, and direction, the industry risks mistaking convenience for progress. I’ve seen enough productions to know that Unreal Engine can bring down costs and let small teams do more, but does that still mean the next Spielberg will be making movies in Unreal Engine? Answering that question could, at least, be entertaining in the coming years.