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Fake Plastic Baby in “American Sniper” Is the Real Winner Here

Clint Eastwood criticized for being cheap, using doll

Jan 20, 2015 10:43 GMT  ·  By
Siena Miller gives birth to fake plastic baby in “American Sniper”
3 photos
   Siena Miller gives birth to fake plastic baby in “American Sniper”

“American Sniper,” directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Bradley Cooper as real-life Navy Seal Chris Kyle, opened in US theaters last weekend and made over $100 million (€86.4 million) domestically over the extended weekend.

It’s also scored no less than 6 Oscar nominations and several other awards and nods, together with praise from both the critics’ community and regular moviegoers. The film is a success on all counts – except when it comes to the decision to use a fake plastic baby instead of the real thing.

Big budget, cheap prop

Now that pretty much everyone in the US has seen the film, the doll that “plays” the newborn daughter of Cooper and Sienna Miller’s characters is getting a lot of attention – and not of the good kind, either.

The photos in the gallery below, along with the messages embedded from Twitter, make one thing clear: no one actually thought the doll was a real baby because it was obviously fake. Cooper even had to use his thumb to move its hand, and in another scene, you can tell the fingers on its hand are moving through the power of CGI, not because they actually shot a real baby’s hand.

In between jokes that a plastic baby is much cheaper and comes with far less hassle than a real one, people are shocked that a movie as praised and as expensive to make as this one would use such a cheap prop.

After all, “American Sniper” has a budget of almost $60 million (€51.7 million), so they could have at least afforded better CGI, if not an actual baby.

This fake plastic baby is even worse than the Chuckesmee doll used in “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part II,” because at least there Summit had invested in a good animatronic doll. Yes it was the creepiest thing ever, but at least they made an effort, which can’t be said for Eastwood.

It’s even worse than the GCI baby that replaced the Chuckesmee doll in the finished film, and if you’ve seen it, you know that’s saying a lot.

The baby wasn’t important

Focusing on the fake baby and wondering how Eastwood could have overlooked it is missing the point, film columnist Anne Thompson tells USA Today.

The idea of “American Sniper” was to focus on Chris Kyle and the relationship with his wife. Those who did notice the doll weren’t paying attention to what they should have been paying attention to. Plus, using dolls isn’t that uncommon, even in productions with bigger budgets than this one.

“Basically, film professionals know that Eastwood likes to move fast on movie sets and recognize that he took the easy and less expensive route of using a fake baby — not even animatronic — that Cooper had to move himself to make it look lifelike!” Thompson adds.

Still, the result was hilarious. Fake plastic baby was the only big snub at the Oscars 2015 – and the real winner in this, the Internet has decided.

 

Fake baby in “American Sniper” (3 Images)

Siena Miller gives birth to fake plastic baby in “American Sniper”
Fake plastic baby in “American Sniper” is obviously fake and made of plasticThe Internet has a blast with the fake plastic baby used in “American Sniper”
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