Yea interesting. I’d bet the animatronic also landed somewhere in the uncanny valley. Which is why I feel like the problem is that they wanted to put a spot light on the character. The better option is to cleverly obscure it just enough. Broken mechanics/manerisms as I suggested would be one way … shadows another. Full on close ups were not the right choice. In the end it was probably a misstep by a director not experienced enough with that sort of effect.