- by Owen Morton
I’ve got a little bit of a problem, and my problem is in large part a problem with Eric Bana. You must be aware of this bastard. He annoys me very much, just because of his name. Firstly because everybody called Eric makes me think of the sailor from Guess Who, which is bad enough, but secondly because his surname always puts me in mind of half a banana. Or, I suppose, more accurately, two thirds of a banana. But go round telling people that Eric Bana reminds you of two thirds of a banana and they’ll think you’re mad, so it’s best to stick with half a banana.
But it’s not just because of his sailing bananary tendencies that Eric Bana causes me a problem. You must be aware by now that this danger to society has at least four identities. Now, there’s obviously the identity of Eric Bana himself, which would be fine if a) it wasn’t such a stupid name, and b) he didn’t have three other identities. The other identities are someone called Henry, someone called Nero, and Henry VIII.
You see the problem? How can Eric Bana simultaneously be himself, Nero, Henry and Henry VIII? Answer: he bloody can’t, obviously. You can’t be four people, especially if those four people include one who’s well established to have died four and a half centuries ago. So what the bloody hell is going on? It can’t be denied that Eric Bana has showed up in three films within the last year, in his Nero guise in Star Trek, as Henry VIII in The Other Boleyn Girl, and Henry Whatever-His-Surname-Is in The Time Traveller’s Wife, and in each case he appears to have genuinely believed that he was that person. He’s got a personality disorder a mile wide, if you ask me.
So, let’s consider Nero. Eric Bana is a bald tattooed Romulan hell-bent on getting revenge on Mr Spock by going back in time and blowing up Spock’s entire planet, in a plot that doesn’t really stand up to repeated viewings. Then there’s Henry VIII. A tyrannical despot from the sixteenth century who doesn’t have any tattoos and does have hair, and moreover doesn’t blow up any planets, as far as we know. So these are two completely different identities for Eric. But hold on! There’s not as much difference between them as you might think.
The clue is in Eric’s fourth identity – Henry from the Time Traveller’s Wife. (Henry DeTamble. I’ve just looked it up.) Now, Henry DeTamble is, as cunning persons may have deducted, a time traveller. Who else is a time traveller? Yes – Nero. So in a full fifty percent of his identities, Eric Bana is a time traveller. So here’s my theory. There’s this fellow called Eric Bana who lives on twentieth century Earth, then discovers he has innate time travelling abilities, starts calling himself Henry DeTamble and eventually ends up going back in time to the sixteenth century, where he drops the DeTamble and adds a VIII, has a long a fulfilling life knocking down monasteries and knocking up wives, then finally shaves all his hair off, gets some tattoos, sharpens his ears to points and departs for the twenty third century and blows up the planet Vulcan. It sounds pretty plausible, doesn’t it?
Unfortunately, we don’t have a motive. Why would anyone do this? I have to admit, sadly, that I don’t know. I only know that I don’t like him at all. He’s got four separate personalities, for Christ’s sake! And I don’t even have one.