celebrity gossip, academic style

Eric Bana: Still Not a Star

I like Eric Bana fine. I don’t love him, or run out to see his films, which is part of why I’m writing about him. Because several studios, directors, and producers have attempted to make him a bonafide star, but it just doesn’t seem to to take. Eric Bana has starred in many of the big budget, high profile films of the last year — but nearly all of them have either been outright bombs (The Hulk), domestic disappointments (Troy), or so bad as to be labelled camp (The Other Boleyn Girl). Of course, Star Trek was a huge hit - but Bana was nigh unrecognizable in a character role.

I’m writing about Bana in particular because I just saw The Time Traveller’s Wife — a piece of melodramatic, well-dressed jumbo that was redeemed almost entirely by the presence of the always radiant Rachel McAdams and several well-chosen child actors. But in contrast to Rachel McAdams, who seemed a star from the first second I saw her in Mean Girls, Bana lacks….a certain something. Nikki Finke puts a fine point on it: “Erica Bana isn’t leading man worthy. Too dull on screen.”

So let’s have a run-down of Bana’s significant roles/achievements:

• Break-out role in the Australian movie Damages (2000). Still unknown in U.S.
• Supporting point in Blackhawk Down (2001)
• Voice in Finding Nemo (2003)
• Chosen by Ang Lee to star in the much-anticipated Hulk (2003), huge failure.
• Redeeming himself as the straight, boring Hector in Troy, which does very well internationally but only moderately in the U.S. Obviously pales in comparison to Brad Pitt, but not nearly as annoying as Orlando Bloom.
• Perhaps most memorably in Munich (2005), although that film is much more about group collaboration and plot than Bana’s singular performance.
• The embarrassingly bad Vegas drama Lucky You (2006) with Drew Barrymore, which grossed a paltry $5 million domestic.
• Playing Henry VIII in the much-anticipated, star-studded, pre-sold The Other Boleyn Girl, which was pushed back and re-cut several times before getting dumped with a February release in 2008. Grossed only $26 million domestically, $50 million internationally, which, on a supposed $35 million budget (double that for advertising and promotion), marks it as a disappointment.
• Nero in Star Trek — he’s excellent, but as I mention above, he’s neither in the lead nor the true star. He’s the villain and gets to play bad. And his hair is gone and he’s covered in Romulan tattoos.
• The foil in Funny People. Using his actual accent. As discussed at length before, this film is not doing well.
• And now, The Time Traveler’s Wife, a movie that has been in post for over a year (always a bad sign). Honestly, it was better than I thought it would be. Having read the book, I knew the premise and the funky timing (even if it still doesn’t exactly make sense). But for this movie to real work — work in the way that a weepie has to work in order to get over its melodramatic weight — it needs to have a strong male lead, an even stronger female lead, and fireworks — FIREWORKS — between them. My favorite example would be the case of Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling in The Notebook, which is clearly a piece of dreck….unless you focus on the performances and chemistry of the leads, which is delectable. Same goes for Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood in Bridges of Madison County - I mean, have you glimpsed that book? But the movie is ravishing. Point is, Eric Bana is no Ryan Gosling. His persona is simply not big — or notable — enough to make us really, truly care for him and his relationship. Nor does he make a love story believable. Why is this?

Eric Bana Not Pulling It Off in Time Traveler’s Wife

So let’s take stock: Eric Bana seems to do well in period pieces — he’s a convincingly evil and horny Henry VIII, even if the rest of the film is a a miscalculation. He’s also good as both a classic Greek (Troy) and a ’70s assassin (Munich). Where he fails, then, is in roles that ask him to play a contemporary, straight-up lead — a restriction that applies equally to Keira Knightly, who can only play period (and does so convincingly…but put her in the present, and her cheekbones just can’t pull it off.)

Why is this? Part of it is his off-kilter face. But it’s also a lack of charisma, or curiosity about him — and that’s the fault of both Bana and his publicist. What do you know about Eric Bana? Other than the fact that he’s from Australia? Nothing. He’s obviously a big star back home — in part because he’s married to Rebecca Gleeson, the daughter of the head justice of Australia. That’s hot! Or at least interesting! But apparently not to American audiences. He also has two small children with cute names — Klaus and Sophia. But you’ve never seen a picture of them. He’s a huge sports car driver, and has placed in a number of major races. Again, sexy. But they live in Melbourne, which guards them from most American paparazzi.

Cute wife. Cute kids. So what’s missing?

New Line/Warner Bros’ The Time Traveler’s Wife opened to $7.7M and #2 Friday but dropped -17% Saturday for $6.2M and #3. It was a disappointing $18M weekend from 2,988 runs. That’s hardly the $25M rival studios expected. (Isn’t it funny how New Line has gone from pumping out testerone to estrogen? But Eric Bana isn’t leading man worthy. Too dull on screen. And it’s not his publicist either: there he is on the cover of both GQ and Details, as you can see below. He’s been marketed to both male and female audiences, but neither seem to take the bait. At least not enough to make him a star.

So here’s my theory. I’ve previously brought up the theory of extra-textual and textual information and stardom: the idea that an actor becomes a star when information about his personal life becomes of equal or greater interest as his roles onscreen. With this balance between extra-textual and textual information, you also create the balance between the ordinary and the extraordinary — the paradoxical belief that stars are simultaneously ‘just like us’ and superlatives. Richard Dyer believes that within that paradox — that very finely held balance — lies true charisma. In other words, stars that can really convince us that they’re both — those are the true stars. (It’s also a matter of how the embodiment of both extraordinary and ordinary signifies — what it means, what that particular star’s very existence proves is possible, but that’s another post). So the lack of extratextual information on Bana — a combination of the fact that he lives in Australia and doesn’t do anything that scandalous or interesting; he’s not married to a star, he isn’t a womanizer or a drug addict — already puts him at a charisma deficit. But such deficits can be overcome through performance and skill: look at the case of Robert De Niro, who, in his prime, was one of the most charismatic actors onscreen — so charismatic, in fact, that it troubled you that you liked him, whether he was playing Jake La Motta or Travis Bickle. That’s true charisma: the ability to turn someone dispicable into your point of identification and affection.

So Bana’s problem is two-fold: his extratextual life is boring, and he lacks the gravitas necessary to turn him into a renowned character actor. He’s in no man’s land. He’s neither Brad Pitt nor Matt Damon, neither Colin Farrell nor Russell Crowe, another Australian whose personal life is now boring and domestic, but who still has the pull onscreen, even when he’s fat and dowdy. He’s also made some remarkably bad film choices — or at least made the wrong choices as far as rom-coms go. Ultimately, the fact that he can’t sell movies based on two of the best selling novels of the last ten years should tell us something. For Bana to become a star, he either needs an Oscar role or a huge rom-com hit, neither of which seem to be in the cards.

Am I wrong? Tell me why.