I’m not sure there’s an actor in the history of cinema that has required more saving than Matt Damon. I’d never really noticed it before, but one astute Quora user posed a hysterical hypothetical question to the community earlier this year that was more interesting than I ever imagined: “How much money has been spent attempting to bring Matt Damon back from distant places?”
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That’s the kind of question so incredible that I didn’t even need an answer to squeeze some enjoyment from it. But here’s the thing — I got an answer anyway. Quora user Kynan Eng decided to break the question down in terms of both actual, real-life movie budgets and the estimated costs of bringing the fictional characters played by Damon home.
Here’s what he came up with:
Movie Budgets
Courage Under Fire: $46m
Saving Private Ryan: $70m
Titan A.E.: $75m
Syriana: $50m
Green Zone: $100m
Elysium: $115m
Interstellar: $165m
The Martian: $108m
TOTAL: $729mFictional Costs
[My estimates, costs are in 2015 currency]
Courage Under Fire (Gulf War 1 helicopter rescue): $300k
Saving Private Ryan (WW2 Europe search party): $100k
Titan A.E. (Earth evacuation spaceship): $200B
Syriana (Middle East private security return flight): $50k
Green Zone (US Army transport from Middle East): $50k
Elysium (Space station security deployment and damages): $100m
Interstellar (Interstellar spaceship): $500B
The Martian (Mars mission): $200B
TOTAL: $900B plus change
Nearly a trillion dollars to save various incarnations of Matt Damon. That’s a significant percentage of the U.S. national debt. At least we know that Matt Damon will be doing the saving when he returns as Jason Bourne in 2016.
