From 'Saving Private Ryan' to 'The Martian,' the actor has needed plenty of rescuing.
We know you can’t put a price on human life, but damn, Matt Damon.
From Saving Private Ryan to The Martian, the Oscar winner’s movie characters are constantly getting left behind and/or otherwise needing to be saved. Now, an Australian researcher, Kynan Eng, has calculated how much it cost to keep the people Damon plays alive.
The Quora post recently went viral, using “fictional costs” from each film and calculating totals using 2015 currency.
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1. Courage Under Fire (1996) - $300,000
Why Damon Needed Saving: Specialist Ilario was part of a Medevac team sent to rescue the crew of a shot-down Black Hawk, though, in the end, both crews needed rescuing.
The Expenses: “Gulf War 1 helicopter rescue.”
2. Saving Private Ryan (1998) - $100,000
Why Damon Needed Saving: Private First Class James Ryan was a paratrooper who went missing in Normandy on D-Day and was ordered to be brought home safely after his three brothers die in action.
The Expenses: “WW2 Europe search party.”
3. Titan A.E. (2000) - $200 Billion
Why Damon Needed Saving: Cale Tucker (voiced by Damon) was evacuated from Earth when it was attacked and ultimately destroyed by an alien species.
The Expenses: “Earth evacuation spaceship.”
4. Syriana (2005) - $50,000
Why Damon Needed Saving: Bryan Woodman was an energy analyst sent to the Middle East, where he survived the missile strike assassination of a prince before being sent home.
The Expenses: “Middle East private security return flight.”
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5. Green Zone (2010) - $50,000
Why Damon Needed Saving: U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller was abducted in Baghdad while searching for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
The Expenses: “U.S. Army transport from Middle East.”
6. Elysium (2013) - $100 Million
Why Damon Needed Saving: Max Da Costa was exposed to lethal levels of radiation during a factory accident and must make it to the space habitat Elysium to use a med-bay before he dies.
The Expenses: “Space station security deployment and damages.”
7. Interstellar (2014) - $500 Billion
Why Damon Needed Saving: Dr. Mann was one of a dozen astronauts sent via a wormhole to investigate potentially habitable galaxies and became stranded on an ice planet.
The Expenses: “Interstellar spaceship.”
8. The Martian (2015) - $200 Billion
Why Damon Needed Saving: Astronaut Mark Watney was inadvertently left for dead on Mars when his crew mates were forced to abort their mission due to a dust storm.
The Expenses: “Mars mission.”
Total: $900 billion. As in, $900,000,000,000. “Plus change,” Eng notes.
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Eng also calculated the cost of saving the actor based on the movies’ budgets, not including marketing, and found that making the films only costs about 0.1 percent of the “real” costs. Meanwhile, the billions of dollars that his movies have grossed so far would only cover 40 percent of the cheapest proposed trip to Mars.
So, maybe let’s keep a better eye on Matt Damon from now on, guys.
Now, how does the actor himself explain why he has to keep getting saved? “I’m just very leave-able,” he told ET. Here’s what else he had to say about it:
