When it comes to the bright lights of Hollywood, we often get swept up in the imagination of it all – rarely do we ever consider the real-life cost of some of those stunts, explosions, or rescue missions that we see in big action movies. Well, reality hurts, and thanks to one Quora user, we now have a financial idea of what it takes to save a leading man – specifically Matt Damon.
The Quora user Kynan Eng (via Comicbook.com) has provided all of us curious cinephiles with a great service – they have worked out how much it would cost to save Matt Damon’s character in various films where the actor has been in fictional danger. And, spoiler alert, it turns out that Matt Damon is typically cast as a man who finds himself in life-threatening and very pricey hot water.
Taking into account space missions, various aircraft rescue teams, and some search parties, Matt Damon managed to tally up an impressive bill of $900 billion if these situations were conducted in real life. So yeah, hypothetically, Hollywood has spent billions keeping Damon alive and on the silver screen.
Here is a list of Kynan Eng’s stats if you want to see Damon’s life-saving costs.
- 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
While the real-life price to keep an action movie star alive is hefty, to say the least, we are glad that ultimately Hollywood kept throwing Damon into the fire. Although, in reality, the expenses are high, the on-screen thrills are worth it in our eyes. Also, it should be mentioned that the production budget cost for all the films mentioned above is collectively a lot cheaper than $900 billion and instead only have an estimated cost of $729 million.
Fans can look forward to seeing if Matt Damon will be adding some nuclear-related costs to that list in the future, as the actor is set to star in the 2023 movie, Oppenheimer. For more impressive stunts, here is our list of the best spy movies of all time.