Someone Worked Out How Much Money Has Been Spent Rescuing Matt Damon

Every actor has a thing that they’re known for in movies – Leonardo DiCaprio‘s characters tend to die all the goddamn time, while Matt Damon is constantly finding himself in sticky situations in need of rescue.

From behind enemy lines in occupied France to Gulf oil states to outer space – especially outer space – Damon’s characters always needs to be brought home from somewhere or other.
Because it’s the time of year to ponder such things, a Quora user, Kynan Eng, posed the question of how much money has been spent bringing Damon back from distant places over the years.
Eng broke it down into both movie budgets and the fictional cost of Damon retrieval, and it turns out that it’s a shitload either way.
The fictional cost of rescuing Damon, as estimated (we repeat, ~estimated~, because none of this is real) in 2015 currency comes to around $900 billion. Here’s how that breaks down, film-by-film:
Fictional 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
The actual movie budget cost of bringing Matt Damon home from places is a comparatively reasonable $729 million:
Movie Budgets

Saving Private Ryan: $70m

Titan A.E.: $75m

Syriana: $50m

Green Zone: $100m

Elysium: $115m

Interstellar: $165m

The Martian: $108m

TOTAL: $729m
We figured we’d take it a step further and figure out how much money people have paid to see Matt Damon getting rescued. Via Box Office Mojo, we looked at the worldwide gross of the above films:
Worldwide Gross
Saving Private Ryan: $482m
Titan A.E.: $37m
Syriana: $94m
Green Zone: $95m
Elysium: $286m
Interstellar: $675m
The Martian: $594m
TOTAL: $2.263b

Going by the above figures, it seems like cinema-goers have spent approximately $2.263 billion to see Matt Damon getting rescued from various scrapes. 

Because it’s the holidays and we can, we also hit up Box Office Mojo to figure out how much money people have paid to watch Leonardo DiCaprio die over the years. The numbers, as you can see, are pretty huge.
Worldwide gross:
The Quick And The Dead: $18m
Total Eclipse: $340k
Romeo & Juliet: $147m
Titanic: $2.2b
Blood Diamond: $171m
The Departed: $290m
J. Edgar: $84m
Django Unchained: $425m
The Great Gatsby: $351m
TOTAL: $3.68b
It turns out people have spent approximately $3.68 billion to watch Leonardo DiCaprio die on screen, most of it on watching him freeze in the icy waters of the North Atlantic. 
[Leo fans: note that we haven’t seen The Revenant, because it doesn’t open here til January, and so we haven’t included it on the list as we have no goddamn way of knowing if Leo’s character lives, dies or what.]  
Sorry, Leo, but it looks like killing you is a way better investment than saving Matt.
Story: BGR

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