Maybe we should do away with the term “damsel in distress” because the most rescued person in cinematic history is any character played by Matt Damon. A Quora user posed the question, “How much money has been spent attempting to bring Matt Damon back from distant places?” From Saving Private Ryan to The Martian, fictional enterprises have spent untold effort to rescue him. Kynan Eng actually came up with estimates, both in filmmaking costs and estimated actual costs if the scenarios had been real.
Movie Budgets
Courage under Fire: $46m
Saving Private Ryan: $70m
Titan AE: $75m
Syriana: $50m
Green Zone: $100m
Elysium: $115m
Interstellar: $165m
The Martian: $108m
TOTAL: $729m
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 AE (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
This raises another question: Is there any other movie star worth this much hassle? The original calculations included more movies, which were deleted for one reason or another. You can read the whole thing at Quora. -via Uproxx