Matt Damon has had a lot of unfortunate onscreen accidents that have stranded him in far-off locales, both real and fictional, launching awe-inspiring rescue missions. But what would such daring escapes cost if they took place in the real world?

A Quora user posed that question on the Q&A site, and a commenter named Kynan Eng took it upon himself to total up the hypothetical budgets of such complicated endeavors. The result, Eng discovered, was truly staggering.

In an examination of eight of Damon's films -- including "The Martian," "Interstellar," "Elysium," and "Saving Private Ryan" -- Eng calculated that the rescue efforts depicted onscreen amounted to a whopping $900 billion or so in real-life money. That includes more reasonable sums like $100,000 for the search team headed by Tom Hanks in WWII flick "Saving Private Ryan," as well as astronomical numbers like $500 billion for the space ship in "Interstellar" and the $200 billion spent on the Mars mission in "The Martian."

So is Saving Matt Damon really worth it when the costs are considered? It depends on how you look at it. Sure, his movies are entertaining, but his films' combined $2.7 billion gross barely scratches that $900 billion surface. As fellow Quora user Devin Jones put it in the comments section, "The real question is why after so many failed attempts do we continue to send Matt Damon into outrageous scenarios which inevitably require hundreds of millions of dollars simply to rescue him only so he can undo all our efforts by getting stuck in another equally or more absurd situation."

Something to think about the next time the actor needs rescuing at the multiplex.

[via: Quora]