This year, popular culture seems to finally understand that women don’t really need saving. From Jessica Jones to Supergirl to Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens to Melissa McCarthy in Spy (and I guess even Bryce Dallas Howard in Jurassic World if we’re generously ignoring that whole Louboutin thing), it appears that pop culture finally understands it’s far more fun watching women fight stuff than waiting around for someone else to do it.
But now that women are too busy being heroines in blockbuster films and TV shows, who will fill the damsel-in-distress role? We have a suggestion.
Recently, a Quora user asked, “How much money has been spent attempting to bring Matt Damon back from distant places?” After all, it seems like every Damon role involves getting stranded somewhere dangerous until someone puts forth great effort to rescue him — kind of like that friend of yours who always manages to get to the party but can’t ever seem to find a ride home.
Another Quora user, Kynan Eng, calculated the fictional costs. Here’s the breakdown:
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
By those calculations, it has cost $900 billion to save his cinematic hide all these years, proving that we don’t need damsels when we have a Damon.