Across three decades of a glittering film career, Matt Damon has played different kinds of characters. It would seem, however, that he enjoys playing a specific type of character more than most: characters who keep getting stuck somewhere. These characters have ended up in places that make a return trip feel nearly impossible, and each time, the odds stacked against them are the whole point, whether the ending is a triumphant homecoming or a spectacular unraveling.
Each one wanders further from the last, from a soldier stuck behind enemy lines to a man whose home planet no longer exists; the list is thrilling. The scale of the problem only grows from there. Here’s a rundown of five times Damon played someone who simply couldn’t find his way home.
1. Private Ryan – Saving Private Ryan (1998)
The army had already confirmed the death of three Ryan brothers before someone in Washington figured out a fourth brother was still alive. They take action by sending Tom Hanks’ Captain Miller and seven other guys to bring him home. The problem is that Damon’s Private Ryan would rather not leave. He’s holed up defending a bridge with the men he’s got left, and going home would feel less like relief and more like abandoning them. The story is loosely based on the real-life Niland brothers from New York, who suffered the same tragedy during World War II, and Damon was almost 27 when he played Private Ryan.
2. Dr. Mann – Interstellar (2014)
Nobody sets out to be the guy who almost dooms humanity, but that’s basically the path Damon’s Dr. Mann follows in Interstellar. He volunteers for one of the most isolating tasks ever conceived: fly solo through a wormhole, land on an unknown planet, and report back on its viability for human settlement. Unfortunately for Dr. Mann, the planet he found turns out to be a dead planet of ice clouds and ammonia-filled air. But instead of admitting his failure, he falsifies data and sends back glowing reports of the planet.
Then he waits. And waits. And waits some more. By the time Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) and his crew arrive, he’s become less a scientist and more a desperate animal who would do anything to leave that hellhole. The movie makes the viewer pity him, right up to the point where he tries to kill everyone. Turns out solitude and a god complex are perfect recipes for disaster.
3. Mark Watney – The Martian (2015)
Mark Watney’s situation in The Martian is absurd enough to make one laugh if it weren’t so scary. On sol 18 of the Ares III mission, a dust storm knocks Mark out, and his crew believes he’s dead. So they leave without him onboard. Now he’s stuck alone on Mars with enough food for about 300 days. His solution? Become a space farmer.
He turns his living module into a potato patch, using his own waste as fertilizer, a strategy that scientists agree is a sound one, even if the film compresses the timeline. He eventually scrambles together a tech to contact NASA to let them know he’s alive. They plan a rescue mission that keeps failing for one reason or the other, until his old crew puts everything on the line, including disobeying direct orders, to fly back and save him.
4. Odysseus – The Odyssey (2026)
Homer’s The Odyssey has been Hollywood’s blueprint for this kind of story for years, and Christopher Nolan’s version has Damon play the archetypal displaced king who schemes to win over Troy with a wooden horse. He then spends the next 10 years trying and failing spectacularly to sail the few hundred miles back home. He faces all kinds of obstacles, including mythological creatures who keep reducing his crew and a sorceress or two who try to make him a permanent resident of their respective islands.
Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) deals with loads of rude and arrogant suitors desperate to marry her and take over the kingdom. And their son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), a baby when Odysseus left, is now a grown man who barely remembers what his father looks like. The whole thing is a lesson on patience, a lesson Damon knows all too well.
5. Cale Tucker (voice) – Titan A. E. (2000)
Every other character on this list had a home to get back to. Private Ryan had Iowa. Mark Watney had Earth. Odysseus had Ithaca. Cale Tucker, on the other hand, had his home (Earth) blown up by an alien race called the Drej when he was a kid. So he’s not looking to be rescued like the others because there’s essentially no home to return to.
In Titan A. E., Cale chases a rumor that his father built a spaceship called the Titan, and that ship supposedly has the power to create a whole new world. The catch is, no one knows where it is. So Cale is basically following a treasure map written in invisible ink by a dead man. It’s the loneliest quest on this list because even if he succeeds, he’ll have to make a new home from scratch. That’s less a commute and more a reinvention. And that’s arguably harder than finding a way home.
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