Matt Damon said Ridley Scott’s 2015 film The Martian came closest to replicating his experience on the Bourne films, despite their very different stories and genres. He drew the comparison because both productions required him to perform long stretches alone on screen, making the work unusually solitary and character-driven.

Damon played amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne across four films, a franchise noted for its gritty action and themes of surveillance and government corruption. In The Martian, he played stranded astronaut Mark Watney; Damon told Smithsonian that he accepted its demanding solo monologues because he trusted Scott, despite having played another stranded astronaut in Interstellar the previous year.