10 Matt Damon scenes that should be deleted from history

Chanel meets Marian and Jamie – ‘Drive-Away Dolls’ (Ethan Coen, 2024)

Joel and Ethan Coen gave Damon one of his best roles ever when he co-starred in True Grit, but they weren’t so lucky during their reunion. Based on the two films that he’s directed so far, Ethan has proven that he doesn’t have the same individualist spark that his brother has, as both of his solo efforts are completely unwatchable.

Drive-Away Dolls is a crass, obnoxious satire in which Damon is comically cast as a politician who finds himself in a compromising situation, which leads him to meet Geraldine Viswanathan’s Marian and Margaret Qualley’s Jamie in a lesbian bar to exchange information. Although none of the actors can be faulted for the terrible lines that were fed to them, it is nonetheless embarrassing to see someone of Damon’s calibre working on such a cheap production with immature humour.

Paul Goes to Dusan’s party- ‘Downsizing’ (Alexander Payne, 2017)

Alexander Payne is a filmmaker who would seemingly have been a perfect fit for Damon’s sensibilities as an actor, but Downsizing is a misfire that isn’t nearly as heartwarming or hilarious as his previous work. Although the notion of a ‘downsized’ world in which people are shrunk to live in a low-carbon emissions community is a great premise for satire, Downsizing becomes nothing but a dull midlife crisis film. The most laborious segment of the film involves Damon’s character, Paul, being introduced to his obnoxious neighbour Dusan, played by Christoph Waltz, who holds wild parties.

The fact that Waltz’s performance is actually annoying might have been intended to get the audience to relate to Paul, but it ends up being nothing but an exhausting experience. It’s also strange to see Damon in the role of a dejected, grumpy middle-aged man, making Downsizing an absolute bummer.

The Asgardian actors return – ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ (Taika Waititi, 2022)

Damon has miraculously managed to avoid being in the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any superhero films, which is among his best career decisions, given the place of desperation that the genre is in now. The one exception is a rather amusing cameo in Thor: Ragnarok, in which Damon, Luke Hemsworth, and the late Sam Neill pop up as Asgardian actors who are appearing in a play in honour of Tom Hiddleston’s Loki.

It’s an amusing scene, but everything that was fun about Thor: Ragnarok overstayed its welcome in the follow-up, Thor: Love and Thunder, in which Taika Waititi’s comedic sensibilities derailed any sense of legitimate worldbuilding. Damon has more screen time in the sequel, but far less laughs; it’s yet another example of how the MCU can’t let something exist in isolation without trying to tie it back into the lore.

The journalists interview Dominic Matai – ‘Youth Without Youth’ (Francis Ford Coppola, 2007)

Francis Ford Coppola directed Damon to one of his most underrated performances ever in the legal thriller The Rainmaker, so it made sense that they would reunite when the beloved filmmaker was trying to self-finance independent films made outside the studio system. While it is understandable why Coppola was frustrated dealing with financiers and studio notes, Youth Without Youth is the perfect example of a film in which no one ever questioned his decision, resulting in a convoluted mess.

Damon has a brief cameo as a Life reporter who interviews the protagonist Dominic Matai, played by Tim Roth, adding yet another framing device to the overcomplicated narrative. While it’s distracting to see Damon wasted in such a minor role, it’s hardly the most baffling thing that happens in Youth Without Youth, which deserves to be seen as being just as big a blunder as Megalopolis.

Bagger Vance caddies for Junuh – ‘The Legend of Bagger Vance’ (Robert Redford, 2000)

Robert Redford peaked so early on in his career as a director with the masterpiece Ordinary People that the rest of his work behind the camera couldn’t help but feel a little disappointing. He would direct great films like Quiz Show and A River Runs Through It, but The Legend of Bagger Vance was a colossal misfire with some dubious racial politics, which sees Damon play the golfer Junuh, who begins taking the advice of a wise caddy, Bagger Vance, played by Will Smith.

Even if Redford made the film in earnest, it can’t help but feel like it’s embodying the ‘magical negro’ stereotype, which is outdated to say the least. That Damon clearly can’t play golf makes his performance even more distracting, especially considering it was released not long after a genuinely great film about the sport in Tin Cup, which was well received by players.

Luke’s letter is read – ‘The Majestic’ (Frank Darabont, 2001)

Jim Carrey made a desperate attempt at an Oscar-bait role in 2001 when he starred in The Majestic, as he had rather infamously been overlooked for ‘Best Actor’ nominations by the Academy Awards for both The Truman Show and Man on the Moon. Unfortunately, The Majestic is an overlong and pretentious melodrama that doesn’t really have anything to say, and features one of Carrey’s worst performances.

Carrey stars as a Hollywood screenwriter, blacklisted for his communist ties, who winds up in a small town, where he is mistaken for a soldier killed in war, played by Damon. The film abides by every emotionally manipulative cliché imaginable when the soldier’s letter is read in an attempt to evoke tears; even if it was just a vocal part from Damon, The Majestic was bad enough that Darabont spent a few years in director jail.

Benjamin’s impromptu purchase – ‘We Bought a Zoo’ (Cameron Crowe, 2011)

Cameron Crowe is the type of incredibly sincere, thoughtfully humanistic filmmaker whose films either work perfectly as an expression of earnest emotion or feel like pretentious drivel, and while We Bought a Zoo isn’t nearly as exhausting as the nearly unwatchable Elizabethtown or Aloha, it still asks the audience to buy into a goofy premise that waves its quirkiness like a flag. The idea of a widower and his children deciding to run a zoo is a fairly interesting concept for a family film, but the simplicity in which it is set up is completely unbelievable, making the rest of the experience seem hokey.

To his credit, Damon seems to at least be aware of how heavily the film was mocked; he appeared in a bit at the 2017 Academy Awards in which clips from We Bought a Zoo were made fun of by the host, Jimmy Kimmel, with whom Damon had been in a hilarious ‘feud’ with on late night for over a decade.

Garin and Tvoar impress the Chinese- ‘The Great Wall’ (Zhang Yimou, 2017)

Both Damon and Pedro Pascal caught a fair amount of criticism for starring in The Great Wall, a medieval action epic from the legendary Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou. While the notion that Damon’s name was being used to promote a film about the Great Wall of China was seen as the ultimate instance of whitewashing, the story is a bit more complicated than that; Damon plays an Irish warrior who is captured by Chinese soldiers and learns about how their greatest construction has been used to protect the world from terrifying monsters.

The film justifies using the perspective of an outsider to explore Chinese mythology, but there is one scene in which his miraculous fighting skills are seen as being incredible by his hosts, which feels a bit misjudged. It doesn’t help that The Great Wall is restricted in the violence it can show because of the PG-13 rating.

Bob’s first date with May – ‘Stuck On You’ (Peter and Bobby Farrelly, 2003)

The Farrelly brothers were once considered to be the undisputed kings of gross-out comedy, and ironically, it might have been Peter Farrelly’s Oscar wins for Green Book (which were seen as being undeserved) that sacrificed them that reputation. Stuck on You has a fairly inventive premise about two conjoined twins who attempt to go down different paths, and the performances by Damon and Greg Kinnear are both solid.

The regrettable part of the film occurs when Damon’s character, Bob, is on a date, where there is a misperception that Kinnear’s character is actually his lover. While this type of homophobic humour was fairly common within comedies at the time, it is rather disappointing coming from the Farrellys; despite the ‘low humour’ that they often engage in, the Farrellys have been praised for their consistent willingness to work with actors with disabilities and contribute to positive representation.

Jason Bourne’s appearance – ‘Jay & Silent Bob Reboot’ (Kevin Smith, 2019)

Kevin Smith has made a frequent collaborator out of Affleck, which made it unsurprising that he would also tie Damon into his shared ‘View Askeniverse’. Although Damon had appeared as a fictionalised version of himself in Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, he appeared in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot as Loki, the character that he had played in Smith’s film Dogma (which also co-starred Affleck).

It was fun to see Damon return to a character he hadn’t played since 1999, but it is cringe-inducing for him to also record a cameo as Jason Bourne. Bourne is a character that Damon has taken seriously, and so to laugh at him felt cheap. It would also be disappointing if this was the last time that Damon played the character, given that there has not been a release date set for the supposed sequel to 2016’s Jason Bourne.