death defiance

31 Ways Mark Wahlberg Has Escaped Death in His Movies

Photo: Universal Pictures

Mark Wahlberg has been in more than 40 films, and in almost every one of them, including Lone Survivor, he survives. That would be less impressive if he starred in movies that had kittens on the posters, but Wahlberg is like Boston’s very own Jason Statham: He’s got comedic range (I Heart Huckabees, The Other Guys, Ted), but for the most part he sticks to variations on the Mark Wahlberg Saves the Day conceit. Sometimes that means saving it from Decepticons (Transformer: Age of Extinction), other times from corruption (Broken City, Shooter, The Corruptor, The Yards), and in the new Deepwater Horizon, he does his best to save the crew of an oil rig that exploded off the coast of Mexico in 2010.

Wahlberg doesn’t always make it — RIP Ryan Westerberg from The Substitute, Bobby Shatford from The Perfect Storm, and Norman from Mojave, and good riddance to you, David McCall from Fear. But he has weathered being shot in the face, blown up, beaten relentlessly, chop blocked by the Starship Enterprise, and so, so many shootouts. Who else do you know that would take on a helicopter with a Mini Cooper? So to celebrate his latest instance of heroic self-preservation, we look back at 31 unique ways he’s evaded the icy hand of death.

Drug addiction.
A gang beating.
Exploding cars.
Being inside an exploding building.
A car-chase shootout.
Hand to hand combat with a bipedal ape general.
Spending minutes submerged in frozen-over water.
OD’ing on super-soldier enhancement drugs.
Carrying massive gambling debts with three separate criminals. Photo: Paramount Pictures
Being hit by the Starship Enterprise and having a wall-sized TV screen crash down on him.
31 Ways Mark Wahlberg Has Escaped Death in Films