Deus ex machina? (1 Viewer)

[Brad Porter]

I caught the end of Tim Burton's The Planet of the Apes on cable a few days ago. The humans are hopelessly outnumbered by a much stronger, more agile opponent. The "hero" is being choked to death. Any chance of survival that they may have had is highly unlikely...

...when out of the sky descends the spaceship with the trained ape on board. Sure, it wasn't completely out of nowhere that the ship existed and a prophecy had foretold of the return of the founder of the ape society, but at that exact time and place? Way too convenient.

Brad

 

[Scott Weinberg]

Interesting thread. I'm drawing a blank on examples, but the Jurassic Park example is an excellent one.

 

[Scott Weinberg]

OOh I got 2!

The germs killing the invaders in War of the Worlds and the stupid computer virus in Independence Day.

[zoidberg]Yay I'm helping![/zoidberg]

 

[EricW]

how about BRAZIL with the commando rescue?
of course that's the twist within a twist

perhaps the purest form of DeM is the protagonist waking from a dream? (unless of course the act of dreaming was significant)

 

[Marc_Sulinski]

So, does anyone know how to pronounce Deus ex machina?

 

[Alex Spindler]

See Adaptation. To the best of my knowledge, Brian Cox is the first actor to utter the sentence in film history (or maybe not).

 

[Ben Osborne]

Marc, it's pronounced dày ess eks maakine.

Follow this link to hear it spoken:

deus ex machina.wav

 

[Patrick Sun]

Day-oos X Mac-kenna.

But I internally prounounce it: deuce ex mashina.

 

[Yee-Ming]

Don't know about film history, but Captain Janeway certainly said it on an episode of Voyager. Ironic, considering...

Patrick, not sure about "mac-kenna", I'd put it down as "MAAH-key-naah". Any language experts care to chime in? Where's Rex?

 

[Michael Reuben]

I know how my high school Latin teacher pronounced it, which is the same as the pronounciation in the WAV file linked in Ben Osborne's post.

M.

 

[Bryan Tuck]

I love TNG, too, but it did use DEM quite a bit, but not quite as much as Voyager I think.

However, once DS9 got going good, they usually tried to avoid it when they could.

 

[Greg_C_T]

How about in Signs:

With the water stopping the aliens. Or at least the glasses of water that were left around the house that were used to stop the last one.


Although that had been hinted at earlier in the movie...

 

[Ben Osborne]

I think the ending of Signs is the opposite of a deus ex machina because everything that is part of it is established earlier -- the fact that the Bo left glasses of water all over the house, Graham's baseball bat on the wall because of the record he set, Morgan's asthma, Colleen's dying words, etc. It's not like Shyamalan painted himself into a corner and brought something into the movie out of nowhere to get out of it. It was the kind of ending that you would never have suspected before seeing it, but after seeing it can't imagine it being resolved any other way.

 

[BrianMagog]

What about in O Brother Where Art Thou, the flood
? I know there was some mention of it earlier, but it sure seemed convenient. Given that the story was based on the Odyssey, I wouldn't be surprised that the Brothers put it in intentionally.

 

[Matt Stone]

Re: Signs + Others. I think that if the driving factor of a film is fate (or faith)...it's hard to have a true DEM. An exception that I can think of, though, is the self-acknowledged DEM in Donnie Darko.

 

[BrianMagog]

What about the Frogs
in Magnolia?

 

[Charles J P]

Its been stated, but a completely lame, implausable plot event used to finish out a movie is NOT necessarily a Deus ex machina. Often times, deus ex machinas are lame and implausable, but they still require certain elements to be considered such.

 

[Holadem]

I disagree with Magnolia, that event wasn't used to extract characters out of a sticky situation or to solve a problem.

I am in agreement with Ben regarding Signs. Totally the opposite of what the term means!

--
Holadem

 

[Jim Peavy]

You guys are forgetting the classic example in films: when Moses parts the Red sea in The 10 Commandments!

Course, some of us think that's a historical event as well. But in the context of a dramatic, narrative film, it's the clearest case of literal deus ex machina I can think of.

Disagree about the T-Rex appearing at the end of Jurassic Park. It may be cliche'd or far-fetched, but it's not impossible. If that's an example of deus ex machina, then the climax of just about every summer blockbuster is as well (which I don't think is the case).

To me, it's when something happens to resolve the climax that obviously the writer pulled out of his ass. When something has no set-up or foreshadowing, or a solution is introduced at the climax that has not even been mentioned previously in the story.

Thanks for the explanation of where the term came from, Chris. Fascinatin' stuff!

 

[Mike Broadman]

Disagree about the 10 Commandments. Earlier events in the film, like the staffs turning into snakes, the water into blood, and all the plagues, establish the fact that God will save the Hebrews. The Red Sea was just another case of that.