![]() In the final battle of Avengers: Endgame, at the exact moment that Thanos orders his warships to fire upon the battlefield and wipe out everybody, Captain Marvel shows up and uses her near-unlimited power to punch a giant hole through the Mad Titan’s fleet. ![]() There are countless examples from the Bond movies, especially when the villain sends 007 to an elaborate instrument of death instead of just shooting him (a motif hilariously lampooned in Austin Powers). God From The MachineĪs the screenwriters of studio tentpoles are faced with tighter and tighter deadlines, the “deus ex machina” is appearing more and more regularly in the modern blockbuster landscape. At the end of Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs chasing after the heroes – a T-rex and a pair of velociraptors – lose interest in eating them and fight each other instead. the Extra-Terrestrial, when Elliott and his friends are stopped by a police patrol while trying to escape with the alien, it turns out E.T. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, after Indy fails to stop the Nazis, God himself unleashes his wrath through the opened Ark of the Covenant. Steven Spielberg has employed a “deus ex machina” in some of his most popular movies. RELATED: Avengers 5 Shouldn't Try To Top Endgame She starts melting – apropos of nothing – and the goons that surround Dorothy and the heroes suddenly start celebrating her death. Some of the water splashes on the Witch and water just so happens to be her greatest weakness. ![]() When the Wicked Witch of the West sets the Scarecrow on fire, Dorothy throws a bucket of water over him to put it out. A classic early example of Hollywood’s use of this trope is in The Wizard of Oz. Since it’s a nice, easy way to solve a story problem, the “deus ex machina” trope can be seen in all kinds of stories. When the hero was out of options and facing certain death, an actor dressed as a god would be lowered down onto the stage on a pulley system to save them with divine intervention at the last minute. The trope has its roots in ancient Greek theater. Broadly, a “deus ex machina” is a convenient coincidence that gets a character out of a jam in a story. It’s also one of the most commonly misunderstood, because even the English translation of its Latin name – “god from the machine” – doesn’t define itself very clearly. Or you can head on over to the character analysis for the Lord of the Eagles from The Hobbit.“Deus ex machina” is one of the most commonly cited tropes in blockbuster cinema. Check out Shmoop's analysis of the endings of Moliere's Tartuffe, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, or Theodore Taylor's The Cay for some example. Hence the phrase "god out of the machine," right? Famous Greek guy Euripides loved using this device, like in the ending of his play Medea, in which the title character escapes punishment (for killing her own children!) thanks to the intervention of Helios, the god of the sun.ĭeus ex machina is a popular device in modern works, too, though usually we don't see actual gods fixing the plot. Now, the nitty gritty: in ancient Greek plays, an actor playing a god would literally come down onto the stage via a crane-like machine called a mechane and clean up the plot's sticky mess. A deus ex machina is usually viewed as an artificial or contrived way to end things. ![]() ![]() Deus ex machina is a Latin phrase that, translated literally, means "god out of the machine." Um, does that sound terrifying to you?īefore we give you the nitty gritty on how this Latin phrase got its modern meaning, we'll tell you that deus ex machina refers to an outside force swooping into a play, movie, or novel to neatly tie up the plot, resolve conflict, and generally save the day. ![]()
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