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. Send us feedback about these examples.“Deus ex machina” is one of the most commonly cited tropes in blockbuster cinema. These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'deus ex machina.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 8 June 2011 See More Matthew Continetti, National Review, 18 June 2022 Whereas some fantasists use magic as a deus ex machina which transforms their narrative into farce in short order, at his point a little numinous wonder would do the characters of the A Song of Ice and Fire a world of good. 2023 Absent a deus ex machina in which a winged chariot is sent from the heavens to lower gas prices, end the war in Ukraine, lock up violent criminals, and secure the southern border, House Democrats are doomed. 2023 All certainly seems lost.that is, until a deus ex machina in the form of Luke Skywalker arrives right in time. 2021 The goose is the deus ex machina! - Dan Snierson, EW.com, 20 Mar. New York Times, 9 June 2022 These days, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming our version of the deus ex machina, promising to swoop in and solve our most pressing business problems. 2022 There are no deus ex machina cheats. Leslie Felperin, The Hollywood Reporter, 14 Sep. 2022 And yet the script (by the film’s director Ol Parker and co-writer Daniel Pipski) contrives to seat them next to each other at a series of events, like a mischievous deus ex machina with little imagination but magical command over seating placements. David Marques, The New Republic, 15 Nov. Recent Examples on the Web Throughout the book, Webster functions more as a symbol of this idea than as a protagonist, disappearing for long stretches of the narrative only to reappear, deus ex machina–style, with a rousing speech defending national unity against growing secessionist influence.
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