Worst examples of deus ex machina

[Statalyzer]

Books or movies. . . .

Mr. and Mrs. Smith - being surrounded by like 50 enemies with guns, how do the writers decide to have them get out of this one? They don't, they just have all 50 guys blaze away at them and then suddenly they're alive and they get away. They didn't even make an attempt to come up with an explanation.

 

[MilkmanDan]

The treasure chest in Dodgeball.

 

[TheGallopinGoose]

^
Now that I think about it, a lot of Dodgeball is bad deus ex machina.

 

[mia1994]

War of the Worlds... one second the aliens are routing our *** and the next they are dead.

 

[jcdenton]

In Adaptation, when the alligator shows up out of ******* nowhere.

 

[Horn89]

"War of the Worlds" had an incredible combination of huge budget and horrible plot.

2 hours of running from the monsters, a feel-good family-comes-together plot, then all the monsters suddenly drop dead. The end. Roll credits. Ugh.

 

[mia1994]

The last half of Adaptation was an overt stab at mainstream Hollywood, and as such the devices used were an intentional criticism of the standard of modern film. Which is to say, since that was tounge in cheek to begin with, I'm not sure it can be held as a bad example.

 

[Fetoid]

The crappy end to the theatrical version of The Abyss.

- "So, they're at the bottom of the ocean, the they're all going to die, and WW3 may start over their heads. Lets have the aliens surface, save the world, magically depcompress the submariners, make no explanation of any of this, and then roll credits!"
- "sounds great! Thats a wrap!"

 

[Hornin Hong Kong]

water vulnerable aliens in signs.

 

[Ramathorn]

I don't have a problem with the h20 thing. I mean, they're from another planet. They could be allergic to water or anything in the water.

 

[gsoda3]

any hardy boys book.

 

[TheGallopinGoose]

The deaths of both Wicked Witches in The Wizard of Oz

 

[HornsOverIthaca]

Tartuffe

 

[Xminus6]

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[The Eyes of Texas]

Both teams wearing home jerseys in every single freaking game in 'Any Given Sunday'...they supposedly had all these awesome NFL consultants, and they couldn't figure out that the visiting team wears white?

 

[Statalyzer]

I do not think deus ex machina means what you think it means.

 

[mia1994]

deus = Dudes
ex = in
machina = Jerseys

right?

 

[The Eyes of Texas]

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[Art Vandelay]

I won't argue that the War of the Worlds remake was not good. However, the aliens dying from human viruses is the same thing that happened in the original movie, so I would assume that was taken straight from the book by H.G. Wells (I say assume because I've never read the book.)

So while the movie ending may be a bad example of deus ex machina, it's just staying true to the original story.

In other words, blame H.G. Wells

 

[mia1994]

I do blame Wells. That said, I also blame the directors of the movies for not finding a way to subtly show the illness increasing through the movie. The directors and producers chose how the story will be told (or retold in this case) and seem to like to just roll with this one. I think it is a stupid stupid mistake.

 

[Art Vandelay]

Completely agree, Mia. It's not like it was going to be some big surprise ending (unless you're totally unfamiliar with the story) so why not provide a little bit more explanation, hinting at the aliens susceptibility to human viruses, etc.

 

[jcdenton]

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[jcdenton]

How about at the end of the Planet of the Apes remake, where the monkey shows up in the time machine at the perfect time.

If I remember correctly, the monkey could have appeared at any of an infinite number of different moments in time throughout a span of an enormous number of years... yet it just happened to appear at the exact instant that it needed to in order to save Marky Mark.

It wasn't just a 1 in a million or 1 in a billion coincidence, but something like a 1 in 10^99999999999 coincidence.

 

[Longhorn_Fan68]

Wouldn't the water in the air harm those aliens as well?

but I digress,

The worst example is in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They don't even show them surviving the final rush. They lived right? Right?

 

[alden]

How about superman traveling backwards in time?

Also seems to happen about every week on Lost, which I think greatly detracts from the show.

 

[The Eyes of Texas]

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[Franco]

The movie "War of the Worlds" is faithful to the book, more or less. Aliens invade, conquer, then one day they just die. So don't blame the movie, blame the author of the book. Plus it's not a case of "deus ex machina".

 

[Ramathorn]

Sure, maybe intergalactic space is advanced for us, but maybe not the space dudes. Let's say we can touch down on Jupiter for some reason. yeah, we can know the composition and guess it won't kill us, but how do you know the long term effects an unknown substance may have on you?



Another one is Daniel winning the tourney in Karate Kid. No sir.

 

[NoOne]

frogs raining from the sky in magnolia.

 

[Hans Sprungfeld]

when the fact that that hot chick had the baby straightened the fat loser up and made everything alright in "knocked up," i called it a "deus ex vagina."