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Deus ex machina

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For information about the similarly titled album, see Deus Ex Machinae

The term Deus ex machina refers to an unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot. The phrase has been extended to refer to any resolution to a story which does not pay due regard to the story's internal logic and is so unlikely it challenges suspension of disbelief; allowing the author to conclude the story with an unlikely, but more palatable ending. In modern terms the Deus ex machina has also come to describe a person or thing that suddenly arrives and solves a seemingly insoluble difficulty. While in storytelling this might seem unfulfilling, in real life this type of figure might be welcome and heroic.

The notion of Deus ex machina can also be applied to a revelation within a story experienced by a character which involves the individual realizing that the complicated, sometimes perilous or mundane and perhaps seemingly unrelated sequence of events leading up to this point in the story are joined together by some profound concept. Thus the unexpected and timely intervention is aimed at the meaning of the story rather than a physical event in the plot.

The Greek tragedian Euripides was notorious for using this plot device.

Linguistic considerations

The latin phrase (deus ex māchinā, plural deī ex māchinīs) is a calque from the Greek Template:Polytonic ápo mēchanēs theós, (pronounced in Ancient Greek [a po' mɛ:kʰa'nɛ:s tʰe'os]). It originated with Greek and Roman theater, when a mechane would lower actors playing a god or gods on stage to resolve a hopeless situation. Thus, "god comes from the machine".

The pronunciation of the phrase may be a problem in English. The Latin phrase would originally have been pronounced something like ['de.ʊs ex 'ma:kʰɪ.na:], in other words with machina stressed on the first syllable, and with the ch similar to an English k, but English-speaking people may be influenced by the modern English machine ([mə'ʃi:n]), resulting in a mixed pronunciation. See also Latin spelling and pronunciation.

Examples

Template:Spoiler

Literature and comics

Examples in plot

  • In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the kidnapping of Hamlet, alone, by pirates in order to escape his orchestrated death in England is in large part an example of deus ex machina, only toward the climax of the play.
  • Shakespeare's As You Like It also has an example of deux ex machina when Hymenaios comes to the mass wedding to sort out the problems of Rosalind's stay and disguise in the Forest of Arden.
  • In the Edgar Allan Poe story The Pit and the Pendulum, the unnamed narrator has just been pushed over the edge of the bottomless pit when he reaches up and grabs the arm of the general who has led the French army to seize the fortress where the narrator has been imprisoned.
  • In The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton, an alien artifact known as "the Sleeping God" is used to solve a problem which over 3000 pages have been working through, in less than 5 minutes (or an hour, in the "Tinkerbell/Ketton" events).
  • Many comic book characters can be seen as walking dei ex machinis. Wolverine is viewed by many fans of the X-Men comics as such. His mutant powers include an incredibly fast healing ability (making him nearly invincible), enhanced senses, and a skeleton of adamantium, a fictional indestructible metal. Lifeguard, also from the X-Men, is widely considered by her detractors to be the ultimate deus ex. Her mutant ability is to manifest any necessary ability to save lives, which makes her a quick fix for the writers if any characters are stuck in a tight spot. Perhaps the most famous superhero to be labelled a deus ex is Superman himself, as his writers had a tendency to inflate his powers over the years to constantly trump his previous successes. Kryptonite, Superman's only weakness, then became a sort of reverse deus ex machina, which would be called in whenever the writer wanted to explore a conflict which he didn't want Superman to resolve in one punch.
  • In Molière's The School for Wives, Agnès is suddenly found out to have been betrothed all along to another man, which spares her from having to marry Arnolphe.
  • Tintin's encounters involved (more often than not) dei ex machinis to spare his life: heavy weights replaced by wood, a solar eclipse, explosive mines not working etc.
  • In Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain, scientists race to find a way to contain an extremely dangerous extraterrestrial virus. In the end, they fail and the virus escapes into the atmosphere, but conveniently for mankind the virus mutates into a completely harmless form.
  • In Richard Adams' Watership Down, Hazel, after freeing the local farm dog to attack the Efrafans, he is immediately pinned by the farm cat and about to be killed until a young girl resident of the farm intervenes by ordering the cat to back away and then takes Hazel into the country to a ___location which is coinicidentally near his warren. Interestingly enough, the chapter in which the buildup for this event occurs is indeed titled Dea ex Machina.
  • In Sharon Shinn's Novels of Samaria, God really is in the machine when it is revealed that the sender of the rain, medicine and seeds from the sky is in fact a highly advanced spaceship named Jehovah that has been instructed to answer the 'prayers' of the genetically engineered Angels. This also provides an opportunity to employ the literary technique in resolving the different crises of each book.
  • In Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, the ___location of the antimatter is seemingly revealed by a vision from God, a true deus ex machina, however it is later revealed to be a deception by the novel's villain.
  • Clive Cussler, the author of the Dirk Pitt adventure novels, has introduced himself into the plot of a number of his stories so that he may rescue his characters from hopeless situations.
  • In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Antonio's entire life is resting on whether or not his ships come to port. It is heard throughout the story that they have all crashed. Yet in the end, Portia tells him all his ships have come home, with no explanation as to how they survived the storms, or why people had believed them all to have crashed.
  • In J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Frodo and Samwise are rescued by the Eagles as Mordor collapses around them, raising the question of why the Eagles could not have helped more on the outward journey (or taken the Ring to Mordor themselves).
  • In Hajime Kanzaka's novel Shirogane no Majū (白銀の魔獣, the fifth book in his Slayers series of novels, which form the basis for the anime series of the same name), the story's main character and first-person narrator, Lina Inverse, uses a powerful spell known as "Ragna Blade" to defeat Zanaffar in the story's climax. The reader is never informed of the existence of this spell until she casts it, whereupon Lina reveals that she created the spell herself several days beforehand (which occurs within the time frame of the novel's other events).
  • In William Golding's book "Lord of the Flies" the boys are rescued by an officer in a crisp, clean uniform - resulting in the end of all their troubles.
  • The author of the strip figures heavily in Bob and George, often showing up "to see how things are going." In the May 2000 strips, he introduces himself to Proto Man and Roll, and announces he will resurrect Dr. Light, and is subsequently forced by his characters to fill in for Mega Man. In July, he appears again to help Mega Man and Proto Man defeat the seemingly invincible Yellow Demon, and subsequently gets very drunk and attempts to proposition Roll before passing out. In September, he is kidnapped and killed by Dr. Wily, ending the Mega Man strips. In October, he "wakes up," reverting to the Mega Man strips, and in November, reappears once again to stop Mega Man's irrational running, and thus start a chain of events to introduce Bob and reintroduce George to the series.

References to the phrase

Cinema and television

Examples in plot

  • Possibly the least satisfactory deus ex machina to the audience is the revelation that all or large parts of what has gone before were "all a dream". This was perhaps most notoriously used in Dallas, where an entire season was "unwritten" to allow the resurrection of a character who had been killed off.
  • In The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) acts as a deus ex machina, in that his timely arrival provides a means for the machines and the humans to unite after they have been fighting for centuries, and a truce to be called. With intentional irony, the machine figurehead is named the Deus Ex Machina. It is voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson.
  • In The Wizard of Oz, just before Dorothy and her companions reach the Emerald City, the Wicked Witch of the West produces a giant field of poppies that puts Dorothy, Toto and the Cowardly Lion to sleep. The Scarecrow and the Tin Man cry for help, and Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, produces a snow shower that wakes everyone up. Also, in the scene where Dorothy misses the Wizard's balloon, Glinda appears and tells Dorothy she had the power to return home the entire time, meaning the Ruby Slippers. When the Scarecrow asks in disbelief why didn't Glinda tell Dorothy about the Slippers, Glinda casually responds that Dorothy would not have believed her and had to learn it for herself. It is difficult to think Dorothy would not have believed Glinda after all the strange things that had happened to her in Oz.
  • In the episode "Operation: Annihilate!" from the first season of Star Trek: The Original Series, Spock is infected by an alien parasite which has overwhelmed a Federation colony world. Discovering that intense light will kill the parasites, Spock volunteers to be exposed to this light. He is cured, but also blinded. In the end, he miraculously recovers his sight, explaining that as a Vulcan he has nictitating membranes that protect his eyes from the intense solar radiation on his homeworld.
  • In the television series Doctor Who, in the final episode of the 2005 season (The Parting of the Ways), the Doctor's companion Rose forces the TARDIS console open, and her subsequent access to the time vortex grants her manipulative powers over time and space, which she uses to rescue the Doctor. This is a deus ex machina in both the traditional literary sense (an ending is contrived by appealing to arbitrary, previously undisclosed elements) and a humorous one (Rose gets her godlike abilities from the TARDIS machine). See also Boom Town.
  • The seventh (and final) season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer concludes with a series of unlikely events to save the world from the near-impossible to stop evil. Buffy receives an amulet from Angel which Spike uses conveniently to destroy the Hellmouth and the scythe used to activate every slayer is introduced by making the villains dig it up for no real reason.
  • In V: The Final Battle mini-series, when the mothership is about to destroy Earth, a half-alien/half-human girl comes out of nowhere and puts her hands on the control panel and starts glowing and the threat is eliminated.
  • In the film Jurassic Park 3, when the main characters are fleeing and at the end of the film, as soon as they arrive at the beach, the US Navy arrives to stablize the situation and kill the dinosaurs, a blatant D.E.M.
  • In the Disney movie The Emperor's New Groove, a chase occurs where the main character, the Emperor Kuzco (who has been turned into a llama) and his friend Pacha are being pursued back to the palace by Kuzco's evil advisor Yzma and her assistant Kronk. During the chase, Yzma and Kronk are struck by lightning, and fall into a gorge, leaving Kuzco and Pacha seemingly free to return to the palace. Upon their return, they discover that Yzma and Kronk are already there, and when Kuzco asks Yzma how they got back before they did, she looks confused and asks Kronk. Kronk says "Beats me. By all accounts it doesn't make sense." This is a humorous use of the DEM.
  • In Dragonball Z, a technique called the Genki Dama, or Spirit Bomb, is often used by Goku to destroy a foe who could not be beaten by normal fighting styles.
  • At the end of the anime Mai-HiME the previously "dead" characters are brought back to life in order to fight the final battle by Mashiro, whose powers were supposedly sealed and under the control of the Dark Lord.

Examples for comic effect in plot

This is not specifically the use of the device in comedy, but the specific comedic use of a deus ex machina that at least some of the audience is expected to appreciate as such.

  • Monty Python and the Holy Grail employs the device, in combination with "breaking the fourth wall" in several places. While attempting to enter a cave, the knights of the Round Table are attacked by a bloodthirsty rabbit which they can't overcome, but they manage to kill it with the Holy Hand-grenade of Antioch, which has been heretofore unmentioned (though this is only preparatory to the main comedic deus ex machina). Having entered the cave the knights are then attacked by the Ravenous Black Beast of Argh, with no apparent hope of survival. At this point, it is revealed by the narrator that the film's animator suffered a fatal heart attack, obliterating the animated monster. Later, the film's final battle sequence is suddenly interrupted by the appearance of the police, who immediately arrest the entire on-screen principal cast of medieval characters, allegedly for murder.
  • Monty Python's Life of Brian also utilises the Deus Ex Machina for comedic effect. In one scene Brian falls from the top of a high tower, only to be saved by alien space ship that happened to be passing. He is taken on a joy ride through the solar system before the space ship is shot down and crashes at the foot of the very tower he had just fallen from. A bystander who witnesses all this remarks, "Ooh, you lucky bastard!"
  • In the cartoon The Angry Beavers, at the end of the episode Moby Dopes, during which the two main characters are terrorised by a Killer Whale in their pond, it is suddenly eaten by a Tyrannosaurus rex. One of the characters then exclaims "Where in the name of dues ex machina did that T-Rex come from?"
  • In the Futurama episode Godfellas, Bender is returned to Earth by God after being stranded in space with no hope of rescue. He crashes to Earth a few feet in front of Fry and Leela, provoking the response "This is by a wide margin the least likely thing that has ever happened" from Leela.
  • In the British sitcom Bottom, Ritchie and Eddie are trapped atop of a crumbling ferris wheel. Facing certain death they pray for their lives - literally. God's hand promptly appears and Ritchie and Eddie, looking stunned climb aboard. Normality is restored when they announce to the audience they don't believe in God; the hand dissappears and they fall to their doom.

References to the phrase

  • At the end of the film Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, the treasure chest containing the main character's gambling winnings has the phrase "Deus ex Machina" written on it. (The joke being that the prize money will be the thing that solves the problem in a flash)
  • Deus Ex Machina is the name of the ship Joel Robinson uses to escape from the Satellite of Love on the television show Mystery Science Theater 3000.
  • An episode of Stargate SG-1 is called Ex Deus Machina. This is a play on words to mean "former god".
  • In Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water Deus Ex Machina is the name of one of the flying ships that Gargoiles from the Neo-Atlantides used to attack the Neo-Nautilus.
  • The 19th episode of the TV show Lost is called Deus Ex Machina. In the episode Locke dreams about a crashed plane, located somewhere on the island. He believes that if he finds the plane, the answer to his problems will present themselves, specifically how to open a mysterious hatch buried under the ground. The plane is found, but does not directly reveal any answers, and instead leads to the death of Boone; however, at the end of the episode a bright light shines from the hatch. The suggestion is that Boone has been "sacrificed" to the island, in the fashion of an angry god.
  • In Season 2 of Sex and the City, when Samantha is no longer blackballed thanks to Leonardo Di Caprio "Ex Machina"
  • In The Simpsons episode Thank God It's Doomsday, after the rapture occurs and Homer Simpson is taken to heaven, he asks God to reverse what has happened. God agrees, then proclaims "Deus ex Machina" and normality is restored magically.
  • In Olive, the Other Reindeer, a movie by Matt Groening, Olive finds a package marked, "To: Olive, From: Deus ex Machina". It contains a metal file which she uses to free herself from captivity in the back of the evil postman's truck.
  • In The Daily Show segment, "This Week in God", Stephen Colbert uses "The God Machine" as a physical, floating button to introduce the topics.

Video Games

Examples in plot

  • In the Tekken series of video games, several members of the Mishima family have been the victims of acts of violence that would kill almost any human being, and very often that would be the resolution of the conflict which the game was based around. For the character Kazuya in Tekken 4, the Deus Ex Machina is the G Corporation, had "brought him back to life" after being thrown into an active volcano. The other DEM is the so-called Devil Gene, that apparently renders the bearer immortal.
  • In Final Fantasy VII, the end seems inevitable when Meteor is about to crash into the planet, and the only thing that can stop Meteor, Holy, is not strong enough to deflect it, and Meteor barrels through Holy. Just when the end seems near, the planet itself, apparently at the behest of Aeris, uses its Lifestream (the planet's life force) to stop Meteor, which (apparently, given the after-credits ending of the game and the sequel) worked, and the planet is saved (at a certain cost). This can be seen as a god as directly interfering (as the planet's lifeforce can be considered the game's god).
  • In Metal Gear Solid, the ending finds Solid Snake and a companion (either Otacon or Meryl Silverburgh, depending on a choice the player makes) trapped under a crashed Jeep after attempting to escape Liquid Snake and the bombing of the island. Liquid, armed with an assault rifle, staggers forward, about to kill the two. The deus ex machina occurs when a virus known as "FOX-DIE" (unknowingly injected into Solid Snake to spread throughout the base, killing the terrorists and silencing the hostages) activates, causing Liquid to suffer a fatal heart attack. It is later revealed in a special section of the sequel, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, that Naomi Hunter, the woman who programmed FOX-DIE to kill Solid Snake because he killed her brother, Gray Fox, set FOX-DIE to randomly activate at no predictable time after it came into contact with Snake's DNA. Liquid and Solid were both clones of the same man, and therefore genetic twins.
  • The ending to Conker's Bad Fur Day is a deus ex machina. While Conker is battling the "alien," he gets help from an imaginary game programmer who gives him weapons.
  • In Xenogears, Deus is an extremely advanced intelligent weapon of mass destruction, created by an advanced civilisation of humans to destroy entire planets. It is made of both artificial and organic components. When it crash-landed on a planet, Deus was able to populate it with humans by using its organic replication plant in order to produce sufficient genetic material to rebuild itself. Therefore, God really was in the Machine, since Deus created the humans of that planet.
  • Throughout the Resident Evil series, there's a recurring theme in which the player's character receives a rocket launcher or a similarly powerful weapon from an ally while fighting against an otherwise indestructible creature (usually the game's final boss). In the original Resident Evil, the player as (either Jill or Chris) receives a rocket launcher from a helicopter pilot (Brad Vickers) while fighting against the final boss, the Tyrant. Likewise, in Resident Evil 2, during either of the "2nd scenarios" (as Leon or Claire), the player receives a rocket launcher from Ada while fighting the Tyrant 003 (a homage to this scene was featured in Resident Evil 4). Resident Evil 3: Nemesis and Resident Evil Code: Veronica featured similar situations, in which a weapon needed by the player was conveniently located nearby during the final battle (a railcannon and linear launcher respectively). During the events of Resident Evil 4, Leon and Ashley are implanted with the "Las Plagas" parasites by the main villain, Saddler, and it isn't until the very end in which the existence of a machine which destroys the parasites internally is revealed.
  • One character in Kingdom Hearts II, Naminé, has a Deus ex Machina background. Rather than simply discarding Naminé as a character, she was revealed to be Kairi's Nobody. However, the 'nobody-creaton' process described in the game makes it impossible for Naminé to be Kairi's Nobody. Nomura explained this as "Naminé is a special kind of Nobody." This explantation is a deus ex machina, allowing Naminé to exist, even without explaining her 'special' status.
  • In Mega Man Zero, Zero is seemingly unable to defeat a boss, but an unknown spirit gives him a sword that can.
  • In Star Fox Assault, Peppy Hare crashes the Great Fox into the aparoid homeworld's shield, in order for the Star Fox team to get through. The Great Fox is shown exploding, seemingly with no way out for Peppy, but in the epligoue, it was revealed that Peppy miraculously escaped through some sort of escape pod.

References to the phrase

  • A strange and in some ways groundbreaking game called Deus Ex Machina, created by a company called Automata was released for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum in October 1984, and ported to other platforms (ex., Commodore 64) later.
  • In Maken X, on the opening screen the words "deus ex machina" are heard, and the premise is a sword with the ability to control people and take any form, everyone it "brain jacks" is left in a sort of purgatory within the sword itself.
  • In Star Wars: Republic Commando, the final level aboard the 1 Acclamator-class assault transport Prosecutor is called Deux Ex Machina. The player's commando team is required to defend itself against incoming droid squads, while slicing several computer terminals. Slicing the terminals turns on the Prosecutor's automated turbolaser turrets, enabling the Republic ship to defend herself against a Trade Federation Droid Control Ship.
  • In Final Fantasy X-2, Rikku has a dressphere named Deus Ex Machina. But in that world there are lots of robots called Machina and Rikku's people are the only ones who use them so it's more a reference to her people helping her in battle than to God.
  • In Armored Core 2, Deus Ex Machina is the name of an enemy 'AC' that you fight in arena mode.
  • In Advance Wars Dual Strike, Von Bolt's Power is named Ex Machina.
  • In Mega Man X: Command Mission, the enemy boss Great Redips possesses an attack called Deus Ex Machina, which hurls several meteors on the player's party.
  • In World of Warcraft, the Paladin class of characters possesses an ability termed Divine Intervention, which both nominally and functionally references deus ex machina. The ability sacrifices the paladin to protect the targeted player from harm and remove the targeted player from combat. This ability represents the interference of an external force to effectively save a player from otherwise certain death.

Music

See also

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