Adaptation is a great movie. The aligator is somewhat of a DEM; but then the whole point of the ending is that it’s supposed to be bad, cheesey and pandering. The opposite of everything that was originally intended.
To SuperNova and KGS, well Excuuuuuuuse-me.
I was just trying come up with, what came to mind, as a completely implausible plot turn that a script writer uses when s/he has obviously written himself into a corner.
I thought that DEM = extremely contrived plot device.
Alright, how about Raiders of the Lost Ark then?
It turns out that when the Ark unleashes its fury, all you have to do is… Close your eyes???
This was never suggested anywhere else in the movie and doesn’t even fit in whatever logic could be used for wanting the Ark in the first place.
So does this qualify?
Incidentally, I think this is a great discussion. And for the record, I did take a good chunk out of the assignment I was supposed to be working on.
Monty Python and The Holy Grail: The final climactic battle by Arthur and his knights is aborted when the British riot police arrest them all and take them away. Funny on it’s own, but my understanding is that the filmmaker’s budget ran out and so they had to improvise an ending.
Didn’t Greek gods often take active interest and be mentioned beforehand in the play? (I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong) For me a DEX is when the writer paints himself into a corner and then magically fixes it all that violates the rules established before hand. Like gods watching the hero get into scrape after scrape and do nothing but when it’s unresolvable in the end THEN they descend from the clouds
Yes, it is. But not all contrived plot devices are DEX’s.
The problem with a DEX is that it takes all responsibility for resolving the problem off the hero’s shoulders. The hero needs to find out what works, what doesn’t work, and eventually (hopefully) come up with some insight that solves the problem. As long as his solution follows logically from what he’s learned in the story, it works.
So, Bruce Willis’s idea in “The Sixth Sense”, how he tells Cole to listen to the ghosts instead of being afraid, is NOT a DEX at all. It works, because he’s learned it from what he’s seen and done throughout the whole story. After all…he’s already dead. 
Raiders is a bit more iffy, but at least it’s Indy himself who comes up with the idea to close his eyes, not the voice of his dead grandmother or something. (But Raiders is a film that shouldn’t be taken that seriously, anyway.)
A classic DEX that does work would be the ending of Lord of the Flies. Not in terms of story – because Ralph needs rescuing from outside forces instead of solving his own dilemma – but in terms of social commentary: The adults ended the children’s game and saved them, but…who will save the adults from their OWN war games??
MP&THG is another classic DEX, which leaves the viewer thinking, “What the HELL was that?!?” – but since that’s exactly what the filmmakers wanted, it works too.
KGS,
I (needless to say) disagree on the Sixth Sense. What did Bruce learn about the ghosts during the movie? Nothing only Cole’s terrifying experiences with them. None of which pointed to their desire to impart information just cause stress and pain. IF he had learned that he was a ghost and realized he was using Cole to work through his own problems and then applied that to the rest of the story that would have been one thing. As it stands however he just says “oh talk to them it’ll be all right” and the ghosts go from being terrifying to someone Cole talks to before plays with no stress. (BTW there’s some scenes cut out of the film that does A LOT to help the plot along and reduces my complaint but as the movie stands without those scenes it’s DEX IMHO)
and yes I like to use () alot. 
Of the Greek playwrights whose work has come down to us, Euripides probably makes the most flagrant use of the deus ex machina. See his Orestes, in which Apollo shows up at the very end and sets everything improbably aright, even pairing Orestes off with the very girl he was about to murder in cold blood!
Interestingly, the extreme absurdity of this ending seems to have been a deliberate attempt on the part of Euripides to criticize the absurdity of the use of the deus ex machina ending itself.
Queen Elizabeth played something of a deus ex machina role in Shakespeare in Love, although I wouldn’t consider her a true DEM since 1) her character did appear earlier in the film and 2) although she is a big help to our heroes, she certainly does not solve all their problems.
I nominate Stephen King as the, err, well, king of DEM.
Off the top of my head I can think of two novels he’s written whose climactic end scenes were completed thanks in no small part to an outside, supernatural force involving itself.
The Stand literally has “The Hand of God” come down and detonate the nuke when our heroes were helpless, and The Tommyknockers, IIRC, has God help the guy with the plate in his head escape on his dirtbike to the alien ship when he otherwise would never have good his escape.
IIRC, it was the extra eyelid that prevented him from going blind. Still entirely applicable, though.
Nope. They were in the middle of a war, and it had been well established that there were Allied forces scattered all through the area. Plus, they were specifically holding that bridge until reinforcements arrived. Thus, when the reinforcements finally show up, it cannot be a DEM.
Not a DEM, because it had been established from the beginning that he could use the machine, and that even untrained, he was still powerful enough to kill the creeps in the black trenchcoats. Plus, they had established that it was possible to implant memories in people, and that the doctor who specialized in that was not entirely loyal to the bad guys. All the elements for the resolution were already there: the climax just brought them together.
Borderline, and it depends on how the information was presented. If it was established early on that destroying the book would kill the demons, and the characters were somehow prevented from destroying the book earlier, then it is not a DEM. If it was never mentioned before, and then in the final showdown, when the hero is surrounded by slavering hordes of demons, he accidentally knocked a candle over onto the book and all the demons went “poof” then it would be a classic DEM.
Nope, not even close. In fact, it’s an entirely logical approach (and perfectly in character for a psychiatrist) to resolving the dilemma, “Why do I keep seeing dead people?” “Well, have you tried asking them?” Willis suggests this as an approach to dealing with them, because nothing else the boy has tried has worked. The approach works. Therefore, Willis learns that the ghosts can be talked to. The ghosts in the film are a mystery. There’s no indication at all as to why they’re there. Most of them don’t even seem malevolent. Cole has been reacting to their appearance, which is generally ghastly, but Willis teaches him to behave maturely: to not judge them on how they appear, but on how they act. Certainly, Cole would not be half as calm as he was talking to the dead schoolteacher as he would confronting the slave’s ghost in his schoolmate’s attic, but he has learned that just because someone has half their face burned off, it doesn’t mean they’re bad people.
No again. Kenny’s wish comes after the resolution. Saddam is defeated, Armageddon averted, and the bloody American-Canadian war halted. Then Kenny makes his wish. If Kenny’s wish itself had resolved any of those plot points, it would be a DEM. As it was, it was just a way of tying up a whole buncha loose ends all at once.
Nope, although this one could be considered a little dodgy. See, the idea that not looking at the Ark of the Covenent will prevent your pyrotechnical death doesn’t come from the movie. It comes from the Bible, where people are regularly struck down by heavenly fire for daring to befoul the Ark with their unworthy gaze. Granted, this isn’t exactly common knowledge, and could have been set up better earlier in the movie, but it is in line with commonly held beliefs about the nature of the Ark. It’s not a premise that was invented for the very end of the movie to resolve the central conflict, it’s a premise that predates the movie by thousands of years.
Technically, a DEM has to help the hero overcome an obstacle and achieve his goal, not permanently thwart it. Although it could be considered a DEM for that French guy in the castle, but I don’t think it works like that.
In addition to that, the Queen had agreed to officiate a sizeable wager over wether this William Shakespeare character could write believable romance, and would certainly want to be able to observe if this was true first-hand. Since Lord Philip of Morris was leaving for North America later that day, this would be the only opportunity to settle the bet. So it makes perfect sense for her to be there. Besides which, the whole scene was likely meant as a reference to Henry V disguising himself as a common soldier to guage his army’s morale.
Incidentally, I opened this thread to nominate Chamber of Secrets (the movie) myself. The ending was so ham-handed and groan-inducing it pretty much killed any further interest in the franchise for me. Haven’t read any of the books, but if that ending was true to the original (and, from everything I’ve heard, it is), I don’t much want to read them, either.
The Stand is another really good one.
The Stand was not a Deus Ex Machina at all.
The theme of Good vs. Evil and God vs. Satan was prevelent throughout the entire novel.
Almost any mystery novel written by a British author. I never know what the hell is going on and then at the end somebody you never heard of turns out to be the killer.
Or is it just me?
Yes, those were prevalent themes throughout the story, but using a physical manifestation of the “Hand of God” to swoop down and blow up all the bad guys with the conveniently placed nuclear missile does not follow the novel’s internal logic.
Personally I think King realized just how long the book was getting and couldn’t think of a quick way out and settled on the DEM.
I’ll grant you dark city. I still think it was lame. Good movie otherwise though
We’ll have to agree to disagree on Sixth Sense.
As for Evil Dead the only clue you have that destroying the book is that one of the demons smokes when the book gets hot (this is about 10 mins before the end of the movie while the main character is getting the crap kicked out of him by the demon)
Cool World.
One of the major angsty points of the movie is that Brad Pitt’s character can never get it on with his girlfriend, because he’s human, and she’s a “doodle” (cartoon). If ever a human and a doodle did the deed, the doodle would become human for a while, but then the boundaries between the real world and the “cool world” would break down, and both would be destroyed. Kim Basinger’s character (“Holli Would,” I think) seduces a human, and Pitt must save the worlds.
At the end of the movie, Pitt’s character has succeeded, but Holli managed to kill him in the process. Pitt’s girlfriend weeps over his body, but then asks if Holli was human or doodle when she killed him. When told that Holli was a doodle at the time, Pitt’s girlfriend exclaims, “But if a human is killed by a doodle, that means he is reborn as a doodle!” And at that moment, Brad Pitt comes back to cartoon life. They immediately start to make out…
WTF?!?
Why didn’t she just stab him in his sleep some night?
Basically, yeah. In On Writing, King describes how he got 500 pages into The Stand and got stuck – there were too many plot threads going on at once. After weeks of writer’s block, he finally solved the problem by planting the bomb in Nick Andros’s closet (killing half the main characters) and then following up with the A-bomb in Las Vegas (killing the rest.)
Since The Stand reads like a classic Greek tragedy (with God & Satan standing in for the Pantheon) the A-bomb ending is certainly a DEXM in the purest sense.
Well, I stand corrected, then.
RE: The Sixth Sense
Malcom (Bruce Willis) doesn’t tell Cole to ask the ghosts what they want because he thinks Cole is supposed to help them, and will therefore no longer be haunted. He doesn’t believe that the ghosts are real, but a hallucination Cole has been having. Malcom, by telling Cole to ask them what they want, is just using a therapuetic technique to help Cole come to terms with whatever truama he is repressing by creating these ghosts (which any Psychiatrist would assume to be subconscious manifestations of internal fears or trauma), ie Cole has repressed fears that he hasn’t dealt with that are manifesting themselves through these hallucinations. By dealing with the fears directly, by talking to the ghosts that represent them, Malcom is hoping to get them out in the open so that Cole can deal with them directly. That this type of therapy leads to a resolution of the problem in a different way than the character exptected isn’t a DEX, as it grows organically out of the interaction of the two main characters.
Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974) had sort-of a deus ex ending. The outlaws have managed to avoid the cops during the ridiculously long car chase that makes up the last 30 minutes of the film, and just as they’re starting to smile and celebrate the fact that they made it, kaBLAM!, their charger gets creamed by a freight train in what are literally the final seconds of the movie. There isn’t a moment where the driver is seen trying (and failing) to beat the train: the tracks just seem to magically appear.
For some reason, the director just couldn’t let them escape. It’s straight out of the Hays code playbook.
I saw Basic recently, and I remember it had a deus ex machina kind of ending where things suddenly fit together in a way that cannot really be predicted, though I don’t remember exactly how it worked.
The Lord of the Rings (the book, and I assume the third movie) ends with a deus ex machina–more of a diabolus ex machina–when Gollum bites the Ring off Frodo’s finger and falls into the Cracks of Doom. (If this is a spoiler for you, then shame.) It’s my opinion that Tolkien needed to keep Gollum alive for some strange philosophical/theological reason of his, and the ending is his way of justifying something that makes little sense otherwise. I know that “it was pity that stayed [Frodo’s] hand…pity, and mercy…”, but Gollum gives ample reason for the hobbits to kill him, and really rather little justification for them keeping him alive. I even think it’s more in Sam’s character for him to kill Gollum (unless he’s only not doing it to obey Frodo). Gollum does quite a few very bad things that would certainly make me (or any characters under my control) want to kill him. You can’t even justify it by saying he showed them the secret way into Mordor via Cirith Ungol, since Gollum knows about Shelob; he’s trying to get the hobbits killed, not to help them. I forget exactly why Tolkien needed to keep Gollum alive, but I think the reason is given in one of the Road to Middle-Earth books (or maybe it’s Letters). The deus ex machina ending is simply a justification for that reason.
Surely the Deus Ex Machina in LOTR is the arrival of the giant eagles to rescue Sam and Frodo?
And in The Stand, doesn’t the incarnation of the Devil actually explicitly say that now people will believe in him?