Actually, the Ewok thing is fine, once you get over the teddy-bear thing. They were vicious little devils fighting on their home turf and they’d clearly been preparing this for some time (fifty-ton logs aren’t something you suspend on a whim). Sure, they didn’t have high tech, but so what?
That’s more of a case of the cavalry coming to the rescue. However for a real Deus ex Machina involving Harrison Ford, there’s always Raiders of the Lost Ark. You can’t get much closer to a textbook example than having God smite the Nazis dead.
The worst Deus ex machina in LOTR, IMHO, is the fact that they never really stress the fact that destroying the ring will not only keep it away from Sauron, it will also totally destroy him, his minions and cause his armies to break and run (in fact, I’m not even sure they mention it will weaken Sauron at all). When this ends up being the case, it almost instantly solves every problem the heroes are having. The Wraiths all die, letting the eagles save Sam/Frodo. The army at the Black Gates instantly break (or in the movie, even more imporbably, are swallowed by a giant chasm), saving Aragon & Co, and Sauron dies, ending the War.
Everything is doom and gloom up to that point, even if the heroes win a few battles Sauron is neigh unstoppable. And the best they can do is give Frodo a chance to destroy the ring so that Sauron’s power will be somewhat limited when he takes over the world.
Not quite a Deus Ex Machina, after the Ark chars the Nazi symbols on the crate they put it in. That makes it clear it really has power, and probably isn’t fond of Nazis. It’s not a stretch to expect that a holy artifact of the Jews (that actually works) isn’t healthy for Nazis.
Oh there is no doubt that the Ewoks were a fearsome martial race capable of large scale organization and planning. But so were the Aztecs, and look how they fared against 1500 Spaniards (ok the Tlaxcalteca helped too). Lucas says he was inspired by the Vietnam War, but come on, the NVA had surface to air missiles, not catapults.
In my mind (which is oddly compelled for some reason to both love and criticize Star Wars with great passion) the Ewoks were fighting an important diversionary action, while the Rebel assault force they helped free did most of the overall storm trooper killing.
Ah crap, I just went on a fan wank about Star Wars on the internet.
I like the Deus ex Machina character in the “Jack of the Fables” comics. He’s literally the Deus ex Machina, just appearing, providing something helpful, and then disappearing.
In DC Comics Animal Man series, the author wrote himself into the story to basically apologize to Animal Man for screwing up his life with bad plotting and then rebooted the continuity.
I seem to remember an issue of Superboy where the editors said, “Look, we’ve been setting this in the 1930s since the beginning. It’s now the 1970s and the timeline doesn’t work. So from now on it will be set in the 1950s.”
In Bored of the Rings, the eagle that rescues Frito and Spam actually has the words Deus Ex Machina Arlines lettered on its side.
In the book **The Alienist **by Caleb Carr, Teddy Friggin’ Roosevelt shows up to beat the crap out of everyone (via offshore artillery). Best ending ever, one in which I think I started up a thread trying to figure out what other stories would be improved with the Trust Buster showing up to deliver a pounding to everyone in sight.
And everybody got hit by a bus.
Welcome to the Dark Side.
The wraiths derived their power from the rings. Sauron put his own power in the ring. His control of the armies would be severly damaged after the ring’s destruction. The gates were more than mere doors.
The wraiths dropping made the most sense, it was pretty clear that destroying the ring would fizzle the lesser rings.
But do they ever say that destroying it would get rid of Sauron? Or screw up his control of his armies beyond killing the wraiths. From what I recall, the emphisis is always on destroying the ring to keep Sauron from getting hold of it. The fact that it also solved basically all of the heroes other problems seemed kinda incidentally added at the end.
(Plus it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Its pretty explicitly stated that Sauron needs physical possesion of the ring to use its power. So he doesn’t have it, then how is it keeping him alive? They also mention that Sauron thought the ring was destroyed, suggesting that he doesn’t need it to live).
What about Dorthy’s ruby Birks? They were there all the time and had some associated magic, but nothing remotely hinting that they could wake someone from a coma/send someone home. The whole point of the quest was to see Oz so he could get her back to Kansas. Oz failed miserably and the Good Witch of the Wildgooechaseast didn’t do anything herself.
Say it with me: There’s no place like the Dope … there’s no place like the Dope … there’s no place like the Dope …
You can’t trust the laws of physics in Oz. It’s a crazy alternate universe where the sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side.
Forget it Dorthy, it’s Munchkinland.
Because it IS him to a degree; a major portion of what he is, is in the Ring. He is more powerful with the Ring in his possession, because he can use it’s power, and because one of those powers is to draw from the energies that his old master Morgoth infused into the world. Not that the latter detail is mentioned in the main books.
From the original Funny Games film
The family being tortured by two sadistic teenage boys finally manage to get the upper hand and shoot one of them. But then the film rewinds! And the teen prevents the hostage from shooting him, and tells the camera that he’s not going to let that sort of thing happen.
For the finicky and forgetful, tvtropes lists 4 different levels of DEM.
I also kind of like the Stranger Than Fiction and Adaptation example.
All three are of course somewhat meta.