Worst use of Deus Ex Machina you've ever seen

[remnant_phoenix]

The ending of Final Fantasy XIII.

Then again, maybe it wasn't dues ex machina and the build-up explanation was buried in that ancillary text-log bullshit known as the Datalog...

Ungh... It's like the story plotters WANTED to tell the story as ineffectively as possible.

I wonder if anyone at Square-Enix has ever actually studied Creative Writing at all.

 

[Azex]

How did Squall survive the shard of ice to the chest in FFVIII?

Some think he didn't [http://squallsdead.com/]

Wow... that's scary. Thanks for sharing 0_0

replayed it with this in mind.
Best FF ever if his theory is true...thing is...it really really could be

 

[remnant_phoenix]

Final Fantasy XIII's ending. I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't played it, but the main characters basically do the stupidest thing and end up getting saved by a ridiculous plot device they had no way of predicting would occur. It was the stupidest ending seen in a long while (although the CGI was very pretty)

SPOILERS:

Okay I don't want to give too much away but the basic plot of FFXIII is about the main villain trying to trick the main cast into doing action X, or they suffer a terrible fate. The protagonists don't want to do action X, so...... they proceed to directly do EXACTLY what the main villain told them to do. It's like if the Main Villain had said "Ahah! My master plan is for you to push that button!", and the main characters said "No! We won't push that button! Now, charge and push that button!" It was literally the stupidest plan ever, and the only reason they get saved is due to some deus ex machina nonsense they couldn't have predicted.

I was incredibly annoyed at the ending of FFXIII. What a terrible story.

THANK you.

 

[Scrubiii]

The Dark Knight. Batman accelerates his motorcycle, the Joker stands in the street. Last moment, Batman decides not to run him over, and we see that the Joker did not try to move out of the way. Really? This one thing and everything after it wouldn't have happened. Is this a deus ex machina?

No, not a deus ex machina at all. It's been well established that Batman forbids himself from killing anyone, and Joker knew that better than anyone else.

Is this one better? Lord of the Rings, the eagle saves Gandalf from the Tower in Isengard. If you just look at the movie, not once before eagles are mentioned. So Gangalf, clearly in a situation nothing we know of can help him, this eagle appears and saves him.

mfG diebane

If you start to look too deep into how the eagles could have affected the plot of lord of the rings, the whole storyline unravels, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yqVD0swvWU

EDIT: Damn ninja'd

 

[ACman]

I can't believe no one has mentioned Battlestar Galactica, and it's a painfully literal use of it too. So disappointing after such a great show.

Ahh the joy of Battlestar Ex Machina.

The series has ending where there is revealed to be a literal intervening god leading everybody to a happy verdant paradise where they can live happily ever after and who is used to resolve questions about several plot points and characters,

Also it takes Deus Ex Machina literally and features a religion that comes from a race of machines.....



Bra-vo!

 

[The_ModeRazor]

The Bible, naturally. I mean, how the fuck is it possible that this hasn't been posted yet?

 

[Frybird]

Sorry if they had been mentioned.

In my case, a three way draw:

- Click

Spoiler

The "Auto Fast Forward" Option of the Magic Remote that ruins Adam Sandlers Life by skipping over almost the rest of his life and turning him into a complete Asshole because the "Autopilot"-Sandler during the Time-Skips is set to put work above everything else, teaching him a lesson about how family is important, life's downsides are important, et cetera et cetera.
Only that these lessons feel mindnumbingly forced since the "Auto" Options cannot be switched off, and he can't get rid of the Remote and it's effects on his life. And of course, he knew none of that.

So if Adam Sandler was given a manual for his magic remote, or warned about certain settings, or at least if the magic remote would've worked logically, there would be not (much) harm done and Sandler would've gotten a set of cool godlike powers to make his life more awesome as long as he is careful about using them.

That feels especially stupid when Sandler is given a second chance and recieves the magic remote a second time, only to do the "right thing" and throw it away instantly, despite him knowing of it's dangers.
He could've easily settled for the shown-to-be-harmless "Pause" and "Rewind/Review" Functions and immensely improved his life.

- The Mist

Spoiler

Yes, Life's a ***** sometimes, and in real life, shit happens. But even under real life conditions it's a stretch that the Protagonists never seen or heard that the all-problem-solving military was right behind them

- Code Geass Season 1
Probably the laziest attempt i've ever seen to stretch a series into another season. The reasons a well-rounded happy ending goes to shit are sketchy at best, because even a protagonist as arrogant and self-indulgent as Lelouch wouldn't be that stupid for no reason.

 

[Tdc2182]

The war of the worlds?

I didn't really care for that one though. How about every fight in Dragonball Z ever?

I GOT ONE!!! The movie Signs!!!

*SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!*

1)An advanced alien race invades Earth, a planet that is covered in FUCKING WATER. What are they weak to? WATER!!! And it just so happens the daughter like to leave glasses of the shit lying around!

2)The son has asthma the one and only condition that could've protected him when he gets a shot of poison up the nose at the end!

3) Mel Gibson's wife while dying tell him to tell his brother to "swing away", which is exactly what he needs to hear when the alien attacks the house.

...Deus Ex Machinas up the fuggin ass!

Eh hem...

That's more of a prophecy twist [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ProphecyTwist] than a Deus ex Machina.

 

[Tdc2182]

The Bible, naturally. I mean, how the fuck is it possible that this hasn't been posted yet?

The fucking bible? Are you high?

Care to explain how that makes any sense?

 

[Frybird]

Ghostbusters has a good one.

To paraphrase:

"I think we should cross the streams."

"You said don't cross the streams."

"Nah this time it'll be rad."

Streams cross, everything explodes with mashmellow, "bye, bye" other dimensional monster.

Well, correct me if i'm wrong, it's specifically said that crossing the streams may cause a reaction that destroys the universe. And they shoot the crossed stream THROUGH the doorway into another dimension.

While it's still a stretch that everything worked out so well for them, it at least never felt like a cheap/random solution for me.

I'd say worse is that:

Spoiler

Dana and Lewis, after being turned into hellish dog-creatures, survive, despite it looking like thier monster-forms have been turned to stone. And they just break out of them. How did that even work?

 

[Nikolas Marinakis]

I'm fairly certain Batman's utility belt contains a pocket dimension, considering all the gadgets he magically pulls out of it.

This made me imagine that inside his utility belt is a dimension where everything is made out of pockets. Pockets are EVERYWHERE in the Pocket Dimension! You'll never lose anything again!
It's kind of like a candy bar bag inside of a candy bar bag carrying bag inside of a duffel bag inside of a briefcase stuffed into a backpack that's been loaded into a cargo container which is stored in a warehouse that's tucked inside your pocket! INSEAMPOCKET.

OT: Everything in every Call of Duty after CoD4.

Is that dimension created and drawn by Rob Liefeld?

 

[Samurai Goomba]

The Missile Launcher of Convenience.

So you're playing a game. A helicopter shows up, or a tank or whatever. Point is, you're screwed. THEN SUDDENLY...

ROCKET LAUNCHER OUT OF NOWHERE! Instantly there's an infinite amount of rockets lying around (usually post-cutscene) for no good reason. And this happens constantly in modern games. Call of Duty 4 had, like, 10 instances of this in the sp campaign.

 

[Scrubiii]

Well, I can say 'worst use of Deus Ex Machina' would have to be in Futurama, but that's so bad it's hilarious. Like the Professor just happens to have a convenient doomsday device, or a device that he makes to create glow in the dark noses is also an alien translation device. It's blatantly awful, but it's deliberate and hilarious.

SO...yes...worst in use and placement, but perhaps best in result, because the audience knows it's there, but accepts it and enjoys it...

When deus ex is used in a comedic sense, like in your example and the Monty Python one, it really isn't that bad. In fact, it can be freaking hilarious.

But when people do it seriously, that's when it gets annoying.

Exactly, especially since in comedies Futurama and Monty Python, the writers are fully aware of this, and INTENTIONALLY try to take advantage of the fact that you're going "WHAT THE SHIT?" when it transpires.

That entire Futurama episode completely based around Deus Ex Machina. It is the one where Farnsworth sends the crew to gather chronitons in order to make is supermutant basketball players grow more quickly. This results in 'timeskips' where time suddenly lurches forwards to a point in the future.
In order to resolve this issue, Farnsworth needs to buld a 'gravity pump' to move a cluster of stars, unfortunately, this is impossible as it would require "all of Earth's money". There is then a timeskip to a point where President Nixon is handing Farnsworth a cheque for all of Earth's money. There are numerous other moments like this in the episode, but I feel this to be the most significant, apart from the one that has already been mentioned about doomsday devices.

 

[Scrubiii]

The Bible, naturally. I mean, how the fuck is it possible that this hasn't been posted yet?

The ending of the Bible (I presume you are referring to the ending) is not Deus Ex Machina. It is established throughout the New Testament that Jesus is the son of God, and that God is All Powerful and Omnipotent. Therefore, any problem solved by "Because he's God" or "Because he's the son of God" (which is all of them) is not Deus Ex Machina.

 

[Goldeneye103X2]

Anime suffers this a lot, but I remember that the Devi May Cry anime had so many of those. Still a cool anime though.

 

[x EvilErmine x]

Why did the gravity gun survive disintegration in Half Life 2?

This is due to the fact that apparently did not register as a weapon, and somehow became supercharged

Well as Dr Mossman (sp?) says it's not a gravity gun, it's a zero point energy manipulator. Alix just calls it a gravity gun because that's what it seems to manipulate and well it's less of a mouth full to say. It got supercharged because the Combine use zero point energy as a power source in there tech. So essentially when Freeman gets caught in the combine weapons scanner and the rest of his stuff is destroyed then the 'Gravity Gun' gets a extra big jolt of energy thus turning it into a 'Super Gravity Gun'

....well that's my theory on it anyway.

 

[Pig Mazurka]

Well, after just beating Oblivion for the first time, I'd say Martin turning into Akatosh and then freezing was just a big 'What?' moment.

Me : Come on Martin, we're almost at the temple, we've got to relight th- OH FUCK MEHRUNES DAGON!

Martin : Quickly, inside the temple!

*Mehrunes Dagon conveniently doesn't notice us walk underneath him with a horde of Daedra chasing us*

Me : Alright Martin, relight th- OH FUCK MEHRUNES DAGON AGAIN!

Martin : Don't worry dawg, I got this. *explodes into flames, and then the flames form into the Avatar of Akatosh and Martin noms on Mehrunes kneck and all is well*

I sat there in awe for about 10 seconds, and then just burst into laughter.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

I can't believe no one has mentioned Battlestar Galactica, and it's a painfully literal use of it too. So disappointing after such a great show.

How did they use Deus Ex Machina to end BSG?

They pretty much just ended it with "God did it all". How did Starbuck come back? She's an angel. What were the visions Six and Baltar were having of each other? Angels. How did Starbuck know to paint that particular picture? Divine inspiration.

The fact that they actually used a divine being makes it a more prototypical deus ex machina than you can usually find in modern media. I was not referring to the fact that the god was worshipped by the machines - though I guess that's literal as well depending on how you translate the Latin.

And if people want to argue that it wasn't really deus ex machina because God was involved since the very beginning, just secretly: (1) there was no reasonable evidence whatsoever that God had anything to do with any of the things later ascribed to divine intervention (2) the writers have explicitly stated that they were making it up as they went along and had no idea how they could possibly put all the pieces together by the end.

 

[Joepow]

The eagles are literal Deus ex machina as they are severants of the god Manwe the reason that they dont intervene more is that the races of middle earth have to sort sauron out themselves as its their fault he still exists

From the LotR wiki:

Before and during the War of the Ring, Gwaihir rescued Gandalf the Grey from the top of Isengard and again from Zirak-Zigil. The Eagles aided troops of King Elessar at the Battle of the Morannon at the Black Gate. The Eagles arrived in time to overthrow some Názgul, including Khamûl. Gwaihir, with others of his people, rescued Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee from Mount Doom in Mordor after the One Ring had been destroyed.

The eagles did help in the war against Sauron.