Deus ex Machina (ampliacion)

Amplliando sobre el tema les pongo aquí una lista de ejemplos de como el deus ex machina resuelve la historia, cuando el o los protagonistas (y mucho más el escritor) se encuentran en aprietos. Está muy buena, Desde Homero y su Odisea, hasta los X-Men.


Literature and comics
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Examples in plot
In Homer's The Odyssey, after Odysseus and Telemachus slaughter the suitors, the families of the suitors show up at the farm of Laertes seeking vengeance. As a battle is about to begin, Athena appears in the last few lines of the poem and tells both parties to stop, to which they comply.
In William Golding's novel The Lord of the Flies, just as the protagonist Ralph is about to be killed by the band of "hunters" at the end of the story, a ship appears from nowhere onto the island, drawn by the smoke produced by the wildfire on the island. One of the ship's officers rescues Ralph. He and the rest of the boys are then taken from the island.
In Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, with Jim apprehended in the heart of the South and Huck unable to rescue him, Tom Sawyer reenters the story, having come hundreds of miles downriver to visit a relative. Huck's reunion with Tom gives him the opportunity to free Jim and allows a channel for the resolution of all dangling storylines that the book had left behind in St. Petersburg, Missouri.
In Shakespeare's As You Like It, 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 French general who has seized the fortress where the narrator has been imprisoned.
In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the 'Time Turner' used by Hermione is seen as a deus ex machina plot device, as it is not heard about in the books prior to the third in the series, although throughout the book it is hinted that Hermione is not telling us something.
The final issue of Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man was titled Deus Ex Machina, and the same title would later be used for the trade paperback collecting his final story arc. The issue itself involves a quite literal example of a deus ex, as Buddy "Animal Man" Baker is finally brought face to face with Morrison himself, who reveals to Baker that his life is a comic book and that he is his (soon-to-depart) writer, before eventually growing tired of his own attempts at preaching and sending Baker home, resurrecting his previously-murdered family in the process.
Lifeguard, from the X-Men has the 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. Similar criticisms were heaped against the character of Crazy Jane from Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol. Jane had hundreds of multiple personalities each with their own powers that would often appear at convenient times to save the day. In contrast Morrisson also created the villain The Quiz who has "every power you haven't thought of."
A deus ex machina exists in K. A. Applegate's Remnants series. Earth is devoid of almost all life, no longer rotates, and is cloaked in perpetual twilight. An alien spaceship, the character Billy Weir and his psychic powers, and the baby girl of a human are able to return the Earth back to its original state, full of life. Unfortunately the inner workings of these 3 elements are never fully explained.
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 Superman: The Movie Superman turns back time by flying around the world until it spins in the other direction. While Superman is supposed to be fast, there is no evidence that he could go that fast before. For example, if he had, he would have been able to stop both missiles.
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 in The Adventures of Tintin involve coincidences that 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, after freeing the local farm dog to attack the Efrafans, Hazel is pinned by the farm cat and about to be killed until a young girl from the farm intervenes by ordering the cat to back away. She then takes Hazel into the country to a location which is coincidentally near his warren. The chapter in which the buildup for this event occurs is indeed titled Dea ex Machina (goddess, in this case).
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.
In Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, the location of the antimatter is seemingly revealed by a vision from God, 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 rests 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 believed them all to have crashed.
In Hajime Kanzaka's novel Shirogane no Majū (白銀の魔獣, which form the basis for the anime series Slayers), Lina Inverse uses a powerful spell known as "Ragna Blade" to defeat Zanaffar. 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 places it within the timeline of the rest of the book and therefore could have been mentioned.
In the Japanese manga-drama Kashimashi, the protagonist is told out of the blue by an alien lifeform that "you will die in 30 days." Prior to this statement, there had been no indication that the protagonist would have such a sudden death, thus effectively becoming a plot device.
In The Vile Village by Lemony Snicket, The Baudelaires make a mortar dissolver to escape from jail. The book also contains a self sustaining mobile hot air home named Dues Ex Machine.
In The War of the Worlds the invading Martians, undefeated by humanity's weapons, conquer Earth, only to be slain by terrestrial bacteria.
In Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, after Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect are thrown into deep space by the Vogons, they are rescued by the Starship Heart of Gold, as a side effect of the ship's Infinite Improbability Drive. (Although it should be noted that this is also a parody of such techniques in other science fiction.)
In Stephen King's The Stand, the hand of God literally appears at the end and detonates a nuclear warhead in Las Vegas, destroying all of the evil characters in the book (with the exception of Randall Flagg, who survives, without explanation, later awaking on a beach).
In Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, just as anti-Semitism in the United States seems to be building to a crescendo, President Lindbergh disappears without a trace and Franklin Roosevelt is returned to office.
In Clive Woodall's "One for Sorrow, Two for Joy" all of the species of small songbirds in Birddom have been wiped out by a mass genocide caused by the magpie armies. At the end of the book, a massive forest fire in Wingland causes songbirds to migrate to Birddom, restoring the natural balance.
Stephen King's Dark Tower series contains a particularly explicit deus ex machina - the author himself (who is introduced as a character in the plot) writes a note which is absorbed into the protagonist's world and appears in time to help rescue Susannah and Roland from a seemingly hopeless situation in the final book. The note itself contains the words "Here comes the deus ex machina".
At one point in the manga One Piece, by Eiichiro Oda, Luffy is trapped in stockades and moments away from being decapitated by Buggy. A lightning bolt suddenly strikes Buggy and destroys the stockades. Luffy is later chased by Captain Smoker, whom he cannot fight because his smoke-control abilities make him invulnerable. Smoker catches Luffy, and is about to subdue him and arrest him, which would have led to his death by execution. However, a previously unmentioned criminal named Dragon appears and stops Smoker from doing so. Dragon creates a storm with his abilities to both free Luffy and create a diversion so he can escape.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, some consider the rescue of Frodo and Sam by the Eagles a deus ex machina. Tolkien had already used the Eagles in The Hobbit, where they helped the Dwarves, Men and Elves defeat the Goblins and Wargs at the Battle of the Five Armies. In The Lord of the Rings, they also arrive to help the Army of the West against Sauron in the Battle of the Morannon, though Sauron is not defeated until the Ring is destroyed. Tolkien explained the Eagles seemingly coming out of nowhere in other writings as their being servants of Manwë, who typically did not intervene. However, since this is not found in the text of The Lord of the Rings itself, the above information may be thought of as a retcon, and the situation as it stands as a deus ex machina.
In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet is sent to England and (unknowingly) to his death after killing Polonius. Later, it is revealed that while on the boat, Hamlet discovered he was to be killed and re-wrote the letter condemning him (his schoolmates Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are executed instead). Afterward, pirates inexplicably commandeer Hamlet's boat, spare his life, and send him back to Denmark.