HumblePie
Lifer
- Oct 30, 2000
- 14,665
- 440
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Hah, I thought about deus ex machina during the movie...in every tight scene you start waiting for Gandalf to show up and magically save the day. I think this is part of what made a lot of the scenes lack impact - you never felt like the characters were in any real danger because Gandalf could show up at any point and easily save them. So you're not really holding your breath in suspense because you start to figure out what's coming. It reminded me of the later seasons of House - oh no, the episode character is going to die! Almost dead! Oh wait, Dr. House figured it out in the nick of time, whew! Oh wait, we were expecting that, no real suspense! Hehe.
* MASSIVE SPOILERS BELOW *
That is part of the plot. There is a reason why early on Gandalf keeps showing up to save the day. Because at the end he doesn't anymore. Dwarves die. Humans die. Many, many characters at the end just die. It's supposed to be jarring at the end of the story when all that happens. When you read the book, and I read the hobbit first like you should story wise so you never know if Bilbo will survive the story (we all know from LotR that he does) and when characters start dying off in the end of the book it really gets suspenseful.
There is one last Deus Ex machina at the very end of the book that I still didn't like. They gave a bit of a teaser to what it is at the end of this movie. When you see the thrush (the little bird) banging on a snail shell on the door to the entrance to Smaug's domain and waking him up. That thrush is what "saves the day" sort of with a deus ex machina it in the end. Basically the story is that the weakness to any dragon is their slightly softer underbelly. They lack the intensely hard scales there that would thwart dangerous attacks. Smaug makes up for that weakness by completely coating his underbelly with diamonds and other hard jewels found from the dwarven treasure. How he attaches these jewels aren't exactly explained in the book, but think super glue I guess. Anyhow, he missed a spot and a thrush notices this. The thrush tells the best human archer there is where that spot is on Smaug.
It's a bit of Deus Ex machina when you read the story. Also the other reason is that by showing you a bird is capable of such intelligence, one finds out how magical middle earth is.