story is simply flawed, as the protagonist has no chance to defeat the odds on his own. And that is, in one word, boring. A story only works, if you can empathise with the protagonist. Otherwise you have the bad pulp of L. Ron Hubbard (Battlefield Earth, anyone? Just horrible!).
This changes, if the d-e-m is not a deus ex machina, but a plot device (Darth Vader, for example), which drives the story forward. A deus ex machina doesn't do that, but is an anti-climatic device, ending the plot suddenly, whithout offering the possibility of character-growth. |
