10 Movies That Relied On Deus Ex Machina

10. Hazel Is Saved From The Cat By The Farmer’s Daughter - Watership Down

Watership Down was first released on film in 1978 as an adaption to the 1972 Richard Adams novel about a colony of rabbits and contains many upsetting and disturbing scenes considering it was an animated film meant for children (General Woundwort is an especially nightmare-inducing creature!)

One of the more distressing scenes is set up when some of the rabbits infiltrate a farm in order to try and free some of the female doe rabbits to join them. The farm cat, Tab, tries to creep up at them and one of the rabbits (Hazel) taunts her into jumping at them before they escape.

Later in the film when the rabbits return to release the farm’s guard dog with the hope of using it to attack another colony of rabbits, Tab manages to catch Hazel and uses the same taunt on him, asking ‘Can you run? I think not!’. She is about to kill him, when suddenly the farmer’s daughter Lucy intervenes by ordering Tab to back away. She then takes Hazel into the country to a location which is coincidentally near his warren.

The chapter in the book which leads up to this event is even titled Dea ex Machina (Dea meaning ‘goddess’), showing that the author was aware of the impact of this plot choice.