Origin and pronounciation of "deus ex machina"?

Where did this phrase originate? What is its modern meaning? How to pronounce it? Thanks.Origin and pronounciation of "deus ex machina"?
It's basically a plot device that writers use to explain the situation at the end of a script, book, movie that wraps everything up, usually in a very unexpected way.



The translation literally means "god from the machine'. or from something man made, comes something man can't fully understand.



The following is from http://en.wikipedia.org/



'Deus ex machina' is a Latin phrase that is used to describe an unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot.



The Latin phrase (deus ex māchinā, plural deī ex māchinīs) is a calque from the Greek '?π? μηχαν?? θε??' ápo mēchanēs theós, (pronounced in Ancient Greek [a po' m?:k?a'n?:s t?e'os]). It originated with Greek and Roman theater, when a mechane would lower actors playing a god or gods on stage to resolve a hopeless situation. The phrase is often translated as "god from the machine", where the machine referred to is the crane device employed in the task.



The pronunciation of the phrase may be a problem in English. The Latin phrase would originally have been pronounced something like ['de.?s eks 'ma?k??.na?], in other words with machina stressed on the first syllable, and with the ch pronounced as in the Scottish word "loch" — similar to an English k — but English-speaking people may be influenced by the modern English machine ([m?'?i?n]), resulting in a mixed pronunciation. Some English speakers face further difficulties in pronouncing the e in Deus [e], which is only approximately rendered as [AY] and is much closer to the ay in day. See also Latin spelling and pronunciation.





Examples:



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.



Possibly the least satisfactory deus ex machina to the audience is the revelation that all or large parts of what has gone before were "all a dream". This was perhaps most notoriously used in Dallas, where an entire season was "unwritten" to allow the resurrection of the character Bobby Ewing who had been killed off.



At the end of the first movie of the The Matrix trilogy, Neo apparently gets shot to death inside the Matrix by Agent Smith. Just in time he realizes that the Matrix is not real, that the bullet is not real and that therefore his death cannot be real. He resurrects and defeats the agents using his newly gained understanding of the Matrix.



Towards the end of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, just after Mola Ram has plummeted to his death, British troops arrive on the scene and help get rid of the rest of the villains.Origin and pronounciation of "deus ex machina"?
Literally, the phrase is Latin and means "God from a machine." It refers to a literary element, such as when something unexpected or hard to explain miraculously happens in the plot. I'm not sure of the pronuncation-- I think it's "day-us ex ma-key-na."