Once in our lifetime

In Movies, A Solar Eclipse Means Change Is Coming.

A solar eclipse is a (relatively) rare event, a break in the celestial routine, which is why they fascinate and are unsettling to us.

The Greek historian Herodotus wrote of one battle that ended abruptly when day turned suddenly to night — both armies panicked, dropped their weapons, and sued for peace.

That’s what solar eclipses do — they remind us, in a striking, purely visual way we can’t ignore, that even something as basic as the sun shining in the middle of the day can get … tweaked.

Films are a visual medium, and several Hollywood movies have employed solar eclipses as a kind of shorthand to signal to audiences that the normal rules have temporarily lifted, and things are about to get weird.

Everyone will connect to it in some way. Some people may also believe the sudden darkness of the eclipse could mean doomsday is near.   That uneasiness is what can make people predicting the end of the world can often play on, fear about wars and drastic weather changes, drastic economic occurrence.

No matter what it means to you, it is an interesting event in time. One thing you can say, this event and what is happening pulls us together as a human community. This is something apparently that millions of people want to experience together. We can all look up and drop our differences, even if it is just a short period of time.

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