There has always been ignorance in the world, but I can't think of any place or period in history where it has been treasured and honored the way it is here and now.

Maybe. It might be some improvement that in the old days the ignorance was universal. At least now it's identifiable as such.

A lot depends on context. I have a lot of patience with true ignorance, i.e. somebody who just doesn't KNOW something. Often, it's something that doesn't affect their lives one way or another. A person who may know nothing about eclipses might know a lot about how to wire up a building. Frankly, if his job is to wire up a building so it doesn't catch fire, I can live with that.

In the Sherlock Holmes stories, John Watson was astounded at how little Holmes knew about anything outside of his chosen field, including Copernican theory. Watson made a list:

1. Knowledge of Literature -- Nil.
2. Knowledge of Philosophy -- Nil.
3. Knowledge of Astronomy -- Nil.
4. Knowledge of Politics -- Feeble.
5. Knowledge of Botany -- Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons. Generally knows nothing of practical gardening.

6. Knowledge of Geology -- Practical, but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes, and told me by their color and consistence in what parts of London he had received them.

7. Knowledge of Chemistry -- Profound.
8. Knowledge of Anatomy -- Accurate, but unsystematic..
9. Knowledge of Sensational Literature -- Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the Century.

10. Plays the violin well.
11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer and swordsman.
12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.

"When I had got so far in my list, [writes Watson] I threw it into the fire in despair."

I know about eclipses, but there are probably things growing in my back yard that know more about things like sports or popular culture. I have the math I need for my work, but know little of areas like statistics, or theoretical math. Good on standard physics, not much on theoretical physics. Everybody is like this to some extent--there probably isn't anybody in the world you couldn't look at and wonder, "They don't know THAT?" A lot of people could say the same thing about you and me. Each of us knows hundreds of things the other person doesn't know.

Where I don't have much patience with is WILLFUL ignorance. Either somebody who needs new information to make a decision, and won't bother to find it out (an amazingly simple thing now in the age of the Internet), or worse, somebody who is presented with information who simply prefers ignorance.

Information is as close to universal and free in this country as it's ever been. If something isn't important to someone's life, which, sorry to say, astronomical information isn't for most people, they normally aren't going to worry about it.

When it becomes important, though, there's no excuse today for not educating yourself properly. If we had a referendum vote for example, on launching a mission to deflect an asteroid, I would reasonably expect people to know a lot more about asteroids by the time the vote came up than they did when it wasn't an issue. Same for anything else where our actions require accurate information.

In your example of the movie (one of the "Warlock" series by the schedule), it's pretty good odds that the writer didn't know how eclipses work. Science is not a strong suit in Hollywood, and never has been. In the movie, perhaps the astronomical impossibility is intended to show proof of supernatural events, like the sun standing still, although that's probably cutting the script more slack than it deserves. If someone is going to do a science fiction movie, there's a certain responsibility to not screw up the science. Fantasies? Not so much.

There are also movie traditions that developed from dramatic need where science has been slid out the door. Either by ignorance, or someone saying, "eh, who gives a rip."

Movie lava, for example, is only hot if you actually touch it. ANY eclipse in a movie or on TV takes place in a matter of minutes. In fact, you can usually see the shadow slide all the way across the sun in a single take (after which the totality lasts exactly as long as the plot requires). Movie computers and networks bear no resemblance to the real thing. All cars explode after crashes (something I've never even read in a newspaper, never mind seen in my own life.) And, of course, the ever-popular "sounds in space." You could probably think of a lot of others.