Pitch Black

I haven't forgotten my new blogging manifesto from a few weeks back, my promise not to waste my time and words on trite matters. I'm not going to witter endlessly about how cool the aliens are in Pitch Black. I have slightly loftier ambitions than that.
For those of you who who haven't seen it, Pitch Black is a sci-fi film from 2000, starring Vin Diesel (star of The Fast & The Furious, XXX and a bunch of other stuff very few of us have seen) as a convict being transported on a freighter along with some random passengers, when it is forced to crash land by a meteor shower that catastrophically damages their ship.
The planet they land on has three suns and therefore permanent daylight. This is fortunate, since light-sensitive creatures live underground who like the taste of human flesh and have very sharp teeth and claws. An abandoned human settlement with a transport ship is found and with it, the prospect of escaping from this hostile, dry planet. All they need to do is take the energy cells from their stricken ship and transfer them to the new vessel. Oh and then there is a solar eclipse, which brings the light-sensitive beasties up to the surface for a feeding frenzy.
If that all sounds like typical B-movie shlock, then to an extent it is. However, there are some genuinely thought provoking moments that bear some consideration.
Firstly, towards the end, one character who is one of the few who can pilot the ship is offered a chance by Vin's character to leave the remaining survivors behind but refuses the opportunity.
"Would you die for them?" says Vin. "I would try for them", she replies. "Answer the question", he insists. "Yes", she relents, "I would die for them". It is not clear to what extent he is moved by her attitude to change his own course, but rather than abandon all of them, he agrees to go back and help rescue the remaining survivors. A hardened, violent criminal, inspired by the example of selflessness he sees in another to change his course and live more sacrificially.
The remaining survivors make it back to the ship and Vin gets cornered by two of the underground creatures. Although he survives their attack, he is badly injured and the pilot come back for him, to help him back to the ship. Sadly, she is then grabbed herself and dragged off into the darkness. "No!" Yells Vin, "not for me!" He knows what kind of man he is, what kind of life he has led, how undeserving he is of this sacrifice, that it would cost someone their own life to save him. He almost cannot live with the idea that someone would do that for him, when he knows what sort of man he is.
But grace and compassion are like that. They do not look to what we deserve, but what we need. We may find it hard to look at the sacrifice of another for our benefit and struggle to accept it. "Not for me!" We cry, "I'm not worth it. I cannot live with the knowledge that though I deserved nothing you still did this for me". But He did. He did it anyway and we can only sit back in awe and then move forward in gratitude, humbly offering our lives in His service as a thank offering.