Biochemistry as Portrayed in the Movies

Many people have pointed out that many phenomena portrayed in the movies are unrealistic from a physics standpoint. For example, gas tanks on cars would never explode with the evident ease that they do in the movies. Cars also don't flip over for no reason. Bullets, even if they are steel-jacketed, don't make sparks. And explosions can't be heard in the vacuum of space.

However, as far as I know, no one has mentioned the movie stunts that break all the laws of biochemistry. If anything, these offenses against the laws of nature are even more improbable than the physics mistakes. I've listed a few of these below. If you know of others, I'd be happy to include them.

             GAATTC         GATTACA
             ||||||         |||||||
             CTTAAG         CTAATGT   

This kind of thing really pisses me off.

According to the first Alien movie, the creature has an outer layer of protein polysaccharides with a coating of crystalline silicon. If so, it would probably have a coating of silicon on the inside as well, to prevent its acidic blood from dissolving the protein.

Even in humans, there are some types of protein that cannot be dissolved by acid. A perfect example is the protein in the plaques found in the brains of people with a certain neurodegenerative disease. These proteins cannot even be dissolved by trifluoroacetic acid, a powerful acid commonly used to dissolve protein for experimentation. Moreover, some carbon-based animals, like ants, produce and secrete strong acid. Many species of ants spray their victims with formic acid, as a sort of preliminary meat tenderizing step. The bombardier beetle squirts a boiling hot mixture of hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone. Although these aren't acids, they have a similar effect on their victims. But even if the creature in Alien were based on carbon, the chances of it being able to digest human protein are minimal. For one thing, the amino acids would likely all be different. For animals, even a change of an amino acid into its mirror image (e.g. from L-alanine to D-alanine) completely changes its biological function, often changing it from a nutrient into a deadly poison. Alien creatures, who evolved in a biosphere with a different complement of amino acids, would get sick and die if they ate us. And it would serve them right. Come to think of it, maybe that's why the creature in Alien acts so unfriendly.

The same thing with viruses from outer space. Viruses on Earth evolved alongside their hosts, becoming more effective over time by gradually mutating using the process of evolution. A virus in space, even if its DNA structure were somehow compatible with ours, would have a zero chance of infecting a human because it never had the opportunity to coexist with one.

Needless to say, this is just impossible. Memories are stored as synaptic connections of varying strength in the brain that are reinforced with learning. Although certain regions subserve specific functions (for example, the hippocampus is used for processing spatial memory), these nerve connections are unique for each individual.

This means that even if the 3-dimensional pattern of neuronal connections could be recorded and stored, imposing them on another brain would require obliterating all the existing synapses, determining the appropriate 3D stretching and warping function, growing new synapses in the desired locations at trillions of specific points in the brain, determining the function of the millions of motorneurons and sensory neurons in the brain, and reattaching the neurons to them at the correct points.

Even if there were some way to cause a synapse to grow at a specific point in the brain, and endow the synapse with the desired strength, no technology could avoid the fact that motor and sensory neurons are in slightly different locations in each person, This means each neuron would have to be tested electrically before connecting to it -- a process that would take years.

The only possible explanation is that Neo is still following somebody else's rules. His "discovery" that the world is an illusion, along with the resistance, Zion, and the other characters in the movie, are all just another part of the original simulation. It cannot be, as Neo supposedly discovers, that Neo is a real person who has been co-opted to be an integral part of the simulation's self-correcting algorithm. The entire "computer simulation" is itself yet another illusion. Neo has in fact made no progress at discovering the truth about his world at all. He has just exchanged one illusion for another.

Star Trek: The Next Generation had a similar episode, where the entire crew changed into cavemen, except for the ship's counselor, Lieutenant Deanna Troi, who changed into a giant frog. Becoming a caveman is a common theme in science fiction. It was also used by that SF masterpiece Space: 1999 when the entire crew of Moonbase Alpha mutated into cavepeople, clothes and all, with the female ones suddenly finding themselves wearing skimpy tiger-skin costumes.

I guess it should be obvious even to a Hollywood screenwriter that such a thing, desirable as it may be, is just not possible.