In a weird mixture of grainy stock footage and acted scenes, an astronaut goes to space, is attacked by a cloud (in the zero vacuum of space) and is hit by a tiny meteorite that somehow doesn’t go straight through him. Scientists on earth look at the fragment and alert Alex Krycek from The X-Files that they found DNA molecules in it. They recognize the DNA as arthropod… by looking at it. Shocked, Alex asks if they found an alien lifeform and the scientists think so.
Now, I’m no scientist but if they would find arthropod (insects, arachnids, shrimps, etc.) DNA in space, wouldn’t that mean that arthropods from earth have gone to space? How would an alien lifeform have the same DNA as a subspecies of earth lifeforms? Arthropods share about 60% of their DNA with humans. Do the aliens also have that 60% or just the unique galactic DNA found in all creepy crawlies? It isn’t revealed but the astronaut is sick.
Alex gets a bug woman to help him, he shows her a closeup color photo and asks what it is. She answers “the banding suggests insect DNA.” She also sees that it’s fake because “insects have a basic 15 pair chromosome structure” and that you can obviously see an extra amino protein which shouldn’t be there.
Insects don’t have a basic 15 pair chromosome structure; their chromosome count varies drastically. There is no such thing as “amino protein,” amino acids are molecules that proteins are made of. DNA is tightly packed and incredibly small; no being alive would be able to see a difference between an insect DNA and DNA from a mushroom.
In less than 11 minutes, Threshold became one of the stupidest films I’ve seen, and I’ve seen about 20 thousand of them.
Alex and the scientist try to figure out what kind of insect it is by looking at the DNA some more, probably a flying one, and before they know it, moths break out of the astronauts’ fingertips (!) in droves. Alex and the scientist decide to go kayaking…
A detective is introduced and in his first scene, he fakes taking a bite out of an apple, but we still hear the crunch sound. People are going missing, but not for too long because they come back… as insect incubator makers slash pod people. Or something.
Threshold is inane and every step, every plot point made me wonder if the writer was homeschooled by alien moths. I looked the writer up, Kim LeMasters, and found that he hasn’t done anything of note, just a few TV credits, except one thing. He was an executive producer of Wild Wild West. Yes, the 170 million Will Smith vehicle.
