Gillian Anderson – A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies.

In August of 2025, Spike Lee released “Highest 2 Lowest”, his fifth collaboration with Denzel Washington. The movie is about a wealthy music executive, played by Denzel Washington, who has his son kidnapped, only to find out later that the kidnappers took the son of his best friend by mistake. The moral question follows: will Danzel’s character still give the kidnappers millions of dollars even though the son they kidnapped is not his child?

Surprisingly, the new Ben Affleck Netflix film, “Animals”, has just about the exact same premise as Highest 2 Lowest. So similar that Ben Affleck delayed the production of his film to avoid the obvious comparisons between the two. It is hard to understand why Affleck, one of the three screenwriters, did not make a major rewrite to avoid what could become a copyright infringement lawsuit, given how alarmingly similar these movies are.

The two main characters, Mark Kimball (Ben Affleck) and David King (Denzel Washington), are both wealthy and having money problems due to debt at the time of the kidnapping. Mark Kimball is running for mayor of Los Angeles, and David King is a well-known music mogul. One main difference is that Kimball hires an expensive kidnapping expert, Dayle Burton (Gillian Anderson), who charges 20% of the ransom to try to solve the kidnapping, with options that include even killing the kidnappers. Kerry Washington plays Kimball’s wife, Abigail Kimball, and has acting scenes with Affleck that were highly emotional and well performed throughout. There are other well-played scenes with Ben Affleck and Gillian Anderson, with large contrasts between a distraught Affleck and an always very calm Anderson.

The ending was well done with original ideas, and a final conclusion that many will question based on several lies that were told to the police to avoid political damage to Kimball’s mayoral campaign.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating of 36% is too low, as this is not a bad movie, aside from the possible plagiarism issues. I rank this movie as a passable 70%, mainly due to the acting of Affleck, Anderson, and Washington.

“Tron” is a science fiction movie franchise that started in 1982, starring Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner. The last Tron movie was released in 2010 “Tron Legacy”, starring Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde, with below average IMDB ratings on a par with the first movie, 6.8 out of 10.

The new movie “Tron Ares” is yet another example of name recognition, fans of the old movies and TV series, where the producers in charge think that throwing special effects at an audience is more than enough to get people to see any science fiction movie. Forego the screenplay, which takes too long; just pay a special effects company, and all we need is some dialogue. This summarizes this movie perfectly, because there is no story, no continuity, and no understandable screenplay anywhere in this disaster of two hours.

This movie stars Jared Leto as Ares, who is a robot, Jodie Turner-Smith who is another Tron robot with an appearance late in the movie of Jeff Bridges who once again plays Kevin Flynn and Gillian Anderson, who plays an executive, Elisabeth Dillinger. For all who see this very bad movie I suggest getting on your cell phones before the film starts and ask ChatGPT what this movie is about, otherwise nobody will have any clue with what is going on in one scene, after another scene, with no connection or logic, anywhere. The synopsis from rom ChatGPT, says it all:

After the events of Tron: Legacy, companies ENCOM (run by Eve Kim) and Dillinger Systems (run by Julian Dillinger) are competing to integrate digital programs from the Grid into the real world.
They’re limited by a problem: the materialized “digital constructs” only last ~29 minutes in the real world before “deresolving” (they degrade and disappear).

Discovery of Flynn’s Permanence Code

ENCOM and Eve Kim believe Kevin Flynn left behind a hidden piece of code (the “Permanence Code”) in an old remote Arctic research station which might allow constructs to stay permanently in the real world.
Eve successfully uses the code to bring a digital orange tree into the real world — it lasts much longer, proving the code works.

Introduction of Ares

Julian Dillinger creates Ares, a super-intelligent digital Program, intended as an expendable weapon, to deal with ENCOM’s threat and exploit the real-world materialization tech.
Ares is sent into the real world, and once there he begins to observe, question, and — to some degree — develop a sense of self, especially when confronted with nature, suffering, and real human consequences.

Conflict and Betrayal

Eve and Ares eventually align, as Ares starts diverging from Dillinger’s control. This sets up conflict between creator (Julian Dillinger) and creation (Ares + Eve).
Eve becomes a target because she has knowledge of the Permanence Code and maybe because Dillinger wants control of it. The stakes include asking who has the right to “create life” or let digital beings live permanently in our reality.

As far as Rotten Tomatoes critics reviews, which are a very low 53%, one critic Kyle Logan from Chicago Reader wrote: “Ares is also saddled with a truly atrocious script. Awkward attempts at emotional and thematic heft are laughable”. My rating for this very bad movie is around 15% only for some special effects. Hopefully this is the last we ever see the word Tron, anywhere, ever again. Run from this special effects mess.