Why Ben Affleck twisted the truth with his adaptation of Argo

In 2012, Ben Affleck told Rolling Stone that "Chris Terrio, our screenwriter, is really good at taking real life, which doesn't have a three-act structure, and turning it into something that has it." The great complexity of the Iranian hostage crisis, in which many of the personnel of the American embassy in Tehran were kidnapped and held hostage for more than a year during the country's revolution, wouldn't have lent itself easily to a two-hour movie. But that was Terrio's job: to find structure in the mess of the overall story, much like his role in co-writing "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker."

Terrio's dramatic restructuring included diminishing international cooperation behind the rescue. "Argo" insists on the role of the CIA, lingering in particular on the expert in "exfiltration" Tony Mendez (Affleck) who is developing a rescue plan for the six escaped hostages from Tehran. In the film, the six Americans all hide in the home of Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor, but in real life, four stayed with Canadian diplomat John Sheardown.

The film's narrative gives virtually all the credit for the CIA rescue, but many Canadian viewers, and even the real Taylor (who told Maclean's "I just think they didn't want be bothered by the facts"), challenged his erasure of their government's contributions. Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter, the US president at the time of the incident, found the film's depiction to be inaccurate. As he told CNN (via Politico), "the main hero was Ken Taylor."