The exciting, reality-based “Argo” gives science fiction a minor, but crucial supporting role in this rescue story.

“Argo” is based on the rescue of six Americans from Iran who had escaped the United States embassy after it was seized in 1979, making the multiple Americans inside hostages for more than a year. Those who escaped before the seizure was completed found refuge in the Canadian embassy.

Considerable creative license was taken with the facts in this movie, but the heart of the story is the same. In the film, a CIA agent is inspired by his son, who likes science fiction, to pose as an American filmmaker looking for a location to shoot a science fiction film.

There has been considerable criticism of just how factual this movie is and whether Ben Affleck should have been cast in the lead CIA agent role. The essential facts are accurately portrayed, however, and I find this to be one of the better performances by Affleck, who also is the film’s director.

Affleck has said in interviews that the escape out of Iran is more dramatic in the film than in reality. And, indeed, this is not intended to be a documentary film.

In this telling of the events, an explanation of the storyboards for the science fiction film given to Iranian airport guards played a crucial role in convincing the Iranians that the film had a message they’d like, about driving out the evil, alien invaders — in other words like the Americans from their perspective— from Iran.

Is this movie a literal retelling of this heroic, rescue message? Obviously not.

If you’re asking, however, if this is an exciting, gripping, action-filled film with a good story worth seeing, the answer is yes.

Politics in science fiction

This is a major election year with the United States president, U.S. senators and representatives, the governor and many other elected offices on ballots.

And if one were to judge solely on the basis of science fiction films, political figures and government in general are bad guys. This clearly is not entirely true with the role government played in rescuing the country from the Great Depression, from igniting the space programs that led to great innovations and more recently to government action that might have saved more than a million auto industry jobs and preventing a recession from becoming another great depression.

Yet, it’s hard to find good guys in government in SF, excluding of course the men in black.

In the movie “Time Cop,” one politician is a particularly evil guy as he uses a time travel portal to send his minions back to the time of the Civil War to steal gold from Confederates. He uses the gold to help fund his election campaigns.

In both versions of “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” government representatives are trigger happy, unwittingly attacking alien ambassadors bringing a message encouraging peace. The visit by the aliens was prompted by the increasing concern about what the human politicians in power would do with their increasingly powerful weapons and technology.

In “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “2010,” “Close Encounters of the third Kind,” and “E.T.: the Extraterrestrial,” politics plays a dark role, whether it is to keep important scientific discoveries secret, trying to capture aliens visiting the planet or a conflict between nations that could lead to a nuclear war.

In “Planet of the Apes,” the back story is how the path of earth’s political leaders sent humans on the road to destruction.

In several movies, political leaders have botched up the planet so much that the machines or computers felt compelled to take over.

In “Star Wars,” the whole story is predicated on the dark side running the empire, which dominates the universe.

In “Avatar,” political agendas drive the mission to the planet to acquire the priceless unobtainium found there. That agenda didn’t care how many natives are killed to get the unobtainium.

One of the few heroic political figures that comes to mind in SF is the president in “Independence Day.”

The excellent television series “Babylon Five” was awash with political stories including one in which human leaders allied with an evil alien force. The short-lived “Jericho” series dealt with the aftermath of nuclear attacks similar to the TV movie, “The Day After.” Nearly all of the many post-apocalyptic TV shows and movies all have political failings as the primary cause.

This partial listing of films and TV shows, doesn’t even include the many books on the dreadful impact of bad politicians on society. “The Canticle for Leibowitz” and “Ender’s Game” are just a couple of the seemingly endless libraries of books on such themes.

Truly, reality has given people many reasons to be cynical about politicians and government. But at least some of that negativity would have to be called science fiction.

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