Ok, I just watched this movie without really knowing anything about it or even anything about Transformers beforehand, and I am left both angry and confused about their setting decisions.
Here's an extremely basic rundown of the plot, at least the relevant parts to this post: There's an ancient artifact called the Transwarp Key that a group of robot animals brought to Earth to keep it safe. But the bad guy robots find it and come to Earth and the heroes have to find the two halves of the key before the bad guys find it and use it to destroy the universe. Pretty simple plot for a kids movie, nothing too creative or thrilling but by itself it's perfectly harmless. Couldn't really keep my attention that well but I'm an adult, for a kids movie a plot like this is sufficient and it's not like it would be torture for a parent or guardian to watch alongside.
BUT this is where the not harmless stuff comes. Where are the key fragments hidden? Why, in a sacred Indigenous South American cultural site, of course! You know, one of those places that almost got destroyed by Europeans and are held in extremely high regard and worshipped by the Indigenous peoples in the region? Complete with using symbols from their language (which the Europeans also tried to destroy) as part of the riddle that must be solved to gain the secrets of the key.
Everyone is harping on Transformers for "cultural appropriation" because of this. Which, yeah that's totally unacceptable and I agree with those sentiments. They did engage in coloniamism and cultural appropriation, the latter I know has become a buzzword but this is like, dictionary definition for that term and is absolutely accurate to call it that.
But my question to the director is: Why? Why use Indigenous South American culture which people will rightfully accuse you of colonialism over? White people, why not incorporate your own culture into this? Then no one can say anything because it's your own culture, just like how we don't go around freaking out at Bollywood sci-fi movies when they incorporate Indian culture into their lore, or Chinese fantasy movies when they inject magic elements into a depiction of Ancient China.
You want a place to hide your space transwarp crystal in a way that incorporates humans? Instead of choosing an Indigenous holy site to set it in, choose the Vatican or something? In fact, your crystal was split into two halves and were hidden? How convenient! Christianity already has two separate holy items you can use, the Holy Lance and the Holy Grail, maybe use those? The whole reason those were lost could have been because the giant robot animals hid them away, or those weren't actually associated with Jesus but the Transwarp crystal, and the only reason those were associated with Jesus was due to the robots making that up as a cover story, maybe the actual cup and spear were the things that were used to control the crystal, hence their perceived power to the early Christians. Maybe you get into a conflict with the cardinals and they decide to help the villain because they see the good guys as the Antichrist trying to steal the holy treasures and bring about Armageddon. And that speech that the Transformers give about the only way to save the universe is to fight as one? That can be directed at the cardinals and convince them that the giant space ship trying to kill everything is in fact the bad guy. There, in two minutes and minimal literary effort I just worldbuilt something that would be less offensive and more interesting than what you came up with, considering you didn't even actually incorporate any South American folklore into your own plot (which I'm still thankful for btw, thank god they didn't try that shit unlike some other movies set in South America) and just used "oh shit it's in Peru" as an excuse to get your characters from New York to the plot. Just change it to "oh shit it's in Italy" then. At least I used my proposed setting to my story's advantage in some way.
Or you could have chosen Buckingham Palace. Or Notre Dame. Or the Roman Colosseum. Or for a more wilderness setting like what was in your movie, go to Scandinavia and say the Vikings guarded it or something, or the Alps, or the Neander Valley. Or literally any of the other historic Western European sites. Hell you could have even made up an European place like the Chapel of the First Order of the Knights of Transforminghamsire or something and no one would have batted an eye.
It would literally be the exact same movie if you changed the setting. You can keep every single one of your plotpoints and only the backdrop would be different.
It won't save the plot if it was bad to begin with, but at least you're not engaging in colonialism. Which will actually allow people to enjoy the movie instead of wondering why the fuck you had to bring Indigenous peoples into this and defile their sacred sites.
