USA, July 3, (Pal Telegraph) - Action-adventure sci-fi movies might be considered pure entertainment for their ability to disconnect the audience from the world: when entire buildings are being blasted into dust, not much thinking is required. Last week I went with friends to watch Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I was in for a couple of disconnecting hours.

Just to make one thing clear; I am a tabula rasa when it comes to the Transformers. I didn't see the first movie, or the cartoon version, as my generation grew up watching Japanese cartoons dubbed into classical Arabic (I guess we had more global cultural influences than the Cartoon Network/Disney Channel generation). So I had no expectations, which usually works wonders.

The movie, inevitably, has a positive outlook on the world. Starscream and Megatron's plan to destroy the universe is foiled by Sam Witwicky and the Autobots. The battle reaches an almost destructive climax but the human race triumphs at the end.

I thought: if only our real-world conflicts could be solved in the same manner, and if only the director Michael Bay were leading the Middle East peace process.

In his movie you can travel from the Pyramids of Giza to the Valley of the Kings and Queens in Luxor and on to Petra in Jordan in a remarkably short period of time. This is the closest Jordan and Egypt have ever been, geographically or politically.

At the same time, Mr Bay appears to have nullified the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which began the process of the establishment of Israel in the Mandate of Palestine; in the movie, Israel appears not to exist, thus facilitating the effortless movement from Egypt to Jordan. Rafah Crossing, who needs it?

Maybe the release of the movie will allow the positive Matrix energy to be filtered through from cinema screens into the real world. Or perhaps the movie's depiction of how ease of movement at a border helps to battle evil forces and save the world is an attempt to sway public opinion.

We should never underestimate the extent of Hollywood's influence.

Are these geographic alterations just movie mistakes, or are they there for symbolic reasons? I think they hold symbolic meaning, just as the use of the desert is symbolically essential for the development of the plot (although in the movie it looks nothing like an Egyptian desert - it was most probably Arizona).

The desert is symbolic of what binds the Middle East together. I am prepared to overlook the mysterious appearance in the movie desert of huge rocky mountains, and the inaccurate use of white beach sand. Mr Bay confirmed that he intended this white, rocky desert to be in Egypt by letting loose a few camels running wild through it.

Except that there are no wild Arabian (one humped) camels: they were domesticated between 4,000BC and 1,400BC. So that is another mistake I must be prepared to overlook. Or maybe it is intentionally symbolic of the Middle East's current "wild" status, and our need to have herders.

The whole movie is heavy with symbolism. We have much to learn from it in solving Middle East conflicts. Many might have lost their way on the road map, risking the destruction of the world.

Mr Bay has made a strong political statement by including Arab states in his battle for the world. In the middle of the battle, when the American military has to call in help, they turn to the Egyptian and Jordanian air forces for support, which is certainly an improvement on the traditional "Reel Bad Arabs" Hollywood depictions documented by Jack Shaheen in his book of that name.

It is also one step away from all the post-9/11 movies that presented the sane Arab as an exception to the rule, and torturing detainees as the only way to deal with radicals.

Recall the single sane sheikh in Syriana (2005), and the torture scenes in The Kingdom (2007) and Rendition (2007). In that movie an Arab official justifies torture by observing: "We have a saying: ‘Beat your wife every morning. If you don't know why, she knows why'."

This argument made no sense to the American CIA agent. I'm not surprised. It made no sense to me either, because I have never heard of such a saying.

On the other hand, the agent convinced of the detainee's innocence despite his confession attempted to convince the Arab official by quoting Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice : "I fear you speak upon the rack, Where men enforced do speak anything" - as eloquent an argument for the futility of torture as was ever written.

Of course, the good-looking American agent has to be the hero and come to the rescue of the poor brown tortured detainee. I guess this all began with Lawrence of Arabia , with the blond, blue-eyed heartthrob Peter O'Toole saving us all. But I suppose Hollywood pays for all those productions, so they have the right to depict themselves as heroes.

Irrelevant and minuscule mistakes should not get in the way of a good story. I guess we just look past them, just as we got used to reading the English subtitles whenever any character is supposedly speaking Arabic, because it is usually nonsense, jumbled-up words that sound vaguely Arabic ( Rendition was an exception, right down to using the accent of Morocco, where the movie was set).

At the climax of the Transformers battle the Jordanian helicopter crashes after just one minute of fame, another symbolic twist to the story. My friend thought Mr Bay should have called in Iran at that point. If he had, maybe the real Iranian-American friction might come to an end.

Hissa al Dhaheri is a sociologist and cultural researcher, and holds an MA in Gulf Studies