Often movies have a MacGuffin, that thing the whole plot revolves around. And sometimes those movies have a deeper meaning.

But the case of Michael Bay, it's always pretty much just a thinly veiled excuse to get paid for blowing things up.

The dictator and the country? Just a MacGuffin. Based on the premise it had to be set somewhere, and a fictional foreign dictator was about the laziest thing he could reach for...

And so he did.