The Newest Transformers Movie Is Literally Erasing Actual Culture

Paramount Pictures done fucked up.

The film studio is currently doing some serious damage control after the crew for the upcoming Transformers Universe: Bumblebee (BUMBLEBEE) movie painted over a mural in the Bay Area city of Vallejo dedicated to a number of Vallejo residents who had lost their lives. Yep.

The vibrant 2012 mural, titled “Vallejo Rising,” was the work of Alvaro Garcia, an artist and former high school teacher, and featured a portrait of 12-year-old Joseph Tafoya III, who was killed by a garbage truck while skateboarding, as well as 24-year-old Dewey Tucker, a jazz musician who was shot to death in 2010.

The mural was painted over earlier this month. The owner of the building, Mark Reed, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the wall needed to be patched up due to structural concerns, and that he was planning on replacing the mural with something “whimsical” anyway. Both Reed and Paramount are staying mum on how much money Reed was paid for the aforementioned “building improvements.” But for the community and for anyone with a sense of compassion, covering up the mural without warning was not the best move.

Presumably after realizing that what they had done was cartoonishly bad (like evil resort corporation in an ‘80s ski movie bad), the Bumblebee (BUMBLEBEE) producers met with Garcia and Tafoya’s mother Champaygne Tafoya to apologize and find a location for a new mural.

On the one hand, if Reed was going to cover the mural up anyway, perhaps it’s good that there’s already a plan in motion for another one, even if it’s an apology mural from Paramount. On the other hand, the fucking Bumblebee Transformers movie is a thing, and it led to this whole shitshow, and once again capitalism is bad.