Transformers: Rise of the Beasts has a particularly wild Maximals cameo

Optimus Primal, Cheetor, Rhinox, Airazor — for legacy fans of the Transformers franchise’s Beast Wars Maximal is a household name for animated television series. Transformers Rise of the BeastsThis movie was clearly made by someone who is an expert in Transformers lore. The fifth Maximal in the film represents a deep-cut that’s pretty crazy. Someone behind this movie is clearly a serious Transformers lore specialist — this particular Maximal is a reference to Transformers convention fiction from the beginning of the millennium.

Optimus Primal, a gorilla in shape (Ron Perlman), has led the Maximals most of the time.Rise of the Beasts, but in its opening scene, he’s second-in-command to a second metal gorilla named Apelinq. That Maximal is surprisingly distinctive, a different design from Optimus Primal’s gorilla model — he has a white mohawk, metal tusks, and intimidating blades tucked into his forearms.

David Sobolov voices the character (who has also voiced Battletrap, Rhinox and Rhinox from the original film) Beast Wars cartoon’s Depth Charge), Apelinq passes the mantle of Maximal leadership onto the smaller Optimus Primal so Apelinq can stall their enemy Transformer Scourge (Peter Dinklage), and send the other Maximals to safety with the Transwarp Key, a McGuffin Scourge wants on behalf of his planet-eating master Unicron (Colman Domingo).

Paramount Pictures

Apelinq’s appearance is a shocking but welcome feature-film debut for a character who first appeared as a toy exclusive to BotCon 2000. If Rise of the Beasts’ five credited screenwriters felt that a different gorilla character should precede Optimus Primal as the Maximals’ leader, Apelinq is an obvious but obscure choice. The original Apelinq was a redeco of 1998’s Transmetal Optimus Primal in black, red, and green, and BotCon only produced 1,200 copies of the figure. Apelinq was a Transmetal, which meant that he transformed from an organic, furry robot to a robotic gorilla with a 3rd transportation mode. (In Apelinq’s case, this meant his robot legs partially transformed into a surfboard for the gorilla mode. The ’90s, folks!)

Three hundred years into the future of the Transformers setting, when Maximals rule Cybertron after the end of the Great War, Apelinq was the commander of Cybertron’s legendary do-or-die strike team, the Wreckers. (Those characters appeared in live action in 2011’s Transformers Dark of the Moon.) But Apelinq’s true passion was scientific research and engineering. He was best known for his Transfer Interlink, an invention that allowed Apelinq to “download digital objects into reality.” This was admittedly a more impressive superpower before 3D printers became widespread, but it allowed Apelinq to essentially pull weapons out of thin air. In practice, mostly this was an attempt to explain his toy’s deployable “virtual digiboard.”

David Willis, Polygon

Apelinq’s character history was chronicled across multiple toys and additional Transformers convention fiction. The first time he traveled back to the Beast Wars, Apelinq witnessed the epic Omega Point battle against the Unicron-powered Predicon Shokaract. Apelinq was the sole participant to remember this battle, as it paradoxically disappeared.

He was returned to his time, where he wound up on the Vehicon-controlled Cybertron seen in 1999’s Beast Wars sequel series, Beast Machines. But instead of joining Optimus Primal’s team of Maximals in their 26-episode attempt to free the planet from Vehicon control, Apelinq was tasked by the Oracle to take his Wreckers off planet to stop the evil gangster Cryotek from possessing the Divine Light, an artifact that would let the Predacon take control of Vector Sigma itself.

Image: Glen Hallit & Dan Khanna/3H Productions

Apelinq merged along the way with Primal Prime, a different color Optimus Primal. This involved Apelinq being transformed from beasthood into a truck cab to protect the Matrix powered guardian Sentinel Maximus. Now renamed Hyperlinq, he and Sentinel Maximus were sent across various Transformers continuities under assignment from the Transformers’ creator god Primus himself, which has got to have made Apelinq/Hyperlinq — a magic-hating, insistent atheist — chafe a little.

Apelinq, a variant of Apelinq, returned to BotCon 2014 with a brand new toy in 2014 (another Optimus Primal in different colors), and a matching story. The Maximal Engineer was this time the Scientific Officer for the Cybertronian Knights. This team, similar to the Wreckers, is led by the former Cheetor Alpha Trizer. The Knights and he fought against pirate Transformers just like you. Though he wasn’t the same Apelinq as he was previously, he still had his Transfer Interlink, which he used to summon his virtual digiboard. Apelinq as he appeared in Rise of the Beasts never became Hyperlinq, that we know of — he appears to die in this movie, though in a franchise where characters are so frequently killed and resurrected, I wouldn’t count him out just yet.

Paramount Pictures

In case you’ve been wondering, yes, “Apelinq” was always just a corny pun on the word “Uplink,” with Apelinq’s creator, BotCon organizer Glen Hallit, putting the “Q” in there only so there’d be some name continuity when he became “Hyperlinq.” And characters say this name out loud! It’s not in a big-budget movie!

Unfortunately, I must inform you that the in Rise of the BeastsApelinq, who was once an obscure convention-exclusive, is now a hero Maximal commander. However, at no point does he download any digital content into the real world. Even a digital digiboard is not enough.