The Strange Character You’ve Probably Forgot Chet Hanks Played

There are many things wrong Josh Trank’s 2015 superhero film “Fantastic Four.” Mostly, the film can’t find its way to a solid tone and oscillates from fun and funny to bleak or scary, often without any clear rhyme or reason for doing so. There is an element of wonder as Reed Richard (Miles Teller) finds a way to travel to different dimensions, but the film is also strangely sarcastic and depressing, complete with po-faced performances from its four leads (who , along with Teller, featuring Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, and Jamie Bell). The film even spends some time acting like a Cronenbergian horror film as the Fantastic Four discover that their superpowers have mutated their bodies.

Then there is a short span of superhero deconstruction, as the Four realize their powers are being used as military weapons of death and destruction. Then, quite quickly, the film turns cartoonish and silly as Doctor Doom (Toby Kebbel) plans some sort of dimension-hop world conquest. Trank seems to have been pushed around a lot by 20th Century Fox, and “Fantastic Four” was eventually scrapped by studio notes. While I have no problems with the Fantastic Four being reimagined as young marvels or Doctor Doom no longer being a Latverian dictator, I have many problems with “Fantastic Four” being made so bad

Critics agree. The film only had a 9% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 259 reviews). It wasn’t a box office hit either, making $167.9 million on a $120 million budget.

Also, did you recognize Chet Hanks in the mix? Probably not. Chet Hanks, a more problematic son Hollywood star and classic sci-fi fan Tom Hanksmakes a brief cameo in the Trank film as Jimmy Grimm, the older brother of Bell’s character. Jimmy, in this version of the “Fantastic Four” story, is a mean bully.

Chet Hanks, before we go any further, is somewhat notorious for some of his criminal activity. In 2015, he trashed a hotel in England under the influence of cocaine and went to rehab as a result. Then, in 2021, he went through a very public and possibly criminal breakup when his ex-girlfriend, Kiana Parker, sued him for multiple bouts of domestic abuse. He also indicted Parker for robbery, assault, and battery. That same year, Chet Hanks also spoke out against COVID vaccinations, earning him scorn.

The younger Hanks has worked as an actor and even appeared in the movie “Greyhound” with his father, Tom, but many may know him better for his rapping career. He was the one behind “White Boy Summer” and “DAMN!” in 2021.

In “Fantastic Four,” one may catch Hanks in the early scenes of the film. Future superhero The Thing, Ben Grimm (played by Evan Hannemann) is only 12 years old and lives in a junkyard with his abusive, poor family. His older brother, Jimmy, is seen playing baseball with his friends when young Ben returns home from school. Jimmy asks Ben to perform a task, and Ben refuses. Jimmy, enraged, follows him inside and angrily hits his younger brother a few times. Fortunately, the boys’ mother quickly appears and stops the violence. It’s not a big scene for Hanks, but it effectively communicates that life is boring for young Ben. One can understand why Ben would want to spend time with ambitious engineer Reed Richards instead.

Of course, because interconnectedness is one of the main selling points of modern Marvel movies, you can now accept that Chet Hanks is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or at least has the potential to be. His version of Jimmy Grimm may be one of the many, many characters that appear in it the upcoming “Avengers: Secret Wars”. … but it’s probably best not to count on that.