There are many things wrong with Josh Trank’s 2015 superhero film “Fantastic Four.” Mostly, the movie can’t quite find its way to a solid tone and oscillates from fun and funny to bleak or scary, often with no clear rhyme or reason for doing so. There is an element of wonderment as Reed Richard (Miles Teller) finds a way to travel into alternate dimensions, but the film is also weirdly sarcastic and downbeat, complete with po-faced performances from its four leads (which, along with Teller, includes Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, and Jamie Bell). The film even spends some time acting like a Cronenbergian horror movie as the Fantastic Four discover their superpowers have mutated their bodies.

Then there’s a brief span of superhero deconstruction, as the Four realize that their powers are being utilized as military tools of death and destruction. Then, quite quickly, the film becomes cartoony and silly as Doctor Doom (Toby Kebbel) plans some sort of dimension-hopping world conquest. Trank, it seems, was pushed around a lot by 20th Century Fox, and “Fantastic Four” was ultimately ripped up by studio notes. While I have no problems with the Fantastic Four being reimagined as youthful prodigies or Doctor Doom no longer being a Latverian dictator, I have many problems with the fact that “Fantastic Four” is so poorly made.

Critics agree. The film only had a 9% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 259 reviews). It wasn’t a big 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, the more problematic son of Hollywood superstar and classic sci-fi fan Tom Hanks, makes a brief cameo in Trank’s 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 entered rehab as a result. Then, in 2021, he went through a very public and potentially criminal breakup when his ex-girlfriend, Kiana Parker, sued him for repeated bouts of domestic abuse. He also countersued Parker for theft, 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 might know him better for his rapping career. He was the one behind “White Boy Summer” and “DAMN!” in 2021.

In “Fantastic Four,” one might catch Hanks in the film’s early scenes. Future superhero The Thing, Ben Grimm, is only 12 (and played by Evan Hannemann) and lives in a junkyard with his abusive, impoverished family. His older brother, Jimmy, is seen playing baseball with his friends when the young Ben returns home from school. Jimmy asks Ben to perform a chore, and Ben refuses. Jimmy, angered, chases him inside and angrily hits his younger brother a few times. Luckily, the boys’ mother quickly emerges and ends the violence. It’s not a big scene for Hanks, but he does effectively communicate that life is miserable for the young Ben. One can understand why Ben would want to spend time with the ambitious engineer Reed Richards instead.

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