For the 8th chapter in this series, wanted to take a look at an actor who has become one of the more famous men in the business in a somewhat short amount of time. A man who is an unbridled Superstar who has one very famous role and a bunch of….other things. A man who is often the subject of conversations that revolve around those who are overhyped. And that seems a bit harsh. A man who just received the Hollywood Walk of Fame star…

CHRISTOPHER HEMSWORTH

Again, it’s worth mentioning that I do really like this guy. He is a man who has all of the “tools” that it takes to be a Hollywood-leading man. He has forever had the “it” factor. Even though that factor hasn’t really translated into a lot of smash hits outside of the MCU, I feel that the resume deserves a little bit of a deeper dive.

But first, a couple of things worth mentioning…

As normally is the case with this particular series, we will be going over the essential Chris Hemsworth films. Films that have established the star power that he currently holds. Of course, it includes his leading roles, but it also includes the films where he had key supporting roles, or the films most associated with his brand. The thing is, there are a couple of films that he’s done where his supporting performances really don’t…matter all that much.

There are also a couple of films that will not be mentioned that are so small time that nobody really associates those films with his brand. Or are just cameos. These films include:

*CA$H
*VACATION
*STAR TREK
*STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS
*INTERCEPTOR
*DOCTOR STRANGE
*The TEAM THOR short films
*JAY AND SILENT BOB REBOOT

To be fair the following movies are going to be judged on their quality as well as Hemsworth’s performances in them. He’s been pretty good in some otherwise questionable films and that needs to be pointed out when these films are mentioned.

Anywho, without further ado, here is…

THE CHRIS HEMSWORTH TIER LIST:

Greatness 🤩
Greatness Adjacent
Goodness 😊
Meh...
What the f*** is this garbage? 🤮

🤩 GREATNESS🤩

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS

For all intents and purposes, this is one of the best horror films of (at least) the last 15 years. Hemsworth's contribution to this greatness is very minimal, but people still associate him with this film directly so it counts.

This is one of those movies where many great things are happening and Hemsworth is just kind of a part of the scenery more than a direct contribution to the greatness. That is in no way bashing him. But it is what it is.

FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA

(Amazing S***. See review here)

The Avengers, Thor: Ragnarok, Avengers: Infinity War, & Avengers: Endgame

As historically relevant as all of these films are, I'm going to lump them into one big chunk of greatness. All 4 of these films are very great for many, many, different reasons. One of those main reasons of course is the performance of Chris Hemsworth as Thor.

In THE AVENGERS it becomes crystal clear that along with having incredible chemistry with everyone he shares scenes with... he's a bonafide movie star. Unlike so many people who get forced pushes to become movie stars, Hemsworth holds his own with the litany of incredible actors in that film. Downey, Ruffalo, Renner, Jackson, and Johansson are all Oscar nominees, and none of them really drowned out what Hemsworth was doing in that film.

Thor: Ragnarok is the film that fully encapsulates Hemsworths comedic chops. The film also gives the character a lot more depth to work with within the MCU storyline. The film also brilliantly explains why Thor and Bruce Banner were not a part of "CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR", and how they were dealing with their own personal conflicts. All this AND it is the funniest film in all of the MCU to this day. A brilliant film.

Avengers: Infinity War makes him the conquering hero fighting to overcome multiple tragedies, having a separate storyline from everyone before literally thundering in during the battle of Wakanda which prompted audible cheers from the audiences in all three of the times that I saw this movie in theaters.

And as for Avengers: endgame? Well, I'll get to that later.

GREATNESS ADJACENT

RUSH

Just perfect casting. If you ever seen an interview with the man Hemsworth is portraying, (legendary F1 driver James Hunt) you will see just how much he nails this character and it's not just because he physically resembles the man. It's not that this role was the first time we'd seen Hemsworth show some range, but it was the first film to show that when he really wanted to go deep for a character... he could. I remember when I first saw this film I actually was shocked that he could go deep to this extent.

BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE

This is one of the most underrated movies of the last 10 years in my opinion. There are a lot of awesome things happening all at once with really great acting from beginning to end. And that very much includes Hemsworth as his first bonafide villainous role as a wildly charismatic Charles Manson type of cult leader. He doesn't necessarily show up until late in the film, but when he does he changes the whole energy of everything going on as domineering villains should.

😊GOOD😊

IN THE HEART OF THE SEA

For some reason, this just wasn't on people's radar. It's a good Ron Howard film with an amazing cast and impressive visuals. The problems with the film mostly have to do with the fact that it's not... epic enough maybe? But I don't know what else they could have done. The lack of acknowledgment for this movie befuddles me. Hemsworth lost 30lbs in his commitment to this role. It's one of the best performances of his career. This deserves way more credit than it gets.

A PERFECT GETAWAY

Another underrated movie that is widely considered to be the breakout performance of Hemsworth. I find it to be a good popcorn movie for many different reasons, even though this is another one of those movies where Hemsworth's performance here is not impactful enough to be one of those reasons. Respectfully.

MEH...

AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

I'm in the minority and thinking that age of Ultron was a solid film with one of the low-key best villians in all of the MCU. The problem always was that it had an impossible bar to meet because the previous thing before was historically relevant, and it was F****** impossible for age of Ultron to have any kind of similar impact. Thor really doesn't do a whole lot story-wise in this film, and you do feel his absence throughout the proceedings.

THOR

The first THOR movie has aged rather poorly, and that's through no fault of its own. After the year of 2014, the MCU hit a pretty solid stride. The quality of the films that they were presenting after this point just kept escalating in quality. We became so used to that post-2014 kind of quality, that when we go back and look at the phase one films outside of the first IRON MAN and the AVENEGERS... They just feel antiquated in comparison. This is still a decent watch, but you can tell the strides that the MCU took well after this was released.

THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER

This was a movie with one of the most hyped trailers that I've ever seen in my life. This was the Thor movie taking place right after AVENGERS: ENDGAME. The trailer teased us with the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, a villain played by Christian Bale who is probably the most cool-looking character in the history of the MCU, and the return of Natalie Portman as Lady Thor of all things...Then you see that it's barely two hours long, and you just kind of ask the question on how the f*** they're going to pull off all of this stuff when the average MCU movie up to that point had to have been in the 2-hour and 20-minute range.

Also, people harshly criticized this movie for its dependency on the humor that made Thor: Ragnarok so great. It is somewhat justified. Somewhat. Overall, this movie was disappointing, but you guys got mad about the wrong things when it came to this one.

Snow White and the huntsman and The huntsman: Winter's War

It is fair to say that without the presence of Hemsworth in these films, these films would be very hard to sit through. Maybe it's me being a little bit of a fanboy here, but he really saves these movies from being routine fantasy film dullness. I was entertained....and I seem to be the ONLY person who's not a teenage girl who was.

the extraction movies

Hemsworth is fine throughout. It's clearly a strong suit for him at this point in his career and has been established many times before these films were released. He is not the problem. The problem mainly lies in the fact that everything just kind of feels like a Coke Zero version of JOHN WICK action-wise.

In both of these movies, I couldn't help but feel that I saw something in a lot of the action sequences that the John Wick movies did better. Perhaps it's the fact that these movies very much feel that they belong on Netflix, and not an actual movie theater. Respectfully. It is these films that show us the maximum capabilities of Netflix for making an action franchise. And like... It's okay I guess. It just doesn't feel special.

12 STRONG

A lot of what this movie had to present was very by the numbers. I wouldn't go so far as to call it predictable or anything like that, but this film gave us a lot of stuff that we'd seen before action-wise. It also really didn't have a lot to say given that it's a post 9/11 story. It was well-intentioned, but not very exciting. 12 STRONG is a very strange movie to look at in the sense that calling it bad seems way too harsh, but calling it middle of the road seems like way too much praise.

SPIDERHEAD

The potential for this was through the roof. It just needed to be a lot more serious than what it was. This is a film with a lot of interesting ideas, and it just spends so much time trying to be...quirky. This needed the full-blown Alex Garland-esque type of dark complex look at human nature that messes with your brain long after you see the film. This does not have that, but it almost does. 

Also...Chris Hemsworth shouldn't play people with everyday jobs. He's too GQ for that. This might be a freezing cold take but I'll say it anyway: there are some actors out there who have such a glamorous look that they should never play people with normal everyday jobs. Ever. Not even if you apply prosthetics.

Hemsworth in this film plays the prison warden of a stylish experimental kind of penitentiary. I'm sorry but even that is too normal. Chris Hemsworth-looking mother f****** are not walking the Earth whilst having jobs like a prison warden. I don't care how futuristic the environment is portrayed to be.

🤮WHAT THE F*** IS THIS GARBAGE🤮

THOR: THE DARK WORLD

This movie is the default answer when you ask any comic book fan what the worst movie in the entire MCU is. There's a reason why Thor: Ragnarok was met with such open arms given the heavy contrast in style that that film has in comparison to this one. It's just so dull all around. It takes itself very seriously to a fault, the villain is instantaneously forgettable, the action is very similar to the first film, and the Kat Dennings performance... Is a lot more annoying than it was in the first film. The best thing you can say about Thor: the dark world is that it was an hour and 40 minutes. At the time of its release, it felt a lot less important than every other MCU film that existed up until that time.

RED DAWN

Sometimes you will see something that was made way back in the day and you'll classify it as s***. You'll go your whole life thinking that it's s*** until it is eventually remade in a much more serious tone...and then you'll kind of realize that you were too harsh on that film and that the cheesiness of the original film was a byproduct of the time that it was in. The 1984 RED DAWN film is peak 1980s cringy cheese of the best order. Turn it on when you need to laugh. When you take something like that and remake it 28 years later with a much more serious tone it just misses the mark. RED DAWN seems like a Michael Bay tribute film in a lot of ways. Just without all the stylish Michael Bay kind of stuff.

BLACKHAT

What if I told you there was a film directed by Michael Mann starring Chris Hemsworth & Viola Davis and it was TRASH? One would probably think I'm crazy given the names involved. But there's so much wrong with this film. The pacing is awful, the storyline is muddy as f***, and most of all our GQ boy Hemsworth is wildly miscast. There was a lot of flack for his casting as a supermodel-looking computer hacker, and rightfully so. Hemsworth himself was dissatisfied with what he did in the film and publicly made that known. That's pretty much all you need to know about this film.

GHOSTBUSTERS

Though he has a small role in this film he is clearly the best part about it. It is this film that firmly establishes that Chris Hemsworth is funnier than he is anything else. There are many giant swings at this film took to change this franchise from what it originally was, and all of those swings missed the mark badly and loudly. There's an old saying... If it ain't broke, don't fix it. It not only tried to fix what wasn't broke, it tried to remodel it as well. But at least Hemsworth was good enough to take something positive away from this.

MEN IN BLACK: INTERNATIONAL

Why does this movie exist? Who thought this would be a good idea? In continuing the if it ain't broke don't fix it mantra, not only was the Men in Black franchise not broken, but the entry before this one was good enough to justify the franchise continuing for at least one more round with the original duo that made the franchise iconic in the first place. This really really wasn't a good idea and is kind of unwatchable to an extent in my humble opinion.

Cinematic apogee

It's fat Thor. Who the f*** are we kidding? Fat Thor was absolutely marvelous to behold.

It's hard to pinpoint one thing that he did in avengers: endgame that stood out from the rest of the amazing things he did, so I have to include his performance as a whole in this movie as one giant cinematic apogee. Fat Thor is the absolute maximum of everything that Chris Hemsworth has ever excelled at on a movie screen.

In 2024, we look back at avengers: endgame endearingly because of the final 45 minutes or so. There are so many epic things in that time that happen one after the other, that it kind of drowns out what the rest of that 3-hour movie was. A lot of credit is given to Chris Evans for really rocking the s*** out of Captain America throughout that film. As far as I know, it is he who is given the Lion's share of credit for holding down avengers: endgame, and to that I say....

Not a single character suffered more from the snap of Thanos than Thor. Before he met Thanos he lost Asgard entirely, as well as his dad. Then Thanos kills his brother and Hemindal, And he loses half of his homies in The Avengers. Thor was in so much pain that when he went and decapitated the first Thanos he felt absolutely nothing. This man had nowhere to go but down, had a lot of heavy stuff to deal with, and made unhealthy choices. (Pun not intended)

This might not even be an unpopular opinion, but I do think Thor works better as this version of the character. And I do think that THOR: love and thunder would have been that much more interesting if he would have stayed this way, and was still in the process of working his way back from all the things that he lost. I cannot be the only person who thinks this would have been the best way.

Aside from Loki, Thor has the best character arc in the entire MCU.

**************

It's worth mentioning again that Chris Hemsworth is one of the most recognizable movie stars in the world by this point. But as an actor, I truly feel that he is truly underrated especially when you compare him to individuals who have an equal type of movie stardom.

In the films that I've just mentioned, he's shown that he's dedicated enough to go method for a role, he's self-deprecating enough to pull off comedy as well as he does anything else, and that he plays villains just as well as he plays heroes. He may be a little bit too much of a pretty boy to play everyday blue-collar/normal guy type of folks, but hey, that's what the character actors are for. He's not exactly a character actor. But he can kinda be.

In a recent Vanity Fair article he did mention that he does have a bit of frustration for not being in a Martin Scorsese type of film. He seems very hungry for something like that. My question is why not him? What more does this man have to do to take his career even further than where it's been?