The 12 best non-Marvel Chris Hemsworth movies, ranked

A pretty awesome war movie overall, 12 Strong is not exactly Hemsworth’s best role. Based on a true yet pretty unbelievable story, 12 special forces operatives are the first U.S. retaliation after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Obligated to join forces with the Northern Alliance of Afghanistan, the 12 initiate an unlikely and outnumbered assault to destabilize the Taliban’s power center in Mazar-i-Sharif. Hemsworth’s portrayal of Capt. Mitch Nelson is noble and brave — as it should be — but it didn’t seem like a role in which Hemsworth could truly shine. His accent is also inconsistent in this role. But his macho manliness is apparent as ever — it just doesn’t quite convince. In the end, I don’t blame Hemsworth as much as I do the lazily constructed backstory and writing surrounding the main plot, but he could have given the character more depth in the few emotional scenes provided.

A great chance for Hemsworth to play the villain, Spiderhead follows two inmates who bond with one another as they attempt to understand the state-of-the-art prison that they’re both trapped in. Hemsworth plays the visionary running the prison, who experiments on his inmates with various drugs. Spiderhead is not a perfect movie, but Hemsworth knows how to use his charisma so that he seems like a misunderstood genius. Starring Miles Teller, Spiderhead is fun, frothy, and has just a few serious ideas on its mind.

In the Heart of the Sea is a story about survival and the extremes humans can go to when faced with disaster. It takes place in the early 1820s, aboard a whaling ship called the Essex out of Nantucket, Massachusetts. Chris Hemsworth stars as one of the whalers on the ship, Owen Chase, who is a skilled first mate. The Essex is attacked by a giant, enraged sperm whale in a nightmarish encounter, and the damaged ship sinks, leaving the crew adrift in the vast ocean with limited supplies. The survivors face starvation, dehydration, and harsh elements as they desperately try to find land, and they’re pushed to their limits and forced to make unthinkable choices to survive. The film portrays the real-life events that inspired Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick.

A continuation of the classic National Lampoon films, Vacation is an all-out adventure of idiocy and sexual jokes that don’t quite match the originals. Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms) remembers his days of traveling to Walley World with his family as a child. Determined to create memories with his own family as his father did, they drive across the country and run into all sorts of mishaps. Hemsworth shows up in the film — getting maybe 10 minutes of screen time — as an exaggerated personification of his physical traits, which are all referenced or shown in his short cameo. Though he’s not a big part of the movie, Hemsworth has got to be the absolute highlight. Hair coiffed, abs out, evenly tanned, Hemsworth fully dives into the role as the hunky, southern a-hole with hilarious magnificence. The film, overall, is lowbrow and crude, with little to take away, but Vacation does have some great moments if you want to sit for two hours and turn your brain off.

A gritty and cutting racing story, Rush is the best Ron Howard sports movie and his only one since Cinderella Man. In the 1970s, James Hunt (Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl) begin their bitter rivalry, pushing each other to obsessive lengths to be the best. The performances in this film are fantastic, both Hemsworth and Brühl shine in their opposition and emotional performances, but Brühl a bit more so. For somebody who was hoping for a bit more subtlety, it was a bit disappointing to see Hemsworth show up in the very first scene shirtless and womanizing, despite the promising writer and director. Though this does play on Hemsworth’s strengths and later ends up working well for the character, I wish it wasn’t so simple as that. I was glad to see later that Hemsworth’s role included a dark period of alcoholism and sadness, leaving him with nothing else but racing, but even that was a bit lacking. Seeing him begin to stretch his arms in a new type of role is exciting, which increases anticipation for the upcoming Hulk Hogan biopic he has been cast in.