Robert Downey Jr. has rarely worked outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe since debuting as Iron Man all the way back in 2008. In 18 years he’s only starred in Tropic Thunder, The Soloist, two Sherlock Holmes movies, Due Date, The Judge, Chef, Dolittle, and Oppenheimer. But, of course, he was established prior to the MCU. The same could be said of fellow top-tier stars Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans. Their profiles were certainly bolstered by the Marvel movies, but they were nonetheless established. Not the case with Chris Hemsworth. He’s a global movie star because of the MCU, and since starting his impressive, ongoing run back in 2011, he’s managed to fit in a wide array of appearances in non-Marvel movies.
In fact, Hemsworth has had the most impressive career outside of Marvel of any top-tier Marvel player. Even just since Avengers: Endgame in 2019 he’s put in appearances in movies of multiple genres. Sometimes they worked out, sometimes they didn’t, but they’re all ranked below.
8) Men in Black: International
Even with Men in Black 3, the only follow-up to the original film to feel like it had any reason to exist, it was always clear that Men in Black simply wasn’t meant to be a franchise. And it’s odd because, like with Jurassic Park, it’s a world that seems very conducive to sequels.
But while Men in Black II is the most rushed blockbuster in the history of the industry (the credits roll before it’s even hit its 81st minute), Men in Black: International manages to be even less memorable. Its existence boils down to “Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson had a ton of chemistry in Thor: Ragnarok. That chemistry will be enough to make another big IP successful.” As it turns out, that wasn’t the case, and both the reviews and financial returns reflected that.
7) Thor: Love and Thunder
For years and years Thor: The Dark World was pointed at as the worst the MCU had to offer. But then Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder came along and showed that it wasn’t even the worst of its own franchise within a universe.
Is Love and Thunder the worst of the MCU now that we’re in the midst of 2026? It’s debatable, but let’s say the edge goes to Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Secret Invasion, but it is awfully close. At the very least this is the most tonally inconsistent of them all. The humor that worked in Ragnarok is pushed to 11 and it’s too much by the time the movie has hit the five-minute mark. Then, once the stupid screaming goats come in it’s insufferable. Is Christian Bale amazing in it and is the Shadow Realm action sequence neat? Sure, but one underutilized genius and one grand set piece doesn’t help save a movie that is too goofy by half and too much of a bummer by other half.
6) Spiderhead
Like Project Power, The Midnight Sky, The Discovery, and What Happened to Monday, Spiderhead is a perfectly fine Netflix original sci-fi movie. You’re okay pressing play on it as long as you’re a subscriber but you’re bound to understand why it wasn’t given a theatrical push.
It’s a movie that doesn’t make full good on its admittedly intriguing premise. There’s no plot development or individual scene that will linger in your mind long after the credits roll. That said, were we ranking these movies based on the strength of Hemsworth’s work, it would get a higher placement.
5) Crime 101
Hollywood seems to finally be catching up to the fact that Don Winslow’s prose is perfectly suited for crime cinema. Before Crime 101 all we had were the low budget The Death and Life of Bobby Z and the average but over-stylized Savages, directed by Oliver Stone. Crime 101 is easily the best of them, establishing the tone of Winslow’s more serious (aka less surfing-obsessed) works in a way that bodes well for forthcoming adaptations of The Force, The Border, and the Danny Ryan trilogy.
This is one of the better Hemsworth crime movies, and it’s proof positive that he’s as good an antihero as he is a hero or, on the rare occasion, villain. There isn’t really anything here that hasn’t been done elsewhere, but it’s a breezy two hours, and it’s a perfectly enjoyable Saturday evening crime-romance flick.
4) Transformers One
While Bumblebee is the best movie of the franchise, Transformers One makes the case that this particular IP is better off in animated form. It has more heart than all of the Michael Bay movies and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts combined.
Some weren’t thrilled with the fact that Optimus Prime was being recast, especially given how inextricably linked to the role Peter Cullen is, but Hemsworth fills the spot amiably and admirably. Plenty of people still hold the 1986 close to their heart as the best animated movie, but that’s mostly nostalgia talking (and fair enough to that) and this is really how an animated Transformers should be done. Too bad it didn’t do so hot at the box office.
All of the main Marvel stars have tried to have franchises of their own outside the world of comic book cinema. For Robert Downey Jr. it was Sherlock Holmes, Jeremy Renner had Mayor of Kingstown (a running small screen IP is still a running IP), Scarlett Johansson can return to Jurassic World any time she wants, even if Jurassic World Rebirth seems to be a one-off, and Chris Evans tried with Lightyear and Red One.
Hemsworth has arguably done the best when it comes to establishing a non-Marvel franchise, because Extraction and his Tyler Rake character could go for quite some time. Brutal, energetic, well-acted, and with very few moments that allow the viewer to catch their breath, it’s a winner of a formula. Rescue mission movies have been done to death, but when they’re done with this much style and tricky camerawork it’s more than okay to keep reaching into that particular barrel.
Just edging out Extraction is its own sequel, Extraction 2, which upped the stakes and improved upon everything the original film already did well. This includes the “one-take” sequence in film two, which is longer and even more brutal than the similar scene in film one.
Hemsworth’s Rake is also expanded in just enough ways to make the viewer feel as though they should be excited for round three which is, indeed, on its way. He’s more layered than the average action protagonist, and Hemsworth does well with the quiet moments, as well as his somewhat complicated relationship with Golshifteh Farahani’s Nik Khan.
1) Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Hemsworth gets some credit for his versatility, but not quite enough. On top of being a fully convincing action hero, he’s ingenious in terms of comedic timing. On top of having his funny moments as Thor, and there are many of them, he also took the extremely average Ghostbusters and Vacation reboots and stole his scenes like a master thief.
But, in terms of versatility and credit for it, Hemsworth is far more recognized for his ability to knock action and comedy out of the park than he is for his ability to run away with a villain role. Spiderhead is an example, but with Dr. Dementus in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, he crafted one of the best antagonists of the 2020s. Is the overarching movie a little long-winded? Sure, but that’s primarily because of its ambition. It’s telling a massive story that nonetheless never forgets to keep the aim of its narrative lens as intimate as possible. Furiosa is not the masterpiece Mad Max: Fury Road was (few action movies are), but people are going to look back on it as an extremely worthy addition to the Max canon. This is Hemsworth’s best post-Endgame movie; he had it in him to make it epic.
Which of these is your favorite post-Endgame Hemsworth movie? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!