Chris Hemsworth’s Hollywood image is so dominated by heroics — noble lightning gods, charming action men, clean-cut good guys — that it’s easy to forget just how unsettling he can be when he chooses to plunge into the dark. From Home and Away to hammer-wielding superstardom in the MCU, Hemsworth has carved out a career playing characters we root for. They’re typically brave, funny, and larger-than-life.
Even his more varied roles — from The Cabin in the Woods to his turn in Furiosa — tend to keep him on the charismatic side of the moral compass. Which is precisely why his performance in Bad Times at the El Royale feels like such a delicious shock to the system. In a film stacked with colorful degenerates, damaged souls, and noir archetypes, Hemsworth arrives as something altogether different. He’s a grinning, barefoot dose of pure menace.
If Drew Goddard’s twisted neo-noir is a genre playground, Hemsworth is the moment the playground catches fire. The film’s first two acts are all stylish slow-burn mystery. We discover hidden tunnels and morally murky drifters, while Cynthia Erivo sings her heart out and Jeff Bridges digs up secrets best left buried. But when Hemsworth steps onto the scene, shirt open, charm dialed up to cult-leader levels, the whole movie tilts on its axis. It’s Hemsworth as we’ve never seen him: seductive, sinister, unpredictable. It’s a performance that doesn’t just break from his heroic persona, but gleefully torches it.
Steals The Spotlight
Hemsworth’s charisma and machismo are part of what make his Hollywood roles so endearing, but in Bad Times at the El Royale, in what is arguably the best of his career, he deliciously weaponizes everything audiences usually love about him. His charm becomes manipulation, his warmth curdles into control, and that easy, playful energy transforms into something predatory.
As cult leader Billy Lee, Hemsworth isn’t just performing a villain; he’s dismantling his heroic screen persona piece by piece, revealing a performer far more versatile and dangerous than Marvel ever allowed him to be. It’s the rare role where his physicality and star power are used against the audience, drawing us in only so he can push us to the edge of our seats.
That transformation reaches its apex in the film’s unforgettable Russian roulette sequence. The deadly game has been used effectively before in movies, most notably in The Deer Hunter. The sequence overturns the traditional game of roulette, which most people might be more familiar with in its traditional casino format, or as played on online platforms as internet roulette. Here, that spinning moment of uncertainty becomes one of unpredictable and unsettling risk.
The randomness that makes a roulette wheel exciting becomes, under Billy Lee’s sadistic control, a matter of life and death. It’s this collision of harmless chance and absolute peril that makes the scene so effective. We recognize the mechanics, the tension, the anticipation, but here the stakes are terrifyingly real, amplified by Hemsworth’s magnetic menace.
Turning to the Dark Side
In Bad Times at the El Royale, Chris Hemsworth proves he’s far more than a heroic blockbuster icon. By embracing unpredictability and pure menace, he delivers a performance that stands above many of his celebrated roles. It proves that when Hemsworth goes dark, he delivers some of his most unforgettable work.
