I'd like to create a cinematic sequence where a thor is fighting marines. I have a problem though in that the impact of his gun creates this shockwave animation that is quite annoying from close camera angles. Is there anyway to remove just that portion of the animation and leave the rest (the explosion etc) as is?

I've figured out how to make the marines disintegrate when they die, but the shockwave impact is still there.

In the actors portion of the data editor find the ThorAttack actor. In action actors there is a property called Impact Map this should be where most target effects for attacks are. If you look at it in the None index there is a model under Art, change that to none and you should be good.