How Sydney’s light rail became Hollywood’s most unlikely star

The opening scene of a trailer for The autumn man, the recently released action film starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt that was shot in Australia last year, features an action-packed race through Sydney’s George Street. Gosling weaves around civilians on his e-scooter and rams the closing doors of the L2 Light Rail into Randwick, before crashing through the other side of the carriage and out a window. Yes, Hollywood’s writers’ rooms have concocted a high-stakes action scene in an alternate reality beyond the limits of our imagination: legalized e-scooters in Sydney’s CBD!

I’m kidding. (Although no one is showing Transport for NSW this film because they will add “damage to the light rail windows” to their list of safety concerns that will prevent Sydney from following every other eastern capital in testing the devices.)

Watching The autumn man trailer in a Sydney cinema provided a moment of reflection, if not cultural cringe. Among the snapshots of daily life in Sydney featured in this internationally released film, which saw the Harbor Bridge closed for a chase, is… the light rail? Ryan Gosling races up and crashes through the window of… the Light rails? Let’s Ken take the light rail? It’s not exactly Wolverine fighting bad guys on the bullet train to Nagasaki. Or is it?

Reviled by locals since it opened four years ago as the public transport you take when you want to get around the city at a little faster than walking pace (but, crucially, not quite at driving speed), Sydney’s light rail has become an unlikely movie star .

Loading

In case you haven’t noticed yet: smile, Australia, you’re on camera. The Hollywood strikes are over and the films shot Down Under during the pandemic and its aftermath are now being released. Not all of these films are set here, but if you look closely you can see local production.

Former Question and answer host Stan Grant stars as a small-town news anchor in the new Zac Efron film Ricky Stanickyrecorded in Melbourne and now streaming on Prime, and the Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes looks suspiciously like the Illawarra region (the 10th film in the franchise, shot in NSW in 2022, will hit cinemas next month).

The autumn man is the second Hollywood film set in modern-day Sydney to be released in the past six months. And curiously, it’s also the second with a cameo from the L2 to Randwick. The L2 – unfortunately, the L1 to Dulwich Hill has yet to break through – made its debut on the silver screen last year in Everyone but youa romantic comedy starring Sydney Sweeney and Glenn Powell.

In one scene, Powell’s character makes an easy and completely normal 25-mile journey from his Palm Beach mansion to the center of town to buy flowers for a wedding, standing outside the QVB as the red chariot of George Street heads toward continues in the background. Is the light rail’s new movie star status merely a coincidence? A Destination NSW conspiracy?