The opening sequence of a trailer for The Fall Guy, the recently released action movie starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt shot in Australia last year, features an action-packed race down Sydney’s George Street. Swerving around civilians on his e-scooter, Gosling beats the closing doors of the L2 Light Rail to Randwick, before crashing out a window through the other side of the carriage. Yes, the writers’ rooms of Hollywood have concocted a high-stakes action sequence within an alternate reality beyond the bounds of our imaginations: legalised e-scooters in the Sydney CBD!

I jest. (Although, please, no one let Transport for NSW see this film as they will add “light rail window damage” to their list of safety concerns keeping Sydney from following every other eastern capital city in trialling the devices.)

Watching The Fall Guy trailer in a Sydney cinema brought on a moment of reflection, if not cultural cringe. Among the snapshots of Sydney daily life featured in this internationally released film, which involved shutting down the Harbour Bridge for a car chase, is … the light rail? Ryan Gosling is racing onto and crashing through the window of … the light rail? We let Ken catch the light rail? It’s not exactly Wolverine fighting bad guys on the bullet train to Nagasaki. Or is it?

Maligned by locals since it opened four years ago as the public transport you catch when you want to travel through the city at a bit quicker than walking pace (but, crucially, not quite at running pace), Sydney’s light rail has become an unlikely movie star.

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

Former Q&A host Stan Grant is on screen as a small-town US news anchor in the new Zac Efron movie Ricky Stanicky, shot 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 be released in cinemas next month).

The Fall Guy is the second Hollywood flick set in modern-day Sydney released in the past six months. And, curiously, it is also the second to feature a cameo from the L2 to Randwick. The L2 – alas, the L1 to Dulwich Hill is yet to crack the big time – made its silver screen debut last year in Anyone But You, a romantic comedy starring Sydney Sweeney and Glenn Powell.

One scene features Powell’s character making a convenient and completely normal 40-kilometre trip from his Palm Beach mansion to the centre of town to buy flowers for a wedding, standing outside the QVB as George Street’s red chariot glides through in the background. Is the light rail’s newfound film star status just a coincidence? A Destination NSW conspiracy?