Roosevelt Island Tramway - Media References

Media References

The Roosevelt Island Tramway was featured prominently in a climactic battle in the 2002 film Spider-Man, in which the Green Goblin throws Mary Jane Watson off the Queensboro Bridge, and Spider-Man must choose between saving her or passengers on the tramway. Shooting of this movie caused the Tram to be out of service for weeks.

The Spider-Man film was not the first appearance of the tramway; The House on the Edge of the Park (1980) shows the tram at 6:07 minutes into the film as how it appeared in the late 1970s. The Sylvester Stallone thriller Nighthawks (1981) depicted the tramway as a terrorist target where United Nations delegates were taken hostage. It was used in the opening credits of City Slickers (1991). In the 1994 film Léon: The Professional it can be seen when Natalie Portman's character, Mathilda, is traveling on it alone. It also appeared in the 2005 horror movie Dark Water.

The tram also figured prominently in the Universal Studios Florida theme park attraction Kongfrontation, which opened in 1990 and closed in 2002. The ride consisted of passengers boarding a recreation of a Roosevelt Island tram where they promptly came face-to-face with King Kong. The recreation did take certain liberties with regard to accuracy; the real trams, for example, do not have seats (though they do have benches at either end).

The projected fate of the tramway was shown in episode 4 of the first season of Life After People: The Series.

A virtual version of the tramway is seen in fictional Liberty City of the Grand Theft Auto gaming series.

The tram was featured in a 2012 episode of White Collar (TV series), with the character played by Matt Bomer leaping from a Manhattan bound tram to one going back to Roosevelt Island.