London 2012 Opening Ceremony

The thing I enjoyed most is how pissed off our American friends will be with a few of the references.

NHS, what is this madness? And who are the Brits claiming invented the Internet? :mad:
 
A quick look on twitter would suggest that most Americans aren't enjoying it too much. Apart from Mr Bean, they lapped that shit up.
 
He hoped his warm, witty, self-deprecating show would reflect a country trying to "find its level" in the world. "There has to be a modesty … and you can't get grandiose with this job because you are following Beijing, and it's a late call for our nation I think because we are learning our place in the world.

"A hundred years ago we were everything. Obviously the industrial revolution has partly bred that. But there is a change so I hope there is an innate modesty about it as well.
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Wise words Danny. I think many nations peoples who have been affected by Britain influence will agree with that
 
rcoobc said:
I really don't know what you mean about it being incoherent, maybe to the rest of the world. I didn't like the us of clips at the start but soon got used to it.

Rural Britain with its cows, sheep and cricket 10/10
Industrial Britain didn't break up rural destructively enough, it seemed a slow transition. I complained about the lack of fire, but that was obvious kept for the rings. 7/10
Modern London with its texts, clubbing and culture 10/10
Jerusalem for the 4 nations. 10/10
An advert for British music; didn't have every band or song I would have liked to see but its completely redefined opening ceremonies for me. Finally something that isn't interpretive dance [hat tip Mockney]. Boyle obviously looked at the great events over the past 50 years and decided they all included music. Live aid, etc. 15/10.
An advert for British storytelling. Shortish and sweet, 10/10
An advert for British film, didn't really get any of that and it was short. 2/10

Don't mess with our NHS. Fantastic. No number can be given.

Daniel Craig and the Queen. Needed to be night and Daniel Craig should have been there. Fantastic though. 7/10
Mr Bean. 8/10. Good for the kids.

I dont know what was incoherent at all.
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Pretty much what you wrote. The theme appeared to be 'Some different aspects of Britishness that happened to occur to us'. Why start in the 18th century? Why such an English setting (cricket, maypoles etc.)? Why the industrial revolution - what values were they associating with it? All these things could be fine - but without an overarching concept they seemed a bit random.

Texts and digital stuff isn't particular to Britain or London, so that seemed a departure from the 'theme', such as it was. Yeah we have text messaging here...so does everyone...so what? There's a technological through-line from the industrial revolution to digital shit, but why didn't anything else in the show follow that through? And why was there no aesthetic connection - in theatrical style, lighting, music etc. - reinforcing the link between I.R. and new technology?

Why children's books rather than Shakespeare, or Dickens, or Salman Rushdie, or whatever? What connection did it have to the films or music they chose?

Why the NHS? Why the going to sleep scene with the inflatable baby and the Chariots of Fire theme tune?

Also...Mr. Bean... how come anyone over 4 finds it funny?
 
To be fair, some of their choices where certainly debatable. Did we need so long with the hospital beds?

I saw it as a giant advertising billboard for Britain though, thats essentially what it was to me. To many Americans for example "England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland [Cough Northern Ireland]" are rural countries with sheep and cricket and Rugby. And maybe that is what Britain is to many of us too, so they gave us that.

Then we changed and created the swirling mess of slutty promiscuous teenagers we are today. The Beatles bought us there, the Prodigy brought us there and the Sex Pistols bought us there. The industrial revolution made London what is, as did bringing people from around the world, often in horrible circumstances.

London: Sex, chavs, noise, technology, music.
Britain: Sheep, Cows, Cricket, Rugby.
We gave the world James Bond, Harry Potter, Peter Pan and lots of music.
 
Plechazunga said:
I literally can't believe how many of you liked the ceremony

It was totally incoherent and shite

Floyd/cauldron/fireworks bit at the end was good though
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Same here, it was mental. There was no link through the different segments, and random focus on things that didn't seem very neccessary. I can't see how it would come across well for other nations at all, they wouldn't understand half of it for a start.
 
And something people should remember about Beijing. is that a fair portion of their fireworks were added for the TV audiences olnly and nt actually real.

From what i can gather of grumpy Plech ;), he liked the industrial revolution bit and the end but not what cane in-between, is that correct?

Apparently they had to cut up to a half hour's worth of the performance due to some need to finish at 0:30. Bloody jobsworths.
 
I liked the very end of the Industrial Revolution, where they forged the rings. The towers were also decent. Everything else was cringe-inducingly bad... Branagh, the silly hand-motions meant to invoke factory work, etc.
 
To be fair to Branagh, he only got drafted in a couple of weeks ago to replace Mark Rylance, so probably had to bluff a fair bit of it.
 
I thought the rings were great, the best part of the whole thing. Although it also would have been a fitting end for the ceremony by having them during the fireworks, but yeah I get they wanted to show fire for the Industrial Revolution. The fireworks at the end was nice, but that's fireworks, they always are. The bulk of the ceremony just didn't make sense, and given the aim is to show off Britain to the world, they went about doing so in the most confusing and incoherent way possible. They should have gone with something simple. I've probably never had so many "what the feck" moments in my life.
 
I think the NHS bit was the only part where people not from here would be thinking "wtf is this about?". I mean apart from all the bits where everyone including British people were thinking "wtf is this about?". The industrial revolution part wasn't hard to make sense of and the music/film/technology stuff was just good fun.

I actually think they were quite keen to include lots of things that the rest of the world might think of as typically British (or English rather) ie Mr Bean, Bond, Mary Poppins, Harry Potter all that shite. I think they were clearly included with the international audience in mind.
 
Watching it on record. The beginning with the History of Britain or whatever was rubbish. The end with the Olympics logo lit up was cool, though. Although a part of me wanted that to be Batman's instead, like TDKR.
 
Hasn't James Bond got more important things to do than act as the Queens bodyguard?
 
So the queen jumps out of the helicopter, opens the parachute and suddenly then walks into the stadium? How does that even connect? They didn't think that one through too well I reckon.
 
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I thought it was brilliant. What's all this talk of how would other countries understand. Of course they would. In this day and age, if they don't know, they will find out. I did. I never knew about NHS' service.

China Microblogs and Japan's feedback are outstanding. Beijing was too pompous. It was almost frightening. This ceremony was the best of what I've seen so far (From Seoul 88)

It was essentially British and that's why we all enjoyed it.
 
fishfingers15 said:
I thought it was brilliant. What's all this talk of how would other countries understand. Of course they would. In this day and age, if they don't know, they will find out. I did. I never knew about NHS' service.

China Microblogs and Japan's feedback are outstanding. Beijing was too pompous. It was almost frightening. This ceremony was the best of what I've seen so far (From Seoul 88)

It was essentially British and that's why we all enjoyed it.
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Who all? Just the British? A very tiny percentage enjoyed it in that case.
 
So noone wished it was Batman's logo burning/lit up instead?

To be fair I've only seen half the ceremony. Article Monkeys were a strange choice though. Could barely make out they were on about.
 
Spoony Kobayashi said:
And why do you cnuts like Bean so much?
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I don't. He was the only mildly entertaining part amidst the two hours of people dressing up funny and doing some sort of act/dance that I saw.

That dance choreographed by the Bangladeshi-Brit chap was pretty good.
 
Finally got to watch it and was quite underwhelmed. It dragged on far too long and didn't make much sense to me if it was meant to be a history lesson on Britishness. That fecking texting house party shit was fecking awful. Mr Bean! FFS...he's never been funny and that Queen bit was ruined by her grumpy face at the stadium.

What really infuriated me though was uniquely American...the cnuts at NBC cutting to commercial during interesting bits....and having their own camera shooting their own gurning athletes instead of just going with the feed.
 
fishfingers15 said:
Well I'm Indian, and I enjoyed it. I have a fairly diverse bunch of friends, and from their views they too enjoyed it. I shouldn't have put 'We all', I meant me and my friends.
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Oh alright. I just didn't get half of it. All I saw was "something" being enacted which had to do with history.

BTW, I only saw it till the guy started giving a speech after the countries contingencies came baring flags. How much was left after that?
 
amolbhatia100 said:
Oh alright. I just didn't get half of it. All I saw was "something" being enacted which had to do with history.

BTW, I only saw it till the guy started giving a speech after the countries contingencies came baring flags. How much was left after that?
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It finishes quickly after it. 20 Minutes maybe. Speeches, Arctic Monkeys, Lighting of the Torch by Sir Redgrave, Hey Jude and curtains.
 
amolbhatia100 said:
I don't. He was the only mildly entertaining part amidst the two hours of people dressing up funny and doing some sort of act/dance that I saw.

That dance choreographed by the Bangladeshi-Brit chap was pretty good.
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He made me cringe...of all the things Britain has given to the world, Mr Bean isn't something to be proud of, there's so much more, especially in terms of comedy. As for the dance... Yeah it was great, not just choreographically but aesthetically too.
 
Spoony Kobayashi said:
He made me cringe...of all the things Britain has given to the world, Mr Bean isn't something to be proud of, there's so much more, especially in terms of comedy. As for the dance... Yeah it was great, not just the choreography but aesthetically too.
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I dunno. Just found the whole thing dull. The first 30 minutes and that history lesson ruined it for me, followed by the queen & bond nonsense with the queen then making her entrance which not only made no sense in the context of the sequence but also involved her making the most grumpy face possible while people applauded her.
 
Theon said:
Apparently some American commentators think that Isambard Brunel (guy with the cigar during the revolution bit) was supposed to be Abraham Lincoln.
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I had Twitter on at the time too, was not just the commentators!! I really should have turned twitter off at that point but felt the need to do some educating.
Beckham is not carrying the flag because he is not in the team, England is not the only country in G. Britain, its Brunel not Lincoln you fools, Its because of those that lost their lives on 7th July in the London bombings etc etc.
Apart from winding myself up due to Americans, I actually enjoyed it! So what if some parts didn't seamlessly link in, it was a hell of an effort.
 
Voldemort haunting sick children was probably the most bizarre moment.
 
Now I've had chance to sleep on it, I still think it was shite.
 
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