The London 2012 Olympics - The Events

[Sam]

Sebastian Coe is a tedious speaker. They should have had Boris on instead.

The only boring bits were the stuff that's not London's fault at all. They need to cut out a lot of the boring crap that the IOC insist on putting in, they were the really tedious bits. The speech from Jacques Rogge and the pledges should be cut in my opinion, and there must be a way to shorten the country parade!

 

[Alastair]

I'm just a little disappointed there was no Boris on the bikes and the only reference to Doctor Who was the brief sound of the TARDIS hidden among the generation of music.

It's a bit tenuous, but current doctor Matt Smith was part of the running short film with Rowan.

Hmm, just watched this again and I didn't see him in it?

 

[SLC]

I think I'll need to give it another watch at a later date, as I didn't find it all that impressive. I can definitely see why it was liked by several of you, but it just lacked that missing something. And that 40 ft tall Voldemort was tacky as hell, although it was well performed. The Rowan Atkinson scene was very funny, and some of the industrial scenes were executed nicely. The social networking additions seemed like a pointless gimmick to me, and didn't add much to the performance.

A mixed bag, would want to come back to it with an open mind. Not better than Beijing though.

Psychocoaster, Smith makes an appearance at 2.23 in this video.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7oJ5N0az7w[/youtube]

 

[Meat Pie]

I've always been skeptical of the ability of large scale Spectacles to capture the essence of anything complex. If I'm honest, I felt most of it (even the impressive parts) were very pantomime. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but that's not my taste.

Art is meant to move you, and it just did very little for me. It was just big and flashy.

The industrial revolution scene was cool and I can appreciate how cleverly it was choreographed. I also respect the sentiment behind the tribute to the NHS but I felt that it could have been done in a more effective and moving way. I think the NHS is worth better representation then dancing doctors and kids jumping up and down on beds. Equally, I respect the sentiment of including the suffragette movement, but very little seemed to be made of them at all, almost as if they were a last minute addition.

The event seemed quite gimmicky and relied on cultural stereotypes but that is effective if it's only purpose was to entertain. If you wanted to derive anything more profound, I think you would struggle. That is until they revealed who the Olympic flag bearers were but then they were completely contradictory to previous Olympic conduct (I promise that's all I'm going to say along political lines in this topic).

5/10 - Interesting enough with few highly entertaining elements but overall meh.

Edit: Also, I left out one complaint. They used a snippet from The Sex Pistols' 'God Save The Queen', but cut it before second line of the song which goes on to say "the fascist regime". If you don't want to air the real sentiment of the song, don't use it. To use it the way they did, is disrespectful to the original piece.

 

[QTXAdsy]

Such a wonderful opening ceremony in my humble opinion.

After Beijing, I was wondering how we could pull something like that off, of course there is no point comparing the two opening's, they are both different in their own right.

However, it's not about how fancy the opening ceremony is, it is about how well our boys and girls in team GB do.

 

[Scott]

Incredible.

It strayed far enough away from the world's stereotypes of Britain and gave everyone a different view of our country. There was no tea drinking, there were no red busses or black cabs, there was just a celebration of our rich and diverse history as a nation.

It's a hard job to do, because everything you show has to be translatable globally and this is why Doctor Who was left alone... He isn't a global figure in the same way as Bean or Bond - those two bits were brilliant by the way. Rowan Atkinson was class and getting the Queen to 'act' alongside James Bond was brilliant.

Overall just fantastic.

 

[Martin]

Got to be honest, I changed my mind. I thought it started off pretty bad but the more it went on the more I enjoyed it.

Didn't like a lot of the music, but some of the music for the countries was good, and it was brilliant they ended with Pink Floyd and Muse got a play in the BBC intro (loved the Pink Floyd reference there as well) and the ceremony (bit odd the Olympic song wasn't played though). Arctic Monkeys were great, but not sure why they were there over the bands who made the music for the Olympics. No idea why Alex Turner decided to look like Joey Barton, but they were brilliant and their Beatles cover was much better than the other Beatles cover we heard last night.

Atkinson was really funny, but the best thing is how much it's wound up the right-wing. The Seig Heil are fuming, and that's good enough for me! Great gesture to let the kids light the torch (although I'd have been happy with anyone but Beckham), and in general the whole thing went really well.

My only problem other than the stuff out of their control like the speeches and parade was Paul McCartney. He needs to jack it in, wheeling out a tired sounding, backing tracked Hey Jude at every single public event, turning it into some annoying middle class singalong (has he forgotten how to play all his other songs), not to mention ruining Eclipse by trying to make it about hi by squeezing in that silly quote at the end, which was why they binned him when they made the album in the first place. He's also a pretty useless frontman. As a huge Beatles fan, it's painful to say it, but he's a massive tit.

Never mind, apart from him, it was pretty spectacular, can't wait for the closing ceremony to wind up the Tories even more!

 

[Andrew]

So, that's no medal in the Olympic road race, all because the Germans didn't want to help GB pull back the break away.

Thanks a lot!

I feel sorry for Cavendish who really deserved this after sacraficing so much.

GB deserved to win after doing all the work, but they could not do it.

 

[Rupert]

A somewhat staggering take on the celebration of the NHS by our good friends at the Daily Mail here. Really cementing their position as absolute bastards.

 

[Jonathan]

Danny Boyle really stuck two fingers up to David Cameron and the Tory coalition with the segment about the NHS - and rightly so.

 

[Martin]

Two kids per bed, nice swipe at NHS cuts.

I love how angry it's made them. The Mail article is beyond belief.

 

[James]

A somewhat staggering take on the celebration of the NHS by our good friends at the Daily Mail here. Really cementing their position as absolute bastards.

Wow. Even by Daily Mail standards I can't believe something like that has been published. That's appalling.

 

[Martin]

MP Aidan Burley's tweets were spectacular. Apparently the ceremony was too 'multi-cultural'. I haven't the heart to tell him many of the athletes are black.

 

[Sam]

Have a look at the comments on that Daily Mail story, under "Best Rated", it'll restore your faith in humanity a bit.

 

[Jonathan]

Comments are currently unavailable, Sam.

 

[Adam James]

I'm just a little disappointed there was no Boris on the bikes and the only reference to Doctor Who was the brief sound of the TARDIS hidden among the generation of music. I thought a few Dalek security guards would have perfected the event, especially after the security fiasco.

Overall a great spectacle, you can’t really compare it to anything before and that’s how it should be

After looking into it from organisers/producers on the internet, there was going to be a section celebrating British television which was cut out to Danny Boyle's dismay due to timing issues. Apparantly the section was going to include the theme tunes of Doctor Who and Coronation Street, along with a visual representation of Monty Python. Also, part of the nineties section was removed, set to include Oasis' Wonderwall. A shame really, as all those I can relate too - as can many a Brit.

Saying that, the opening ceremony was marvellous. ;D

 

[John]

Comments are currently unavailable, Sam.

They were all attacking the article and supporting the NHS.

Presumably someone from the Fail noticed and took them down for being too rational.

 

[Jonathan]

Excellent that they were supporting the NHS, but it doesn't surprise me one bit that the Sieg Heil removed them all.

 

[CoasterCrazyChris]

Also, part of the nineties section was removed, set to include Oasis' Wonderwall. A shame really, as all those I can relate too - as can many a Brit.

Damn. Big mistake.

That would have been the icing on the cake for such a great ceremony, it was a tad disheartening at the point they skipped straight over the Britpop years straight to present day (with Dizzee Rascal, Emelie Sande etc) especially as they were some of Britain's finest pop years. Oasis, and the likes of The Verve, Pulp, Radiohead, Robbie Williams and Spice Girls (yes, even them) would have taken people straight back to London's euphoric years of the late 1990s. Thankfully Blur, The Prodigy and Underworld were included. It's obvious they wanted more time in which to play more current music to appeal to the younger generation.

As for the rest of the ceremony, the Pandemonium set was a spectacle of the highest order which had me captivated from start to finish. Up until that point I was kind of hoping for the show to be a let down just to prove how much of a shambles these Olympics had been so far, but by the time those chimneys appeared from the ground my anticipations had entirely altered. Unfortunately, it peetered out from there but Mr Bean and the Bond/Queen moment was pretty good.

 

[josht]

Also, part of the nineties section was removed, set to include Oasis' Wonderwall. A shame really, as all those I can relate too - as can many a Brit.

Damn. Big mistake.

That would have been the icing on the cake for such a great ceremony, it was a tad disheartening at the point they skipped straight over the Britpop years straight to present day (with Dizzee Rascal, Emelie Sande etc) especially as they were some of Britain's finest pop years. Oasis, and the likes of The Verve, Pulp, Radiohead, Robbie Williams and Spice Girls (yes, even them) would have taken people straight back to London's euphoric years of the late 1990s. Thankfully Blur, The Prodigy and Underworld were included. It's obvious they wanted more time in which to play more current music to appeal to the younger generation.

As for the rest of the ceremony, the Pandemonium set was a spectacle of the highest order which had me captivated from start to finish. Up until that point I was kind of hoping for the show to be a let down just to prove how much of a shambles these Olympics had been so far, but by the time those chimneys appeared from the ground my anticipations had entirely altered. Unfortunately, it peetered out from there but Mr Bean and the Bond/Queen moment was pretty good.

They also missed out the stone roses was shocked how many great bands British bands they missed out