The good: Tim Berners-Lee is still alive. I'd thought he was dead. The bad: The third act could have used a psychopathic killer. But feel free to make serious discussion.
I thought it was kind of disappointing, to be honest. The inspired bits were Bond & the Queen parachuting and Mr Bean in the orchestra. The forging of the rings was nice too. But I hated the jittery editing in the film clips. The best opening ceremonies in recent memory have been the ones in Beijing and Vancouver.
It was aired at 4am here in Singapore, so I was not awake for it. Watching the opening ceremonies right now, Ethiopia's contingent is marching in with Adele singing in the background. I'm already disappointed that only the TARDIs is heard and that The Doctor does not appear.
Anyone who watched it on NBC... Did I fall asleep and miss a lot of countries enter or did NBC fast-forward after about 5 or 6 nations to quickly get to the US? I was dozing off and on so I'm not sure. Paul McCartney's voice was totally shot. Shame. I liked the Bond bit with the Queen...then I wondered if I was watching a movie commercial during the olympics opening ceremony.
It was on the screen at the venue apparently. There was a further TV theme montage planned as well, but it got cut due to timings in the rehearsals
The opening film clip was shit (stuttery and sounding like a buzz), most of the first half of the ceremony was great - especially Bond and Bean, and the 40 years of music - but it fell apart when they started on Abide With Me. The parade of athletes was terminally boring as always, and then Macca squished any remaining pleasure by being well past his sell-by date (why couldn't we have had Tom Jones instead, who's kept his voice?) and also overran so that the Dr Who, Corrie and Monty Python themes used in the tech rehearsal didn't get used. The fireworks were great, and some bits (the kids' nightmare, the winged bicycles) appear to have been drug-induced hallucinations. Overall it was a lot better than I expected, with the Abide With Me and Macca bits being what I'd expected...
It was all so so, then it got to the bit they lit the cauldron, i was vey impresssed with that, the way it came together was quite cool.
I personally liked it, watched the show live from start to finish I think it was quite innovative and some ways very different opening ceremony. I enjoyed the humor and many of the set pieces were pretty epic looking, like the forging of the rings part. Nice to see some Shakespeare there in the mix, also( with Branagh, no less). The James Bond part was funny..and the Rowan Atkinson stuff was a nice surprise. The more somber parts were well done also. I personally like to watch the athletes walking inside to the stadium. Some of the teams had some pretty cool looking clothes. I did find the team Finland dressed bit too much like Estonia shortly before them. The Czech team did poke a bit of well intended fun about the British weather with their rubber boots. And when the UK team entered there was a shot of The Queen picking her fingers. I know that it was more of an gaffe by the director, rather than Her Majesty..but it did make me laugh. All in all, a fantastic opening for the games..job well done! Congratulations to the UK!
It was hot and cold for me. It went on waaaaay too long, but some of the stuff was pretty cool. The Bond/Queen thing was funny, although they took off during the day and parachuted in at night. Just a bit of a continuity error. Also, what the hell was up with that young man and woman? She dropped her cell phone and he picked it up, but then he called her? If he had her cell phone how could he do that? Did she have two phones? Why did she have two phones? Why should we even care about those two people? So many unanswered questions...
Either she called her own number in the hope someone had found it, or he called some numbers in her phone book and reached on of her friends with her that night. That one is pretty easy to explain, really. That one is harder to answer.
The Mr Bean bit was inspired, I thought. He's a great comic actor who manages it all just using facial expressions. It helps that he's got a very expressive face, I guess
Saw it in a bar, so it didn't come with the sound, but most of what I saw struck me as rather bizarre or of little interest. Of course, it surely didn't help that I'm not British. Rowan Atkinson, of course, required neither the sound nor any particular nationality to be hilarious.
I found out BBC's version of the opening ceremony is 5 hours long where as my local channel's coverage is only for 2 hours. So I went to my usual sources and watched the BBC's version. Wow. The early farm bits, most of the NHS segment, the entire music montage, the bit with bicyclists with flapping wings were all cut. Little wonder that just about everyone here felt the opening ceremony was boring and uninspired.
Yeah, same here. Watched it on the CTV feed here in Canada and we watched the second showing, which was unfortunately edited just like you describe, which made everything that they did show quite out of context. About the only thing remaining was the industrial revolution, the Bond bit, the Mr Bean bit, and the long drawn-out pop-culture bit, the parade of althletes and then Paul McCartney. No Mike Oldfield, no Arctic Monkeys. It seemed that most of the entertainment had been cut out. They even cut out the intro to the pop-culture segment making it even more out of context and making viewers like me very confused at what we were watching. If I'd had any hand in the editing, I'd have kept the NHS bit as it's something the international audience can identify with more. Watched it again on the On Demand service which included everything and couldn't believe how much had been cut on the broadcast we originally saw. Much more satisfying when watching everything beginning to end with everything included as it was meant to be seen.
It went on too long (but mainly that's down to the parade of athletes!) but prior to that it was pretty darn spectacular. Very British. Could have done with more Doctor Who but what ya gonna do I gave up half way through Hey Jude (and Lonemagpie I said the same thing about Tom, he can still cut it whilst Macca sadly can't, but apparently he has laryngitis at the moment anyway!) I loved the cauldron though!
It was hot and cold for me too, but I stuck with it for the telecast. Glad that Doctor Who got a nod. The American commentators mentioned more than once how fast the procession of athletes was taking place, faster than they had ever seen it.
As far as I know the NBC broadcast didn't cut anything, including the entire parade of nations. There were several commercial breaks of course, but even after coming back from commercial they quickly showed the nations that had come in during the break.
There's a big fuss about the fact that they did cut the 7/7 tribute bit as being "not of US interest" at least from the morning rerun. (Imagine the fuss if the BBC cut out a 9/11 tribute from something as "not of UK interest") Though, TBH, that bit was crap anyway - the singer murdered Abide With Me, while a really pretentious bit of dance went on.