LONDON (AP) — The queen and James Bond gave the London
Olympics a royal entrance like no other Friday in an opening ceremony
that rolled to the rock of the Beatles, the Stones and The Who.
And the creative genius of Danny Boyle spliced it all together.
Brilliant. Cheeky, too.
The highlight of the Oscar-winning director's $42 million show was pure movie magic, using trickery to make it seem that Britain's beloved 86-year-old Queen Elizabeth II had parachuted into the stadium with the nation's most famous spy.
A short film showed Daniel Craig as 007 driving to Buckingham Palace in a black London cab and, pursued by the royal corgis, meeting the queen, who played herself.
"Good evening, Mr. Bond," she said.
They
were shown flying in a helicopter over London landmarks and a waving
statue of Winston Churchill — the queen in a salmon-colored dress, Bond
dashing as ever in a black tuxedo — before leaping into the inky night
over Olympic Park.
At the same moment, real skydivers appeared as
the stadium throbbed to the James Bond theme. And moments after that,
the monarch appeared in person, accompanied by her husband, Prince
Philip.
Organizers said it was thought to be the first time she has acted on film.
"The queen made herself more accessible than ever before," Boyle said.
In the stadium, Elizabeth stood solemnly while a children's choir serenaded her with "God Save the Queen," and members of the Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force raised the Union Jack.
Boyle
sprang another giant surprise and picked seven teenage athletes for the
supreme honor of igniting the Olympic cauldron. Together, they touched
flaming torches to trumpetlike tubes that spread into a ring of fire.
The
flames rose and joined elegantly together to form the cauldron.
Fireworks erupted over the stadium to music from Pink Floyd. And with a
singalong of "Hey Jude," Beatle Paul McCartney closed a show that ran 45
minutes beyond its scheduled three hours.
Organizers said the cauldron would be moved Sunday night to the corner of the stadium where a giant bell tolled during the show.
Boyle
turned the stadium into a giant juke box, with a nonstop rock and pop
homage to cool Britannia that ensured the show never caught its breath.
The
high-adrenaline soundtrack veered from classical to irreverent. Boyle
daringly included the Sex Pistols' "Pretty Vacant" and a snippet of its
version of "God Save the Queen" — an anti-establishment punk anthem once banned by the BBC.
The
encyclopedic review of modern British music continued with a 1918
Broadway standard adopted by the West Ham football team, the Rolling
Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and "Bohemian Rhapsody," by
still another Queen, and other tracks too numerous to mention, but not
to dance to.
The evening started with fighter jets streaming red,
white and blue smoke and roaring over the stadium, packed with a buzzing
crowd of 60,000 people, at 8:12 p.m. — or 20:12 in the 24-hour time
observed by Britons.
Boyle, one of Britain's
most successful filmmakers, who directed "Slumdog Millionaire" and
"Trainspotting," had a ball with his favored medium, mixing filmed
passages with live action in the stadium to hypnotic effect, with 15,000
volunteers taking part in the show.
Actor Rowan Atkinson as "Mr.
Bean" provided laughs, shown dreaming that he was appearing in "Chariots
of Fire," the inspiring story of a Scotsman and an Englishman at the
1924 Paris Games.
There was a high-speed flyover of the Thames, the river that winds like a vein through London and was the gateway for the city's rise over the centuries as a great global hub of trade and industry.
Headlong
rushes of movie images took spectators on wondrous, heart-racing
voyages through everything British: a cricket match, the London Tube and the roaring, abundant seas that buffet and protect this island nation.
Opening the ceremony, children popped balloons with each number from 10 to 1, leading a countdown that climaxed with Bradley Wiggins, the newly crowned Tour de France champion.
Wearing his yellow winner's jersey, Wiggins rang a 23-ton Olympic Bell from the same London
foundry that made Big Ben and Philadelphia's Liberty Bell. Its
thunderous chime was a nod to the British tradition of pealing bells to
celebrate the end of war and the crowning of kings and queens, and now
for the opening of a 17-day festival of sports — London's record third as host.
The show then shifted to a portrayal of idyllic rural Britain
— a place of meadows, farms, sport on village greens, picnics and
Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne's bear who has delighted generations of
British children tucked warmly in bed.
But that "green and pleasant land," to quote poet William Blake, then took a darker, grittier turn.
The
set was literally torn asunder, the hedgerows and farm fences carried
away, as Boyle shifted to the industrial transformation that
revolutionized Britain
in the 18th and 19th centuries, the foundation for an empire that
reshaped world history. Belching chimneys rose where only moments
earlier sheep had trod.
The Industrial Revolution also produced
terrifying weapons, and Boyle built a moment of hush into his show to
honor those killed in war.
"This is not specific to a country.
This is across all countries, and the fallen from all countries are
celebrated and remembered," he explained to reporters ahead of the
ceremony.
"Because, obviously, one of the penalties of this
incredible force of change that happened in a hundred years was the
industrialization of war, and the fallen," he said. "You know, millions
fell."
Olympic organizers separately rejected calls for a moment
of silence for 11 Israeli athletes and coaches slain by Palestinian
gunmen at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
The parade of nations featured
most of the roughly 10,500 athletes — some planned to stay away to save
their strength for competition — marching behind the flags of the 204
nations taking part.
Greece had the lead, as the spiritual home of
the games, and Team Great Britain was last, as host. Prince William and
his wife, Kate, joined in thunderous applause that greeted the British
team, which marched to the David Bowie track "Heroes." A helicopter
showered the athletes and stadium with 7 billion tiny pieces of paper —
one for each person on Earth.
Both Bahrain and Brunei featured
female flagbearers in what has been called the Olympics' Year of the
Woman. For the first time at the games, each national delegation
includes women, and a record 45 percent of the athletes are women. Three
Saudi women marching behind the men in their delegation flashed victory
signs with their fingers.
"This is a major boost for gender equality," said the International Olympic Committee president, Jacques Rogge. These are his last games as head of the IOC. He steps down in 2013 after completing the maximum two terms.
Rogge
honored the "great, sports-loving country" of Britain as "the
birthplace of modern sport," and he appealed to the thousands of
athletes assembled before him for fair play.
"Character counts far
more than medals. Reject doping. Respect your opponents. Remember that
you are all role models. If you do that, you will inspire a generation,"
Rogge said.
The queen then said: "I declare open the games of London, celebrating the 30th Olympiad of the modern era."
Last
month, the nation put on a festive Diamond Jubilee — a small test run
for the games — to mark her 60 years on the throne, a reign that began
shortly after London's last Olympics, in 1948.
Former
world heavyweight champion and 1960 Rome Olympic gold medalist Muhammad
Ali was cheered when he appeared briefly with his wife, Lonnie, before
the Olympic flag was unfurled.
Some 8,000 torchbearers, mostly
unheralded Britons, had carried the flame on a 70-day, 8,000-mile
journey from toe to tip of the British Isles, whipping up enthusiasm for
a $14 billion Olympics taking place during a severe recession.
The final torchbearers were kept secret — remarkable given the scrutiny on these, the first Summer Games of the Twitter era.
The
show's lighter moments included puppets drawn from British children's
literature — Captain Hook from "Peter Pan," Cruella de Vil from "101
Dalmations" and Lord Voldemort from J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter"
series, as well as Mary Poppins.
Their appearance had a serious message, too — the importance of literacy.
"If you can read and write, you're free, or you can fight for your freedom," Boyle said.
Boyle's
challenge was daunting: To be as memorable as Beijing's incredible,
money-no-object opening ceremony of 2008, the costliest in Olympic
history.
"Beijing is something
that, in a way, was great to follow," Boyle said. "You can't get bigger
than Beijing, you know? So that, in a way, kind of liberated us. We
thought, 'Great, OK, good, we'll try and do something different.'"
