Olympic Opening Ceremony

I just watched some highlights of the Beijing opening ceremony as people have said it was so good etc but im not sure i agree, tell me what was so special about it exactly?

It was good of course but why have people gone on about it and said we coulnd't do better, if we're comparing, both seem good in their own way, ours was a lot more fun. :)
 
crinkleshoes said:
I'm always in the minority in this country - used to it.

China's = impressive
UK = terrible and boring

Different is good, when it works... this was just terrible.

Why would we try and educate the world on our history? Surely it would have been a better idea to advertise the country as it is now?

A much much better scenario than trying any of this ******** - would have just been to spend all the money on the biggest fireworks display the world has even seen... now that would have been awesome!

I'm one of the minority who actually has to deal with people from outside this country on an almost daily basis, something most don't... it's made us a laughing stock.

Seems the only people who liked it were brits - have you even seen the perception from elsewhere? We're a joke...

It wasn't even funny bad... just bad bad
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Frankly, you are in the minority.

I frequent a US based forum, here are some of the comments in a thread entitled "Awesome Olympic Opening" started by a Canadian

Brits knocked this one out of the park.

Loved the James Bond and the Queen bit

A resident of Bend, Oregon said

Great job!!! Brits knocked it out of the park! Very impressed BEST EVER

A resident of Maryland wrote

Not totally incomprehensible at all, I loved it. Salute to the Brits for doing it the way it should be done! You guys did a great job!

I'll tell you this though, when they were doing the" boy meets girl" music part I was very upset there was no Pink Floyd. I was actually yelling at the screen "WHERE"S THE FLOYD!"

But you made up for it at the lighting of the cauldron by playing Floyd then. I teared up.

I also teared up when Sir Mccartney broke up on the first verse of Hey Jude. You could just tell he was aw struck at what he was doing. I cheered when he got his act together and finished the song.

A chap of unknown location in America

i hate to say it but the chinese did kick ass...but this one was good

A resident of France wrote

It was really great show.

Good job brits!!

Another Canadian said

only saw the industrial revolution and 007 part but danny boyle did not disappoint once again
 
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crinkleshoes said:
Seems the only people who liked it were brits - have you even seen the perception from elsewhere? We're a joke...
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Nah most people seemed to like it - aside from some a few Americans (the sort who don't even have passports)... most Americans seemed to like it - especially Mr Bean, Paul McCartney, the Queen/James Bond bits...

Given that their coverage off it by NBC was heavily edited in itself, full of ad breaks and the presenters were borderline retarded its not surprising that it didn't play out quite as well there. I believe one of the supposed news anchors presenting it didn't know who Tim Berners-Lee was - fine if you're a pleb in the street but you'd expect a major network news presenter to have some knowledge of significant figures/events of the past couple of decades (or at least to used google and find out - since the whole thing was a delayed broadcast).
 
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Stolly said:
Frankly, you are in the minority.
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Seemed to be liked by the majority of people in the Olympic threads on 4chans /tv/ board when it was airing live. There were a fair few Americans amongst them i'd imagine as well. There was the odd troll as you would expect.

Every olympic video on ******** seems to be the majority of the US members hating on it, but ******** seems to be full of trolls.
 
NBC did a mess hack job of it, advertsing, very VERY poor commentators, then they cout out the entire "rememberence " part of it, which I thought was pretty disgusting.
 
crinkleshoes said:
Just the people I've been speaking with.

But then I suppose the only ones talking to me over the weekend are at minimum "friendly acquaintances"... and I only really get friendly with people who think in a similar way to me - so that might explain the perception.

I'm rather surprised by the positive reports.

I care about perception because I'm out of the country a lot and people make assumptions of you due to your affinity with a country.

I still, personally, think it was terrible & boring - but I'm glad I was wrong about the majority of foreign perception.
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I've spoken to half a dozen Americans I work with who are stateside and they all commented on how impressed (to a greater or lesser degree) they were with the opening ceremony. The only bit they weren't sure about was the NHS dancing nurses and odd blow up baby - unsurprisingly NHS and GOSH didn't really mean anything to them.
 
Jokester said:
Yeah I think the handing over of the torch from Redgrave to 7 upcoming athletes and the petals coming together is absolute genius.
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I agree, it was great.

I thought pretty much the whole opening ceremony was great, apart from 2 things; I wasn't a fan of the dancing through 'Abide with me' and McCartney was terrible.

The transformation from the 'green and pleasant land' to the industrial revolution then into the forging of the ring was just superb. The Queen with Daniel Craig was just fantastic, shows me she has a great sense of humour.
 
dowie said:
Nah most people seemed to like it - aside from some a few Americans (the sort who don't even have passports)... most Americans seemed to like it - especially Mr Bean, Paul McCartney, the Queen/James Bond bits...

Given that their coverage off it by NBC was heavily edited in itself, full of ad breaks and the presenters were borderline retarded its not surprising that it didn't play out quite as well there. I believe one of the supposed news anchors presenting it didn't know who Tim Berners-Lee was - fine if you're a pleb in the street but you'd expect a major network news presenter to have some knowledge of significant figures/events of the past couple of decades (or at least to used google and find out - since the whole thing was a delayed broadcast).
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Well what i don't get about that is that there was an announcement in the stadium saying who he was and what he did. Did they edit out the audio or something? :confused:
 
PermaBanned said:
Well what i don't get about that is that there was an announcement in the stadium saying who he was and what he did. Did they edit out the audio or something? :confused:
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tbh.. I think they were deliberated trying to get in a few snide remarks wherever they could... tis a bit pointless on their part - no matter how hard they try to put it down London will never be as bad as the Atlanta Olympic games...
 
My American friend's impression of the opening ceremony:

- The British are proud of their health care system. Though he was confused why the NHS part took a long time.
- James Bond + The Queen and Mr. Bean were the best moments.
- The olympic flame part was underwhelming.
- He thought that the evolution from the beginning of Britain to the Industrial revolution was great.
- He thought that the opening ceremony portrayed that the current British youth are only able to excel at texting and partying? W00t?
-The fireworks were not very special.
 
uannaka said:
- He thought that the opening ceremony portrayed that the current British youth are only able to excel at texting and partying? W00t?
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Hah. Should have had rioting, binge drinking, teenage pregnancies, drugs, stabbings, guns and hoodies in there. Has painted yoof culture in a pretty positive light really. Degenerates only interested in indulging themselves, such a contrast to the constructive progress shown at beginning of the ceremony.
 
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