If you didn't have a summer Friday and weren't able to sign off in the middle of the day, the Olympic Opening Ceremony has ended and the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics are officially underway. And Paris did it...a little differently. As far as Olympic opening ceremonies go, this one, in my opinion, was just OK! I usually tear up during these events, but I barely felt a wisp of moisture in my eyes, let alone a fully-developed teardrop. I appreciate Paris' ambitious vision to use their lovely (??) river, the Seine, and their lovely city as the backdrop instead of a stadium but, ultimately, I think it dwarfed the performances and made the transitions between acts too chaotic. I also didn't love the boats! Eighty-five boats carried all the Olympic athletes down the Seine to the foot of the Eiffel Tower, and while the idea seems cool in theory, I missed watching them all march in a parade together. And it didn't help that it was pouring—but, as NBC commentators Kelly Clarkson and Peyton Manning continued to point out about every 20 seconds, the rain did not deter the athletes from enjoying their first Olympic moment! I don't know why it would, but it seemed they wanted us to feel extremely inspired by this. Despite everything I just said, there was a lot I loved. Namely, the section of the ceremony where French heavy metal band Gojira performed a metal version of “Ah! Ça Ira,” which was a popular song during the French Revolution. Gojira—who is also the first heavy rock back to perform in an Olympics opening ceremony— performed at the Conciergerie, where Marie Antoinette was famously tried and sentenced in 1793. (Before it became a prison and courthouse, the Conciergerie was a royal palace. It's now a museum and a UNESCO World Heritage site.) So it was very ~metal~ of the opening ceremony imagineers to have Gojira perform with a bunch of headless Marie Antoinettes, who were standing in each of the windows. headless marie antoinette opening ceremony is metal af pic.twitter.com/oLZI76DID8 — Kimmi Kill Zombie (@kimmikillzombie) July 26, 2024 Beyond that, I deeply enjoyed the masked, torch-carrying soldier? from the French Revolution? doing Parkour?? (This bit was never fully explained.) And I really loved when all the paintings in the Louvre ran to the window to watch the ceremony. There was also a throuple! Which is absolutely an Olympic first. During another section, 10 golden statues of famous French women from history emerged from the Seine—because of the 300 statues in public spaces in Paris, only 40 of them are of women. So now, there'll be 310 statues and 50 of them will be women! This is progress<3 Finally, Celine Dion performed right before the torchlighting. It was incredible and this moment did make me cry. Ultimately, as with all major moments of late, Twitter was a blast, so I'll let the tweets take it from here. Vive la France, go Team USA, etc., etc. if you're not watching the olympic opening ceremony the main torchbearer is a masked vigilante wearing keens and les miserables-style revolutionary rags who entered on a boat to the phantom of the opera theme and is now doing parkour around paris to techno. extremely french — molly taft (@mollytaft) July 26, 2024 heartbreaking gender reveal: french ???? pic.twitter.com/5VJfFffsTA — mary kate & ashley take the capitol (@steeww_) July 26, 2024 General Lebron James crossing the Delaware pic.twitter.com/NBhGaehd2C — Drea Blackwell (@KSBWDrea) July 26, 2024 Is this the first thrupple to ever appear in an Olympics opening ceremony pic.twitter.com/xckFiIKRTU — Zing Tsjeng (@misszing) July…
