I turned on the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics thinking my children and I would passively watch the typical pomp and circumstance that generally comes with opening ceremonies. But I was immediately drawn into one of the most bizarre, hilarious and confusing viewing experiences of my life.
A few minutes into the start of the video presentation, a group of children holding the Olympic torch in the catacombs boarded a boat with a hooded figure. It was clear the French took a very … um … French approach to these opening ceremonies. The theme seemed to be “avant garde” with little regard for how the rest of the world might respond.
According to the NBC commentators, doing the best they could given the circumstances, the creative director of the opening ceremony decided to lean into the stereotypes generally associated with France. I’m not sure that was the wisest choice. It felt very much like what AI would come up with after given the prompt “Show me a day in Paris from the imagination of someone who has only seen French cinema.”
At one point, a winged accordionist sat atop a bridge over the Seine as boats underneath transported athletes for the parade. Because the athletes were all on boats, I have to assume they were unable to watch any of the performances, including Lady Gaga’s Moulin Rouge-esque number replete with a chorus line bouncing with pink feather pompons.
Eventually the children from the catacombs made it off the boat and onto dry land and marched in a parade with a woman dressed as a croissant, some poor soul dressed as a giant rat, and a bunch of people clad in pink.
THEN. There was a can-can line and I want to say this as nicely as I can, but I do not think they practiced as much as they needed to for a global broadcast. They were all kicking at different times. Some of them did not seem to know the steps. At one point, the camera pulled away, I think because it was too painful to watch.
Shortly after the can-can line came a video presentation of construction workers doing yoga on scaffolding and the hooded figure from the boat doing parkour in the Louis Vuitton workshop. Then the medals were carried in a Louis Vuitton trunk past some other dancers who I think missed a few rehearsals.
Then the hooded torch bearer popped into a performance of “Les Miserables,” then the show cut to a Marie Antoinette head singing along with a metal band that looked lifted directly from the “Fury Road” set. Then an opera diva singing “Habanera” from “Carmen” rode a boat past windows displaying multiple Marie Antoinettes holding their heads in their hands.
This was pretty cool, and I thought was going to be the peak of weirdness. But I was wrong.
Peak weirdness was a scene with three strangers in a library pulling French literature from shelves and tearing out the pages, which makes them all feel attracted to each other, I guess, and the last we see of them is the trio closing a door in our faces, and I had to explain what that meant to my children, so thanks a lot, France. This scene is interspersed with dancers on high poles and tight wires over the Paris streets.
There was a segment of the hooded, torch-holding person running through the Louvre, followed by the subjects of paintings, then there were the minions, as in the stars of “The Minions,” who inexplicably had the Mona Lisa underwater in the Seine, a cardboard version of which popped up on the surface.
Then it started raining, apparently for the first time since 1946, according to the NBC correspondents who at this point were grasping at any kind of straw to keep delivering a lively narration. The athletes on the boats had to put on ponchos. So they were now soaking wet and missing the live performances.
A chrome Darth Vader-looking figure donned an Olympic flag as a cape and rode a chrome motorized horse across the Seine for way too long while the screen flashed images from Olympics past. Then the horse and rider marched in front of the 205 country flags for the delegations represented in the Olympics, up to a platform, where the rider presented the Olympic flag to a soldier while a symphony performed the Olympic anthem, which I’ll be honest, did make me emotional for a moment.
Then, after some speeches in French from French authorities while everyone stood in the pouring rain, President Emmanuel Macron declared the Games open. This was followed by an Eiffel Tower light show and a series of athletes passing the torch to each other until the lighting of the cauldron attached to a hot air balloon. They really pulled it together at the end with a stirring Celine Dion performance, which was almost enough to make up for the mess of the first half.
Almost.
The content was at times engaging and at times confusing, but perhaps the strangest part of these opening ceremonies was that for the first two hours, there was no central stage. Instead there were performances at various points along the Seine, and almost as many video presentations. It was a presentation built solely for a television audience. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t entertained, but it was the kind of entertained I feel when something goes horribly wrong on reality TV.
Which makes me sad for the French who wanted to see their country put on a fabulous show.
Or maybe it was fabulous and I’m just not French enough to get it.
The 2024 Paris Olympic opening ceremonies are available to stream now on Peacock.