LONDON — The queen and James Bond gave the London Olympics a royal entrance Friday in an opening ceremony that rolled to the rock of the Beatles, the Stones and The Who.
The highlight of Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle’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 007 driving up to Buckingham Palace in a black London cab and, pursued by her majesty’s royal dogs - Monty, Willow and Holly, playing themselves - 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 to the stadium and then leaping out into the night sky.
At the same moment, real skydivers appeared in the skies over the stadium as music from the James Bond movies played. 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 Elizabeth 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 a giant surprise and picked seven teenage athletes to ignite the Olympic cauldron. Together, they touched flaming torches to trumpet like tubes that spread into a ring of fire.
The flames rose skyward and joined together to form the cauldron. Fireworks erupted over the stadium to music from Pink Floyd. With a singalong of “Hey Jude,” Beatle Paul McCartney closed a show that ran 45 minutes beyond its scheduled three hours.
Much of the opening ceremony was a review of British music history, from a 1918 Broadway standard adopted by the West Ham soccer team to the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” to “Bohemian Rhapsody” by the group Queen.
The evening started with fighter jets streaming red, white and blue smoke and roaring over the stadium, packed with a crowd of 60,000 people, at 8:12 p.m. local time.
Boyle, one of Britain’s most successful filmmakers and director of Slumdog Millionaire and Trainspotting, had a ball with his favored medium, mixing filmed passages with live action in the stadium, 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 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 voyages through everything British: a cricket match, the London Tube and the roaring, abundant seas that buffet this island nation.
Boyle turned the stadium into a throbbing jukebox, with a nonstop rock and pop homage to British hits.
The soundtrack 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. There were The Who’s “My Generation” and other tracks too numerous to mention.
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 a yellow shirt reminiscent of his race-winner’s yellow 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.
The show then shifted to a portrayal of 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 children.
But the British ideal - to quote poet William Blake, of “England’s green and pleasant land” - 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 weapons of war, and Boyle put a quiet moment into his show to honor those killed.
“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.”
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 Great Britain was last, as host. Prince William and his wife, Kate, joined in the 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 flag bearers 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.
The queen declared the Games open. 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.
Sports, Pages 19 on 07/28/2012