The immaculate execution of Tokyo’s Olympic opening ceremony was always going to be a tough act to follow. Paris made the canny decision not to try to emulate its stadium spectacle and hi-tech bling. (Remember that formidable arrangement of 1,800 drones?)
This ceremony’s creative director, Thomas Jolly, had the inspired idea to lean into Paris’s famed romance by using the city itself as a stage. So a country-by-country flotilla of athletes sailed down the Seine while a 6km (3.7 mile) parade snaked across its bridges, roads and rooftops. But what appears like a truly original idea on paper does not always live up to its enactment on a rain-sodden night in central Paris.
