Beijing Olympic Games 2008

And given the fact that London ballsed up the "river of fire" that was supposed to happen on Millennium night, no doubt our opening ceremony will be heavily reliant on usual laser lighting and fireworks. Depends what state this country is in come 2012 but I can't imagine we'd top Beijing by any share of imagination.

Beijing's ceremony is truly fantastic, especially when, not to mention when they recreated the stadium from people.

No olympic rings on the endboard as seen in 2004 either

The man running round in the air lighting the torch was fantastic, not much impresses me, but that was good.

The close ups looked a bit like he was mildly incontinent and having a bit of trouble squeezing a big one out though. The position and design of the cauldron on the roof is spectacular though.

Colin Jackson was left speechless just then too.

The Chinese government have heck of a lot more money to splash out on it than we will in 4 years time. I think whatever we come up with will be just as good at the time, probably not as spectacular but more low key and british

I'm not sure about the 'River of Fire' thing, IIIRC it was just talked up into being something that it was never going to be in the first place.

Certainly if you look at how good we've got at huge firework displays in the 8 years that London have put on New Year celebrations, we'll have no problem in that department

Yep - there was a terrible BBC One ident where the globe was put into the middle of the top three rings, and enlarged.

These days the IOC would come down on you like a tonne of bricks for doing that. The Olympic rings graphic is VERY tightly controlled and the rules for its usage are very strict.

It could be because there's a political edge due to it being in China.

Remember that Live 8 had BBC jorno contributions, rather than just standard music/events presenters for similar reasons.

I believe NBC News reported that the Athens opening ceremony cost US$30million, but the Beijing ceremony was predicted to have cost US$300million (yep - TEN times as much)

The Chinese government are treating this in a totally different manner to the UK government - as one might expect...

Personally I don't think London should be influenced by the Beijing ceremony - we should stage a ceremony that works for us as Brits. We can't spend that kind of money - nor should we.

It was good, but I wouldn't say it was value for money. Athens at the time was just as impressive.

Love the cauldron, though would have been better for him to fly up and light it straight away rather than the whole lap of honour thing which took forever.

I'm surprised that the BBC haven't splashed the Olympic rings around their presentation much. They are allowed to, NBC for example have had the rings above their logo bug for most of the year. Didn't they put the rings on the BBC1 promo endboards 4 years ago?

wtf How would you know what value for money was at $300mil?