--- title: London Olympics 2012: Danny Boyle and the Opening Ceremony description: Oh Danny Boyle. The Slumdog Millionaire director's opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics started with such verve and promise. There were fireworks! There were... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7215468/the-2012-olympic-games-open-with-lots-of-bangs-and-a-whimper/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2012-07-28T03:54:17.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-18T14:38:54.152Z article:section: Sports og:title: London Olympics 2012: Danny Boyle and the Opening Ceremony og:description: Oh Danny Boyle. The Slumdog Millionaire director's opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics started with such verve and promise. There were fireworks! There were... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7215468/the-2012-olympic-games-open-with-lots-of-bangs-and-a-whimper/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt45bd39e7be221d44/6998b3de66d4e3e2a9cba6b5/olympics-fireworks.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Olympics-Fireworks og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: London Olympics 2012: Danny Boyle and the Opening Ceremony twitter:description: Oh Danny Boyle. The Slumdog Millionaire director's opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics started with such verve and promise. There were fireworks! There were... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt45bd39e7be221d44/6998b3de66d4e3e2a9cba6b5/olympics-fireworks.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Sports](/section/sports/) * [olympics](/tag/olympics/) # The 2012 Olympic Games Open with Lots of Bangs—and a Whimper > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with Ally. Ally is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: July 2026. ## Ally: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Ally is a digital financial services company offering online-only banking, including checking and savings accounts, through Ally.com and its mobile apps. Launched in 2009 as an original disruptor in financial services, Ally was built to challenge outdated banking norms with a simpler, more convenient way to bank. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Jul 28, 2012 3:54 AM UTC  Fireworks explode over the Olympic Stadium during the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games July 27, 2012. Fireworks explode over the Olympic Stadium during the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games July 27, 2012.Dylan Martinez / Reuters by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Jul 28, 2012 3:54 AM UTC Oh Danny Boyle. The _Slumdog Millionaire_ director’s opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics started with such verve and promise. There were fireworks! There were sheep! There were geese! There was electricity in the stadium, not just the kind generated by 80,000 people in a state of excited anticipation but also a clever arrangement of LED panels at every seat that sent pulses of color across the stands. Rustic folk strolled beneath fluffy cumuli and disported themselves in a vision of the green and pleasant Britain celebrated in verse by William Blake at the beginning of the 19th century, as the industrial revolution gathered steam. By 1916, when Sir Hubert Parry set the poem to music, creating the greatest of all anthems, “Jerusalem,” ever more Britons lived in cities and worked in factories; world war would soon further threaten Blake’s idyll. Boyle’s history appeared to cast industrialists as the greater danger, though the program notes made clear that the engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, played by Kenneth Branagh, should be regarded as a hero. Great chimneys sprouted from the stadium floor and the once carefree yokels were transformed into drudges. It was powerful and surprisingly scary for an event that at previous Games has dazzled but never daunted. “This is \*\*\*\*ing terrifying!! i want my mummy,” tweeted the British critic and journalist Giles Coren. (**INTERACTIVE PANORAMA**: [Re-live the Opening Ceremony](http://olympics.time.com/2012/07/28/interactive-panorama-inside-the-opening-ceremony/)) And it got better, at least if what you wanted from London 2012 wasn’t a poor man’s Beijing or an updated Sydney, all spectacle and not much substance. In the segment entitled “Happy and Glorious,” Boyle served up great dollops of the quirky humor that sustains his compatriots. A filmed sequence showed James Bond, in his current, Daniel Craig-shaped iteration, on a mission to Buckingham Palace. He is greeted by a pair of corgis and then by the Queen, “in her first acting role,” according to the Olympics organizers though she’s arguably been performing as the Queen since 1952\. They board a helicopter and fly to the Olympic Park, and in a _coup de théâtre_, a real helicopter materialized above the stadium, and 007 and Q (or their stunt doubles) parachuted to the ground. And Her Majesty, in the same fetching apricot-colored gown she wore for the filmed sequence, took her seat in the box. (**PHOTOS:** [Highlights From the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony](http://olympics.time.com/2012/07/27/london-gets-its-games-on-highlights-from-the-2012-olympics-opening-ceremony/)) The VIP tiers were already well stocked with royals and more than 80 heads of state and would-be heads of state. Three former British Prime Ministers, John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, bookended the current Prime Minister David Cameron, and the opposition leader Ed Miliband. Michelle Obama represented the United States; Mitt Romney represented the ambition to do so in the future. Whether the next sequence impacted his views on the benefits of universal, taxpayer-funded healthcare remains to be seen. The arena filled with dancing nurses and doctors pushing beds occupied by young patients, to symbolize Britain’s National Health Service (NHS). Initially jolly, this scene too turned dark, as nightmare figures from children’s literature multiplied until a phalanx of Mary Poppinses chased them away. After the show, still in costume, four of the “nurses” told _TIME_ that they were real-life medics, who had gladly joined Boyle’s show in the hopes of chasing away nightmares of their own. “The NHS is a huge part of British history,” said Nadia Gildeh, a junior doctor. “It’s a significant part of what we are.” She hoped Boyle’s tribute would help persuade Prime Minister Cameron to preserve the NHS. “Hands off the NHS!” agreed Hilary Sharpe, a transplant nurse. “We love the NHS.” The audience in the stadium loved the NHS too, or at least its musical version. In fact, they had loved the whole show up to that point. It was weird in places, patchy, a bit preachy sometimes. But as with so many top British sports stars, the wobbles made the watching even more compelling. Like Andy Murray at Wimbledon, Boyle had the crowd believing he could win, _willing_ him to win. And like Murray at Wimbledon, he showed flashes of genius but just couldn’t sustain it. You knew he had lost when British creativity was represented in a montage of clips of music and film and TV and a meandering narrative about young folk texting before putting down their smart phones just long enough to kiss. (**MORE:** [50 Olympic Athletes to Watch](http://olympics.time.com/2012/07/02/50-olympic-athletes-to-watch/)) Britain is creative, prodigiously so. The clips showcased some of the things the nation does brilliantly: subverting genres, inventing new ones, and always, always laughing at itself. Mr Bean made an appearance, though not, as suggested by this author [in a 2008 piece](http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1836464,00.html), as the carrier of the Olympic flame. That honor was given to seven young athletes, who lit a wonderfully, crazily deconstructed cauldron dreamed up by British designer Thomas Heatherwick. But Boyle couldn’t overcome two fundamental problems. Britain is good at the sort of solemn pageantry surrounding royal occasions. It’s less good at solemnity without a traditional framework. It’s hard to disagree with Boyle’s messaging—for example about the dangers of unfettered capitalism and about how generations of immigrants have enriched and renewed Britain and about the value of the NHS—but it was clunky and worthy. That’s because the other banana skin is the idea that last 100 years of British history, with its loss and confusion as well as its triumphs and achievements, lends itself to the lobotomized format of an Olympics opening ceremony. Monty Python might have done it à la _Life of Brian_, but the Olympic powers would never have approved. So we got something that almost worked, and captivated in parts. And that is as true a reflection of Britain as it’s possible to imagine. **MORE:**[ The Worst Ever Opening Ceremonies](http://olympics.time.com/2012/07/27/the-worst-ever-opening-ceremonies/) London Olympics 2012: Danny Boyle and the Opening Ceremony ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7215468/the-2012-olympic-games-open-with-lots-of-bangs-and-a-whimper/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7215468/the-2012-olympic-games-open-with-lots-of-bangs-and-a-whimper/"},"headline":"The 2012 Olympic Games Open with Lots of Bangs—and a Whimper","datePublished":"2012-07-28T03:54:17.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-18T14:38:54.152Z","description":"Oh Danny Boyle. The Slumdog Millionaire director's opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics started with such verve and promise. There were fireworks! 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