2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony

It was not the boisterous return-to-life party we might have hoped for a year ago, nor was it the retreat we might have expected. It was a halfway, transitional ceremony for a halfway, transitional, precarious moment.

With Naomi Osaka lighting the flame on the beautifully designed Olympic cauldron, there was a sense of reverence that at least partly counteracted all the questionable parts of the preamble.

It was impressive and lovely, and yet there was heartbreak at the center of it all, knowing how much work had gone into a presentation that unfolded in front of empty seats and a global television audience that may be more indifferent to the Olympics than it ever has been.

A a mournful mishmash of a ceremony that only emphasized its dark context. ... It was a celebration suited to an Olympics that many aren’t sure should exist at all. ... The moments that drew viewers into rapture were outnumbered by jolts back into distressing reality. More egregiously, the four-hour ceremony devoted multiple minutes to John Lennon’s “Imagine” as arranged by Hans Zimmer and sung by performers around the world, including the overexposed celebrities John Legend and Keith Urban.

Over the course of the two-plus-hour Parade of Nations, NBC’s coverage of the opening ceremonies alternated between edifying trivia (Kiribati is the world’s only nation to occupy all four cardinal hemispheres!) and America-centric jingoism. ... The silence was strange. The lack of ambient crowd energy was strange. The NBC director’s resistance to wide shots capturing the full venue was understandable, but still strange. Add “somber” to the list of adjectives that could be applied to this opening ceremony that have never been applied to an Olympics opening before.

It was an odd, sometimes awkward, and tonally dissonant four-hour presentation that tried to balance the weight of the ongoing pandemic with the joy and elation that usually accompanies the world's most prestigious athletic competition. ... So in one sense, the producers of the ceremony succeeded just by pulling something together. ... But in another – especially considering the controversy behind the Games and the toll they are taking on Japan and the world – this lackluster ceremony is a huge letdown. What's the point of all the risk, all the testing and quarantining and masks, if this is the best emotion and spectacle we can muster?