Sochi 2014 Opening Ceremony - My Verdict

Well the 22nd Olympic Winter Games are officially underway and after a ceremony of extravagance I feel mixed emotions to the production.

Personally I felt that Sochi's Ceremony was derivative of previous ceremonies; The entire premise was fitted into the cliché of a young girl discovering the heritage of the host country, something that was perfected in Sydney in 2000.

Not only this the formation of the Olympic Rings, although clever and relevant, appeared to resemble that of London, not to mention the fact that it failed in practice (I choose not dwell on this fact though as I fear someone could be executed over this error given the extremity of Russia's government).

However some parts of the ceremony were beautifully fantastic: The Swan Lake doves were a stroke of genius and Peter the Great's Navy made a great use of the projections onto the stadium floor.

It is plainly obvious why the stadium roof was seen as a necessity for the spectacular and it was crucial to the constellations segment which seemed to tick the box of the apparently obligatory winter sports portion. The constellations were somewhat reminiscent to the constellations featured in Vancouver which had more cultural significance yet Sochi's starry figures were more dazzling.

I was very surprised that the director chose to include a reference to the Soviet years and even more so that it was portrayed positively. In my opinion this was much better than dancing around the subject and the organisers should be congratulated.

The lighting of the cauldron did not seem as breath-taking as in the previous editions of the event and seemed to borrow a concept of the lighting the cauldron with fireworks from the games of Torino.

In summary I can't help but feel that this would have been mesmerizing had London's ceremony not been among the most original in the history of the games and so by comparison these appeared to lack originality. Given that these are the most expensive Olympics in history I was quite disappointed with the quality of this Opening.