I thought the opening ceremonies were pretty good. The idea of projecting each country like they did for the athletes to come out in (or really anything they did with those projectors) was pretty sweet. Sure the whole communist revolution glossed over a lot of the not so great parts, but really, the whole history of Russia and their long use of serfdom well after industrialization hit Europe meant a lot of brushing over the worst of oppressive regimes, but it was kinda of nice that they owned that era instead of running away from it (The Soviet era parade stuff
). It was kinda fun to listen to the backhanded compliments from Lauer and that one lady who lived in Soviet Russia for like 4 years, until after an hour of it that it really got annoying, especially for the whole striking part of Russian Revolution, which was done artfully amazingly. What I kept thinking about our commentary was how this must be what it's like for all the countries who hate us when we put on shows like this. Also, it was kinda fun to see teams come in in Cyrillic alphabet order, just fascinating seeing it be very out of order to us, and led to a few interesting teams come out after one another (Israel-Iran, Jamaica being essentially last next to Russia).
