London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony: Isles of Wonder

London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony: Isles of Wonder — watch the full recording online on iFILM. On the evening of 27 July 2012, Danny Boyle staged a four-hour live spectacular at the Olympic Stadium, with Shakespeare's The Tempest as the conceptual starting point and a tagline that read "Inspire a Generation."

Paul McCartney closed the show; Mike Oldfield performed "Tubular Bells" to open it; Emeli Sandé sang twice; J.K. Rowling read a passage from a children's book; Daniel Craig escorted Queen Elizabeth II to the stadium in character as James Bond; and Tim Berners-Lee — who invented the World Wide Web — sat at a laptop on the stadium floor with the words "This is for everyone" displayed on the screen above him. Athletes from over 200 nations paraded in. Boyle, who previously made Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire, turned a sports ceremony into something closer to a national self-portrait. Stream the London 2012 Opening Ceremony on iFILM.