This was sort of my thought! HE was the choice???
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Yea, Tom Cruise surprised me too. Definite Hollywood tie but a bit over the top.
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Doesn’t Cruise have a new Mission Impossible movie coming out? Maybe it was filmed in Paris, who knows why he was there???
I was not a fan of this whole thing with TC rappelling down on the stadium and doing the subsequent stints. Apparently, this was done to showcase the rich LA’s film industry (per behind the scenes story shown by NBC).
I didn’t watch the closing ceremony, but I did watch the snippets that people said were good (after the fact). That worked for me!
I don’t care for Tom Cruise. I liked it despite him.
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In 2012 the James Bond bit with Daniel Craig and the queen was fantastic and made total sense, what’s more British than James Bond and the monarch?
If Cruise was there to represent the LA film industry, since it had to be explained to us, it didn’t work. Bond, James Bond and QE2, everyone got it immediately.
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An American action-movie actor know for performing his own stunts drops by wire into the stadium, takes the Olympic flag from the mayor of LA, hops on an all-electric motorcycle and rides off to board a C-130 to return to LA, skydives down to modify the Hollywood sign to incorporate the Olympic rings. Actor, stuntman, Hollywood - pretty self explanatory.
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Agreed. I “understood” it immediately. Just don’t like TC.
One touch I did love … incorporating the Olympic rings into the Hollywood sign.
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Tom Cruise singlehandedly did that too. 
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Alas, the rings were digitally edited. There is a campaign to bring them back (for real) in the weeks leading to the LA Games.
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My feelings exactly! I don’t like his cult, but mostly I just don’t like him as an actor or the movies he’s in (with the possible exception of Risky Business, well and Top Gun and sequel had their moments.) That said, I thought the whole sequence was funny and effective.
I’ve also been catching up on some of the things we missed and even though they didn’t medal I thought France’s routines were great. Loved the faces on the backs of their heads and the catchy can-can.
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I agree… and I love frank Sinatra!
Not a Tom Cruise fan. I thought his segment was ok. I tried to figure out what was CGI and what was previously filmed for something else. Like using footage from one time he went sky diving, since the flag he was supposedly carrying was packed away so not visible. I did think it was a little funny that instead of roaring out of the stadium on the motorcycle, which wouldn’t have been safe, he rode very slowly past the crowd. I’m also not a Red Hot Chili Peppers fan - I’m not much into any music so it’s not them - so wasn’t sure why the one singer was wearing his shirt over his face for a while. I really liked the opening ceremony.
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Red Hot Chili Peppers were horrible. IMO. Snoop and Billy were great even though Billie was definitely lip syncing. 
We assume everything was lip synched at Olympics open/closing ceremonies. And we suspect same for the orchestras and the pianist playing in the rain. Were there any live performances?
Celine Dion sang live. So did Lady Gaga and many others. Ditto the closing ceremony singers and musicians.
I was talking about the beach party in LA where RHCP and Snoop and Billie performed (we noticed that sometimes Billie sang with her mouth closed )
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Every single musical act was pre-recorded in case of technical issues - which abounded during the Opening Ceremony. Whether each act used the pre-recorded version during the live performance varied. In the case of Celine, nobody would begrudge her if she did lipsync.
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That’s why I loved it when my kids ran cross country in high school. One year, my oldest kid (incredibly fast) and my middle kid (incredibly slow, like his mother) were on the team together. In one race, older kid came in first and younger kid came in last (I am not kidding). And the spectators cheered equally loudly for both of them! It’s a wonderful sport.
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