Setting out to prove that topping Paris isn’t mission impossible, Los Angeles rolled out a skydiving Tom Cruise, Grammy winner Billie Eilish and other stars on Sunday as it took over Olympic hosting duties from the French capital, which closed out its 2024 Games just as they started — with joy and panache.
Capping more than two extraordinary weeks of Olympic sports and emotion, Paris’ boisterous, star-studded closing ceremony in France’s national stadium mixed unbridled celebration with a somber call for peace from International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach.
Following in Paris’ footsteps in 2028 promises to be a challenge: It made spectacular use of its cityscape for its first Games in 100 years, with the Eiffel Tower and other iconic monuments becoming Olympic stars in their own right as they served as backdrops and venues for medal-winning feats.
But the City of Angels, like the City of Light, showed it too holds some aces.
Cruise — in his Ethan Hunt persona — wowed by descending from the top of the stadium to electric guitar “Mission: Impossible” riffs. Once his feet were back on the ground — and after shaking hands with enthralled athletes — he took the Olympic flag from American gymnast Simone Biles, fixed it to the back of a motorcycle and roared out of the arena.
The appetite-whetting message was clear: Los Angeles 2028 promises to be an eye-opener too.
Still, this was largely Paris’ night — its opportunity for one final party. And what a party it was. Thousands of athletes danced and sang the night away — reveling in the artistic show that celebrated Olympic themes and its firework flourishes.
Even Bach got the party bug, jokingly calling the Paris Games “Seine-sational” — a nod to the Seine River that, despite water-quality concerns, staged Olympic triathlon and marathon swimming and the wacky and wonderful opening ceremony.
At what will be his last Games after announcing his intention to step down next year, Bach also made a somber appeal for “a culture of peace” in a war-torn world.
“We know that the Olympic Games cannot create peace, but the Olympic Games can create a culture of peace that inspires the world,” he said. “Let us live this culture of peace every single day.”
Cruise then provided a change of gear.
After being lowered on a rope live from the roof’s giddy heights, Cruise drove his bike past the Eiffel Tower in a pre-recorded segment and onto a plane before skydiving over the Hollywood Hills. Three circles were added to the O’s of the famed Hollywood sign, creating five interlaced Olympic rings.
In the stadium, the athletes’ enthusiasm bubbled over when crowds of them rushed the stage at one point. Stadium announcements urged them to double back. Some stayed, creating an impromptu mosh pit around Grammy-winning French pop-rock band Phoenix as they played, before security and volunteers cleared the stage.
Multiple French athletes crowd-surfed. United States team members jumped up and down in their Ralph Lauren jackets.
On the stadium’s giant screens, Eilish, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, rapper Snoop Dogg — wearing pants with the Olympic rings after being a popular feature of the Paris Games — and Dr. Dre kept the party going in a prerecorded show from a California beach.
Each is a California native, as is H.E.R., who sang the U.S. national anthem live at the Stade de France, crammed with more than 70,000 people.
The stadium crowd roared as French swimmer Léon Marchand, dressed in a suit and tie instead of the swim trunks he wore to win four golds, first collected the Olympic flame from the Tuileries Gardens in Paris.
Reappearing later in the stadium to spectators’ chants of “Léon, Léon,” Marchand then blew out the flame. The Summer Games were over.
