Skyfall Stunt's James Bond Dies

Remember the big stunt at the Summer Olympics?

There was a tie-in to the then forthcoming 007 movie, Skyfall. (Skyfall's trailer splashed the prophetic Aurora building on the screen before The Dark Knight Rises began.)

A James Bond double "fell" into the Olympics stadium, along with a double for Queen Elizabeth, as both jumped from a small plane.

Both jumpers were in danger, as such stunts are no easy task. And now the James Bond double is dead.

Mark Sutton, 42, the stuntman who parachuted into the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics in London dressed as James Bond alongside a double of Queen Elizabeth II, was killed on August 15, 2013, in a wing-diving accident in the Swiss Alps.

Sutton, a former Royal Gurkha Rifles officer for the British Army, died after jumping from a helicopter and crashing into a mountain ridge only minutes from the French border near Trient, Switzerland, the Swiss police said. (The Gurkhas are a unique unit in the Army with a reputation of being amongst the finest and most feared soldiers in the world. All Gurkha soldiers are recruited in Nepal. British Officers are recruited from across the UK and Commonwealth.)

Mark Sutton (left) - played James Bond - and Gary Connery (right) - played the Queen - are pictured in their wingstuits last year.

The Olympic stunt was a highlight of the last year’s opening ceremony and followed the showing of a film in which Daniel Craig, the actor who currently plays James Bond, called at Buckingham Palace to meet the real Queen Elizabeth and escort her to the Olympic Stadium.

Danny Boyle, who designed the opening to the Games, said Sutton and Gary Connery, who doubled for the Queen and jumped with Daniel Craig's substitute from a helicopter over the Olympic stadium, had "left indelible memories for people from all walks of life all over the world … disciplined and brave in situations most of us would find terrifying, Mark was also a gentle and thoughtful man," he wrote in the Evening Standard.

Police in the Swiss Valais canton said Sutton had died after jumping with a friend from a helicopter while wearing a wing suit above the Grandes Otannes area, close to the French border. The men had jumped from a height of 10,826ft (3,300m) at around 11am and had planned to land close to the hamlet of Le Peuty, near Trient.
Jean-Marie Bornet, of Valais police, said Sutton's injuries were so severe that experts had to use a DNA test to confirm his identity. "We do not know what caused his death but we know it was immediate. The weather was good but when a pilot takes part in this sport the aim is to fly very close to the ground or mountainside. If you do this at speeds of 200kmh [125mph] the margin for error is very small." Source.

Sutton is a name that means "south."

XXX Olympiad Symbols

Who turned out to be the Olympics' Opening Ceremony's Joker?

I am watching the Olympics Opening Ceremonies, all recorded replays, and thus merely another Danny Boyle production. Actually rather terrible, but here are some things I saw, on a deeper level.

NBC began the evening program with a starting and startling image of a red dawn. You can't make these things up.

Several other symbols jump out.

The 2012 Olympics ceremony's theme is "Isles of Wonder," inspired by William Shakespeare's play about shipwrecked castaways, The Tempest. The reading from The Tempest was about fear and the coming storm.

Amsterdam correspondent Theo Paijmans wrote me: "It is commonly held that William Shakespeare may have modeled the character of Prospero in The Tempest on John Dee." (John Dee signed his letters 007, the first Bond.) Is there a storm coming?

The Bell. The Culture Secretary had an accident with a hand-held bell that almost hurt people in a crowd.

The sound of a 27-ton bell — the largest harmonically tuned bell in the world — forged at London's 442-year-old Whitechapel (Jack the Ripper's neighborhood?) Bell Foundry, which made London's Big Ben and Philadelphia's Liberty Bell, opened the ceremony.  The bell is inscribed with a line from The Tempest: “Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises.”

Yes, as a tie-in to the new 007 movie, Skyfall, a James Bond double "fell" into the Olympics stadium, but the double for Queen Elizabeth jumping from a little plane was what had NBC hosts talking.

The opening had a "green and pleasant land" described in William Blake's poem Jerusalem, which was set to loud, booming music, regarded as England's unofficial national anthem. The underlying symbolism of "Jerusalem" would fill volumes. The rising smoke towers reminded me of those that were said to have inspired The Two Towers of The Lord of the Rings.

Now this is creepy and not lost on even the NBC folks: the Queen of Hearts (Alice in Wonderland), Captain Hook (Peter Pan), Lord Voldemort (Harry Potter), the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Cruella de Vil (101 Dalmatians) - all highly symbolic pedophile figures - were shown vs only Mary Poppins (well, 30 or so cloned Mary Poppins).

Vangelis' theme from Chariots of Fire played. Of late here, we've mentioned the soundtrack composed by Vangelis for Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner.

The entire Chariots of Fire segment was turned into a comedy by Mr. Bean as the Joker at the Olympics. The actor's name is Rowan Atkinson, a double red name.

Rowan \ro-wan\ as a boy's or girl's name is of Gaelic origin, and the meaning of Rowan is "little red-head." Also the name of a flowering tree with red berries.

Atkinson is son of Atkin, which is as a patronymic form of the medieval male given name Atkin or Adkin, itself a double diminutive of the Hebrew name "Adam," meaning "red earth."

For another view of the Opening Ceremony by a person who is more generous in his appreciation of the music, please see Red Dirt Report editor Andrew W. Griffin's "Olympic spectacle on the Isles on Wonder."

Meanwhile, the other clown appearing in London right before the Opening turned out to be Willard Mitt Romney. London's newspapers were not kind to him, and one called him, "Mitt the Twit."  I am not making this observation to be political, but to note that an underlying theme here is that Romney turned himself, by making several gaffs, into a clown, a court jester, and, yes, a joker.