Popular Culture
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| Lego retail model kit of Tower Bridge: the designer describes the near-scale model (over 1m long with 4287 pieces). | |
Tower Bridge is featured – still under construction, using CGI – in the 2009 film Sherlock Holmes. One of the final scenes is played out on the bridge in the movie's climax. The bridge is also the centre of a large action sequence in the film The Mummy Returns. Despite the bridge having been opened in 1894, it also appears in the 2010 film The Wolfman (which was set in 1891). Also, the bridge under construction appears in many episodes of anime Black Butler and it is featured as a place for final battle between angel Ash and a demon Sebastian.
The bridge is also featured as the home of Air Commodore Colonel William Raymond, played by Peter Cushing, in the film Biggles Adventures in Time (1986).
In the 1975 film Brannigan, John Wayne drives a yellow mk2 Ford Capri over the partially opened bridge during a car chase scene. The Spice Girls perform a similar stunt, with a bus, in the 1997 film Spiceworld. The video game, Midtown Madness 2 allows the player to perform the stunt themselves. In the 2004 film Thunderbirds, when The Hood flies the captured Thunderbird 2 to London, he navigates the craft between the bridge's towers, the bridge operators having lifted the bascules just in time.
In the climax of premiere episode of Ashes to Ashes, DCI Gene Hunt takes his team of well-armed detectives by speedboat under Tower Bridge to the rescue.
Tower Bridge was prominently featured twice in the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony. In the pre-recorded "Happy and Glorious", the Queen's helicopter flew through Tower Bridge en route from Buckingham Palace to the Olympic Stadium. Later, the Olympic torch was taken by David Beckham via speedboat under the bridge, coinciding with a display of fireworks exploding from the bridge.
The Bridge features in the London segment of Cars 2 as "Tyre Bridge".
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Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Here in the U.S., culture is not that delicious panacea which we Europeans consume in a sacramental mental space and which has its own special columns in the newspapers—and in people’s minds. Culture is space, speed, cinema, technology. This culture is authentic, if anything can be said to be authentic.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)