It was a dreamlike, science fiction-inspired light-show spectacular that closed with Tom Cruise flying through the air from the stadium roof and whisking the Olympic flag off to Los Angeles.

Paris closed its record-breakingly successful Olympic Games on Sunday night with a stunt-filled final ceremony that began with a mysterious, golden intergalactic traveller wandering through a gloomy, barren futuristic landscape, tasked with resurrecting the Olympic spirit.

Ghostly dancers and acrobats – some of whom were fire-service gymnasts – descended from the Stade de France stadium roof and leaped on to giant Olympic rings while the Swiss musician Alain Roche performed Hymn to Apollo floating in the air playing a vertically suspended piano. The French singer Yseult gave a breathtaking performance of My Way, a nod to French-US relations as a French song that was rearranged in English for Frank Sinatra.

Paris said goodbye to its Olympics with a message about the importance of protecting the spirit of the games in an uncertain world riven by conflict.

The dramatic, pyrotechnic show was a fitting riposte to the epic, Technicolor riverside opening ceremony that broke with tradition by taking place along the Seine two weeks earlier. From that moment, the Paris Games had seen record ticket sales and TV viewing figures, and even a historic number of marriage proposals among athletes.

“Humanity is beautiful when it comes together,” said the theatre and opera director Thomas Jolly of his stadium show about celebrating “respect and tolerance” in a fragile world. He called the Games and the closing performance “a unique opportunity to share, reconcile and repair”.

The ceremony began before dusk beneath Paris’s groundbreaking Olympic cauldron suspended from a balloon, a dramatic ring of fire made up of electricity and LED spotlights to give the appearance of being ablaze.

The balloon-cauldron has become the city’s newest star attraction as thousands have gathered near the Louvre to watch it rise into the sky each night at sundown, and politicians are arguing that it should be kept in Paris permanently as a new landmark.

Beneath it, the award-winning young singer Zaho de Sagazan, whose voice and lyrics have transformed chanson française over the past two years, sang the classic 1950s ode to Paris Sous le Ciel de Paris, made famous by Édith Piaf. Suddenly, France’s star swimmer and gold-medal winner Léon Marchand, hailed in France as Le Roi Léon, appeared to whisk away the flame and the cauldron went out.

At that moment, more than 70,000 spectators in France’s biggest stadium began roaring and cheering as the action began. The Stade de France, which only days before had seen the high drama of the athletics relays and successes such as Armand Duplantis, the Swedish pole vaulter who broke his own world record, had now been transformed into a futuristic, glittering, undulating stage set.

Thousands of volunteers and athletes filled the stadium in a flag-waving moment of togetherness, not seen on this scale in these Games until now because the athletes had appeared in the opening ceremony in separate boats along the Seine.

Dancing, athletes, volunteers and spectators joined for one last time in belting out the dance anthem Freed from Desire, which had become an unofficial anthem at venues, followed by We are the Champions.

Paris had wanted its Games to be a giant open-air party, and the athletes’ final stadium appearance, dancing on the pitch, was no exception.

The ghostly gold traveller figure who landed from the sky was played by the French breakdancer Arthur Cadre, surrounded by hundreds of dancers and acrobats, as athletes stood around the stage looking on.

Flanked by athletes who had rushed on to the stage, the French electro-pop band Phoenix kicked off a music set that included the Belgian singer Angèle and the Cambodian rapper VannDa. The Mission: Impossible star Cruise, abseiling in and then making off with the flag on a motorbike, set a Hollywood tone for the transfer to Los Angeles, the next host of the games in 2028.

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