“The Wizard of Oz” Gets Spherical

Here in New York the annual NYC Unicycle Festival gets underway today, but I confess my attention has been pulled across the shifting sands to Las Vegas, where the Sphere is doing something (using? misusing? perverting? polluting? improving?) to my favorite movie The Wizard of Oz.

In case you’ve not heard of it (it’s less than two years old) the Sphere is a 17,600 seat venue equipped to show 360 degree panoramic shows in 3 dimensions (4 if you count experiential elements like wind machines and so forth), with high definition pictures and high fidelity sound. With this new Wizard of Oz experience, they’re not just screening an 86 year old film (the most-watched movie in history, some reckon), but they are blowing it up and expanding it to the scale and shape of the theatre, so that the movie happens all around the spectators and fills their entire field of vision. The movie, with all those flying elements throughout the story (a house, a hot air balloon, a band of winged monkeys, and witches of both the good and bad sort), will lend itself to this kind of shenanigans more than most. And who wouldn’t want to be in the same room with the Wizard’s giant green projected head bellowing “Silence, whippersnapper!” through 10,000 stereo speakers, or whatever it is? (I hope they don’t open one of these contraptions in Kansas; they might not WANT to experience the tornado!)

And yet, my trepidation outweighs my curiosity. AI has been employed not only to enhance the picture and sound, and to adapt it to the dome-shaped screen, but also to add elements that were not in the movie. Say for example, there are a couple of actors in a two shot in the film, with some other characters in the room but out of frame. There are some shots in the Sphere experience where those out-of-frame people and the rest of the room are added, since after all they are “there”, and the creators have this cavernous room to fill. Or if someone is standing outside, the horizon extends of course in every direction.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not pure. Over the decades I have made a very long list of movies I would love to “correct” using such technology, and unproduced screenplays I would love to bring into being featuring the original intended stars, just to see it. But it’s an exercise I have always envisioned for my eyes only. When you bring it before the public, it seems awfully like desecration. I know there were numerous writers, directors, and producers on The Wizard of Oz, but they all made artistic choices. This process will of necessity alter their intentions. It will be something else. Something akin to a Gump.

Also? I can’t imagine “immersion” being the actual take away from the experience. I picture that you’re in an airplane hanger, there is a drive-in movie screen in front of you showing a very large version of a film, while stage hands blow fans and bubble machines at you. And even if it’s a more successful illusion than that, I couldn’t resist the temptation to look all over the place, to study the machinery, sniff out the secrets, observe the other audience members, and so forth.

So I don’t know that I’m plugging this event per se, with its $100+ ticket price. But it’s Wizard of Oz news, to add to the many dozens of posts in the section of Travalanche devoted to that topic. As to how to get tickets, I leave you to your own, ahem, devices. It opens tonight.

More Wizard of Oz posts here.