Las Vegas has done a lot to define itself as the Entertainment Capital of the World.  Started of as a hub for legalized gambling in a dry arid region with nothing else around, the city revolutionized casino operations and on top of that became a resort destination onto itself.  Beyond the slot machines and blackjack tables, Vegas catered to it’s clientele by attracting big name entertainers to come to their city and perform.  Frank Sinatra and his “Rat Pack” associates Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. became almost synonymous with the city after their long time residency.  Later on, Elvis Presley would come to Sin City and many others would follow in the decades to come, including Celine Dion and Adele.  It was also the place where illusionists like Penn & Teller and Siegfried and Roy would become international celebrities.  Vegas was definitely the place to go for live entertainment on the grandest scale.  And there were so many options too, with every Casino Resort on the Strip being home to at least one marquee theater.  But, as big as the live acts were on the strip, there was one form of entertainment that had failed to catch on in Las Vegas; the Movies.  Sure, like any city Las Vegas has it’s fair share of multiplexes scattered around, but there wasn’t a movie theater anywhere in town that fit with the larger than life character of the City.  The closest thing that Vegas could do to create a bigger than average destination for the movies in their town was an IMAX theater housed in the cavernous atrium of the Luxor Hotel; which has since closed and been replaced with a museum.  It just seemed like Vegas was going to just be a beacon for live entertainment and not be a destination for the grandest of movie experiences.  That was until 2023 when the Madison Square Garden Company (MSG) opened up a theater venue unlike anything the world had ever seen near the Las Vegas Strip.  Called “The Sphere,” this new venue was not just going to turn the live entertainment world on it’s head, but also the movie going experience as well.

The MSG Sphere is a true engineering marvel.  The $2.3 billion spherical structure is 366 ft. high and 516 ft. wide and includes enough interior seating for 20,000 spectators.  But, what sets the venue apart from everything else is it’s colossal 160,000 square foot LED screen.  The screen projects at 16K resolution, making it not just the largest LED screen in the world, but also the sharpest as well.  And if the screen inside wasn’t impressive enough, the exosphere of the building is also it’s own LED screen, lighting up the Vegas skyline with a free show for all to see.  The venue is primarily designed for live shows, with the floor in front of the screen set apart from the grandstand in order to provide room for the stage.  But concerts in the Sphere are unlike anything ever seen before.  The MSG company spends months preparing a video package for the bands that perform at the venue to play on the massive screen.  The screen allows for the sensation of being transported away as a part of the show.  For the Sphere’s opening, the band U2 was given a residency and their best hits show had the giant screen display background settings as incredible as a desert landscape, a kaleidoscope of Vegas style icons, the datascape of a computer, and an angelic like dome that envelopes the entire audience.  The concert could pretty much feel like it could be set anywhere, with only what we can imagine being the limit.  After U2, other famous rock bands have come to the Sphere to perform, such as The Eagles and the Backstreet Boys.  And each of their shows includes those custom made video packages that deliver an experience like no other.  But, a year after blowing the concert world away with the capabilities of the Sphere’s screen feature, the MSG company looked towards doing something even more state of the art.  There was always a plan to incorporate film experiences as a part of the Sphere’s rotation of acts.  While U2 had it’s concert program going, the Sphere also had an hour long nature documentary from director Darren Aronofsky called Postcards from Earth (2023).  But, MSG was looking beyond, seeking a movie going experience that already had a built in audience that at the same time would also take advantage of the capabilities of the venue.

Fast forward to this year where the Sphere debuted a new presentation of a beloved cinematic classic, The Wizard of Oz (1939).  One of the most watched movies of all time, Oz is a universally known film that has managed to remain a draw for audiences for over 80 years.  But, presenting it as is on a screen the size of the one in the Sphere is not so easy.  For one thing, as good as the restorations have been over the years to keep Oz looking pristine and sharp, the resolution of the movie maxes out at 4K resolution.  It’s limited by the fidelity of the film stock that was used at the time.  It also was made long before widescreen had gone mainstream, utilizing the standard Academy Ratio of 1.37:1. Blown up to play on a screen the size of the one inside the Sphere would also amplify all the imperfections built in to the original film stock.  The film’s grain, which helps to give it a healthy texture when played on a standard sized screen, would look very blocky on the Sphere’s screen.  So, here is where we get to the controversial side of the Sphere’s presentation.  In order to get the movie to match the 16K resolution of the screen, the movie was upscaled using AI programs to create extra detail in the image.  This is not unusual, as AI has been a tool used before in film restoration, though always with great care to retain the fidelity of the original image.  But, The Sphere team went a step further.  They used AI to not only upscale the movie, but to also add more image beyond the original dimensions of the film.  This was so they could conform the film’s image to the dimensions of the screen, which is much wider and taller than even the average IMAX screen, and also built with a curve to envelope the audience.  So, now audiences are not only watching The Wizard of Oz in a way they haven’t seen before, but in many ways also watching a version of the movie that’s never existed before.

It raises a lot of concerns about how AI should be used in the movie making process.  What is at issue with many people is that there is no one left alive from the making of the 85 year old movie, so none of them have consented to the alteration of their work with this version of the film.  Some of the demos of the making of this Sphere presentation show how AI has been used to add on to the original movie, and some of it is indeed borderline questionable.  One particular demonstration showed how they altered a scene where Dorothy is speaking with her Auntie Em and Uncle Henry inside the farm house.  In the original film, we see the actor who played Uncle Henry walk off screen for a few seconds and return.  We don’t see what he was doing off screen in that time.  In the Sphere experience, the scene from the film, which included a lot of panning around to capture the action has instead been turned into a fixed shot.  In order to keep it fixed, as lot of the shots that panned across the room were stitched together to keep the image fixed in one place using AI.  And this includes the moment when Uncle Henry is out of frame for a moment.  We don’t know what he was doing offscreen, but the AI constructed movement that never existed before of the actor pacing around the room to fill those missing moments.  This is beyond just restoring an old film; it’s putting things in that never existed before at all. You can see why so many actors are concerned about how AI will use their images in the future, because here we have a clear example of new imagery being created using a long deceased actors image out of nothing.  Now, the MSG company’s explanation is that this version of the movie is not in any way intended to replace the original.  More than anything else, they are using The Wizard of Oz as more of a test subject for presenting older films on their record breaking screen, and using it as more of an experience than a true film presentation.

The question is; will what they are doing at the Sphere be the start of a new trend in filmmaking?  Are we looking at the future of cinema with the Sphere’s Wizard of Oz experience?  The one thing we do know for sure is that this presentation in particular has been an enormous success.  With ticket prices that range in the same ballpark of concert tickets (usually higher that $100 per seat on the low end), the presentation is selling out shows and with only one screen, the movie has amassed over $50 million in grosses so far.  People are turning out to see this one of a kind experience and it’s making Hollywood take notice.  It’s been reported that MSG is already starting talks with Disney and Warner Brothers over the possible use of their own catalog titles for this Sphere experience.  It probably won’t be long before we see movies from the Star Wars and Harry Potter franchises getting the Sphere treatment.  At least with those films you still have the original filmmakers still around to approve and maybe even oversee the alterations to these films to conform them to the Sphere’s screen dimensions.  But, a large question arises about if this is where Hollywood sees film going in the years ahead.  Are we going to see more venues like the Sphere popping up across the country, and are audiences willing to pay extra for ticket prices to see films in this way?  Part of the reason why the Sphere in Vegas is doing as well as it is is because of the novelty of it all.  No other venue in the world has created an audio/visual experience on this scale before.  And that largely is why people are paying up to experience The Wizard of Oz in this format, even if it’s a movie that most people have likely seen many times before.  If you build one of these kinds of venues in every city, it will rob the original of some of that novelty, which is something that the MSG company probably is hesitant to do.  As the saying goes, what happens in Vegas is best left in Vegas.

But, we are at a time when movie attendance is down from where it was pre-pandemic.  This is largely due to economic uncertainty coupled with the ever rising cost of a movie ticket and also the dwindling number of movies making it to the big screen these days.  It’s not the first time that cinema has fallen into the doldrums.  Just as streaming is currently threatening the theatrical business there was a time when movie theaters also had to contend with the rise of television.  Theaters needed something more to draw in audiences beyond just a good movie.  They needed to create something that you just couldn’t do with television at home.  Thus came an era in the 50’s and 60’s when cinema tried to liven their movies up with gimmicks that enhanced the film experience.  One of the most famous filmmakers who revolutionized the use of gimmicks in movie presentations was a man named William Castle.  Castle worked primarily with B-movie thrillers and horror, but what he’s most famous for was the wacky gimmicks he would employ in the promotions of his films.  He famously gave out life insurance certificates to audience members in the case any of them would die of fright at one of his films.  He also implanted buzzers inside theater seats to jolt audiences members during the presentation of his horror film, The Tingler (1959).  Despite the mad science of all of Castle’s ideas, these gimmicks were still effective, as it helped to make the movie going experience more of a multi-sensory experience.  You can see the influence of Castle’s gimmicks today in the 4DX film presentations at select theaters across the country.  There were other like-minded gimmicks that also came out of that era as well, like the short-lived Smell-O-Rama.  But there were other gimmicks that managed to last much longer, like 3D, which improved over the years as the technology got better.  You could even say that Widescreen was a gimmick at first before it caught on and became a mainstream tool in filmmaking.  What movie gimmicks do more than anything is allow for innovation and experimentation with the artform of cinema, even if they sometime can come off as crude and distracting.  But, for an artform over a century old as cinema is, it’s also got to go through periods of renewal in order to survive changing times.  And using gimmicks is sometimes the best way to draw people back in after they’ve grown tired of the artform after a while.

There’s no doubt that what the Sphere is doing is another in the tradition of using gimmicks to draw people in to watch a movie.  And there are nods to the in theater gimmicks that William Castle was famous for.  In The Wizard of Oz presentation, the famous tornado scene is accompanied with in theater effects a well.  When the tornado glides across the screen, massive fans built into the auditorium will recreate the forceful winds of the twister, making it feel like a real tornado is blowing through the venue itself.  Not only that, but artificial leaves and smoke will also be blowing through the auditorium, further reinforcing the illusion.  It’s clear that MSG doesn’t merely just want to play the movie on their screen; they also want to make it come alive as well.  It could be something that supplants the theatrical experience as we know it now, or it could become something else entirely separate.  It’s an experience that uses the movie we already know and making it into an experience that we’ve never seen done before.  But, is it something that we should be doing with older movies.  If anything, what the Sphere has created is a new type of film experience that would be better suited for newer films.  The documentary made by Darren Aronofsky doesn’t have the controversy surrounding it as the Oz experience does, mainly because it was made from scratch for the venue and not enhanced with AI.  There are many filmmakers out there who might look at the Sphere and see a creative challenge that could lead them towards creating a whole new era of innovation in filmmaking.  There are also a lot of rising talent who may find the dimensions of the Sphere’s screen perfect for their revolutionary visions that they would like to immerse their audiences in.  Because of how new the Sphere is we don’t quite know how much of a lasting impact it will have on the future of cinema as a whole.  But what we know from history is that filmmaking thrives when the tools break new ground and change the way we look at the movies in general.

Speaking for myself, I have yet to actually see what the Sphere experience looks like with my own eyes.  I can only judge from a distance, and while the scale of the venue is awe-inspiring in of itself, the way they are using it could be disruptive for the art of filmmaking in general, and not all in a good way.  Taking a classic film like The Wizard of Oz, and “enhancing” it with AI as a lot of ethical red flags behind it.  If you are presenting it with a good chunk of the image added on artificially, it robs the original film of its artistic merit.  The brilliance of Oz is the unbelievable craft behind it, and a lot of the artistic intent was determined by the limitations of the film stock that was available to them.  You change things like adding on to backgrounds, removing edits, and crafting additional performances from offscreen actors that never existed before through AI technology, you have to wonder if it’s still the movie you grew up loving anymore.  The best thing for this presentation to do is to stay one of a kind, and be treated as nothing more than a gimmick.  The last thing that should happen is for Hollywood to take the wrong message and believe that the best way to re-release their films is to use AI to add on more movie.  It’s like those awful AI generated expansions of famous artworks that people began circulating on social media about a year ago.  Sure, AI is capable of filling in what could exist beyond the frames of these famous works of art, but without the original artists input to say so the artwork loses impact because their original limited frame of view was as the artists intended.  Filling in what’s not there misses the point of the composition. The same seems true for this Wizard of Oz experience.  It’s impressive looking, but it’s also not Oz.  Even still, there is potential for the Sphere to have a positive influence on filmmaking.  Imagine if other big scale filmmakers like Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve look at the Sphere’s massive screen and see it as a challenge that fits with their visions.  For now, it stands as a true achievement for the city of Las Vegas.  Finally, they have managed to gain the attention of the cinematic world and created a venue that could indeed change the theatrical experience for good.  We’ll see what the future of the MSG Sphere holds, but there is no doubt that it is one massive leap in innovation when it comes to the presentation of movies.  True to the city of Vegas, it’s a gamble of a project, and as is the case with their presentation of The Wizard of Oz, they seem to have hit the jackpot.