Oz at the Sphere: AI's latest conquest

The inside of the Sphere in Las Vegas — The big problem with Dolan's Oz is that it's "using one of the most cherished pieces of all American pop art to normalize the vandalism inherent to the use of AI."

(Image credit: Ian Maule / Bloomberg / Getty Images)

"If the prospect of seeing an iconic classic on the biggest LED screen in the world feels too good to be true, well, you may be onto something," said Fran Hoepfner in NYMag.com. Starting late this month, Las Vegas' Sphere, the city's enormous ball-shape venue, will debut a version of The Wizard of Oz that's 20 minutes shorter than the 1939 original and goosed up by generative AI. Yet AI isn't the whole story, said Alex Weprin in The Hollywood Reporter. When the tornado touches down on Dorothy's Kansas, 750-horsepower fans will stir up a debris-filled whirlwind in the 17,600-seat venue, and when the wicked witch releases her flying monkeys, winged creatures will fly above viewers' heads. Because the $80 million spectacle marks the Sphere's first full-immersion 3D experience, "Oz is in many ways a culminating event for the venue."

When details about the movie's reimagining were reported in an upbeat recent CBS Sunday Morning segment, many movie lovers were furious, said Odie Henderson in The Boston Globe. James Dolan, owner of the Sphere, talked energetically about using AI to doctor every image, dramatically widen the film's frame, and even place at the far ends of the screen characters who were previously outside the camera's view. The interview "clearly hit a nerve," especially because it was conducted by an enthusiastic Ben Mankiewicz, the face of Turner Classic Movies, which in recent decades has been a bulwark of film tradition. In other words, the segment was "akin to the world's most famous vegan interviewing Colonel Sanders and raving about his chicken."

While Mankiewicz later claimed that Oz's reimagining is good for classic cinema, said David Ehrlich in IndieWire, "I have my doubts that charging $200 for the experience of being attacked by a Kaiju-like Judy Garland will create many new fans of old movies." But the big problem with Dolan's Oz is that it's "using one of the most cherished pieces of all American pop art to normalize the vandalism inherent to the use of AI." It primes the public to expect that art of any type is to be treated as mere fodder for emerging technologies and the billionaires who profit from them.