Why The Sphere’s attempt to reinvent ‘The Wizard of Oz’ with AI is a wickedly bad idea

This image is being used to promote “The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere.”

Everyone in “The Wizard of Oz” wants something. The Scarecrow wants a brain. The Tin Man wants a heart. And the Cowardly Lion?

“The nerve.”

Well, good news, Lion. I know some people who’ve got plenty to spare.

Opening Aug. 28, “The Wizard of Oz at the Sphere” will present a “reimagining” of the movie classic at that giant, multimedia golf ball out in Las Vegas. Tickets “start around $100.” And no, that’s not a misprint.

Of course, this is a different, deluxe, “truly immersive” experience, brags the venue. The Sphere’s 160,000-square-foot “display plane” will “wrap up, over and around the audience.” The remastered score will be blasted on 167,000 speakers. Oh, and the price includes “haptic seats, environmental effects and custom scents.”

Great. I always wanted to know what a Kansas pigsty smelled like.

But wait, there’s worse. AI has been used to “improve” the movie.

Judy Garland and Ray Bolger in “The Wizard of Oz.”

Film grain — those delicate imperfections that make up any celluloid image — have been erased. Backgrounds that were once intentionally left in soft focus have been sharply clarified. And — to help fill those 160,000 square feet of empty space — scenes have been digitally altered and expanded, with AI programs used to cram the frame with details, even characters, that were never there to begin with.

I was outraged as soon as I read about this. And so I did what we do these days when we’re both angry and powerless. I complained on social media.

Judging by the hundreds of responses, it seems like a lot of people shared my feelings. But I’ll admit, perhaps 10 or 15 percent thought I was off-base. Some pointed out that the original film would still be available to those who preferred it. Others noted that this was a special event. And a few insisted that, if movies like this weren’t updated, younger audiences would refuse to watch them.

Joining them on X, Ben Mankiewicz — you know, one of the hosts over at TCM, where they are supposed to preserve and promote classic movies — defended the practice. “The concerns over AI are real,” he wrote to another naysayer. “But it is here. We must accept that. But this is not what our concern should be. The actors are gone. All they’re doing is extending performances to fit a large screen — completing work (directors) Fleming and LeRoy would have if it had been possible.”

But you don’t have to be a Doctor of Thinkology to realize those arguments don’t really fly, even with a magic broomstick.

First of all, I would like to think — would dearly love to hope — that generations to come will still be introduced to “The Wizard of Oz” the way most of us were: in childhood, by our parents. (Although I certainly hope nobody is spending $100 a ticket to take little kids to this thing.) Movies are the closest thing America has to a shared mythology, and knowing about Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion and the Wicked Witch is, very simply, part of being culturally literate.

But these people’s larger point — that art needs to be modernized to stay popular — is wrongheaded. What makes art great is permanence, not popularity. I don’t think that Aristophanes’ comedies draw quite the appreciative crowds they did more than 2000 years ago. But people still go to them, the way they still go to Shakespeare. The work endures.

And while there is always room for a new translation, a new approach — “Hey, how about doing ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ but with street gangs?” — that is not the same thing as adding bells and whistles to try to keep people interested. To begin with, it doesn’t work. (Did colorization really create any new classic movie fans?) And truly — if people can’t enjoy “The Wizard of Oz” without having “custom scents” wafted up their noses, that’s their problem. And their loss.

Second, as to the argument that the original version of the film will continue to exist … well, one can hope. But although I love physical media — a love that was surely tested during a recent move, when I had to pack, and then unpack, several dozen boxes of books, CDs, records, DVDs and tapes — I am no longer so sure of that.

Many companies have gotten out of the home-entertainment business; the streamers that have replaced them only show a fraction of the movies that exist, mostly concentrating on recent hits. And even the films they do show aren’t safe. Recently, Disney’s digital version of “The French Connection” had a line of dialogue cut because of a racist slur. Amazon snipped out most of the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life” because of a rights issue.

Yes, you could still watch the originals, but what happens when you can’t buy discs anymore? Or when the technology used on this new “Wizard of Oz” starts getting used on other movies? Because if there is any money to be made, it will be. Tired of crying at the end of “Titanic”? A few thousand lines of added code and, hooray, Rose pulls Jack out of the water and their romance goes on. And history — our shared cinema history — gets rewritten.

Which is my real problem with this new “Oz”: It disrespects the art, the artist, and the age that produced them. It is one thing for Spielberg and Lucas to go back and re-edit scenes in “E.T” or “Star Wars” (although I’m not thrilled with that either); at least they have the moral authority to revise their own work.

But the director and cast and crew of “The Wizard of Oz” are long gone. They can’t consent to any changes, and it is arrogant to assume they would (and even more arrogant to, like Mankiewicz, say you know they would have done it this way to begin with “had it been possible”).

These were professionals, working at the top of their talent. Every choice they made was deliberate. If the background of a shot was blurred, it was because the cinematographer wanted to focus our attention on the foreground. If an actor was out of frame, it’s because that’s the way the director had blocked the scene, for dramatic effect. These artists knew exactly what they were doing — and for anyone to think they know better is exactly the kind of tech-bro ego that has already gotten us into a lot of messes.

Yes, you can turn a childhood classic into another overpriced amusement park ride. You can have movie seats that buck and swivel, to make us think we’re in a tornado. You can buffet us with gusts of wind, or the smell of a melting witch. You can make the warm and vulnerable face of Judy Garland look as perfect and poreless and plastic as a mannequin’s.

Congratulations. You’ve figured out how to do all those things.

You’ve figured out everything except why.

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