If only by default, I’ve become a “Wizard of Oz” historian during my last 30 years of journalism.
My inauguration for this Yellow Brick Road destiny happened in September 1993 when I was a 23-year-old cub reporter transported by a luxury coach bus to O’Hare Airport in Chicago to cover the arrival of 14 “little people” (many of them chain-smoking en route), 10 of whom had appeared in the original 1939 MGM film classic starring opposite a 16-year-old Judy Garland.
The Munchkins were the annual honored guests at The Wizard of Oz Festival in Chesterton, a popular Midwest event that lasted from 1981 until the final year in 2013. During the past two decades, I’ve been tasked in the newsroom with also writing the Land of Oz obituary tributes as the Munchkins passed away throughout the years, crowning me, by default, as another Munchkin coroner of sorts.
Columnist Phil Potempa arrived with 14 “little people” guests of honor, 10 of whom played Munchkins in the 1939 film classic “The Wizard of Oz,” from O’Hare Airport for the launch of the 1993 Wizard of Oz Festival in Chesterton. Autographed signatures on the photo identify each of the late attendees. (Philip Potempa/provided)
Fast forward to August 2025.
For my Leo the Lion birthday this month, my older sister Pam convinced me to join her for a 24-hour quick trip to Las Vegas to experience “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere,” a fully immersive experience promising to transport audiences down that famed yellow brick road with Dorothy and Co.
This is the same beloved film we still remember our oldest brother Tom, 58, and sister Carol, 71, recalling when they watched this movie for the first time on a color TV. The first television airing of “The Wizard of Oz” was Nov. 3, 1956, earning such high viewer ratings that it became an annual tradition around Thanksgiving. While our family only had a black and white TV in the late 1950s, our mom’s mother, our Grandma Green, who lived in Wheatfield, had a color television. Our siblings describe seeing the Land of Oz in vibrant color to be something akin to “out of this world.”
Such were my expectations for “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere,” shown inside the main bowl configuration venue. Now enhanced, the original film shot for movie screens of the 1930s can fill Sphere’s interior display plane to wrap up, above and to the sides of the audience. The final result is to create a fully immersive visual and sensory experience. I’m told it took more than 2,000 people, artists, engineers, technicians, musicians and researchers from around the world during the course of two years at an (over the budget) cost of around $100 million.
Priced for basic seating at $100 a ticket, the Sphere movie is now a 77-minute film compared to the 102-minute original, with the latter accounting for original cut scenes like “the Scarecrow dance” and “the Jitterbug dance” sequence added back in.
Billed as “shown in 4D” and a “fully immersive experience,” Sphere audiences are treated to special indoor effects as created by Sphere Studios in collaboration with Warner Bros. Discovery, Google and Magnopus.
After the Aug. 28 opening night, there are now at least three screenings daily at 11 a.m., 2 and 5 p.m., with “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere” showings only using the venue’s 10,000 sensory “haptic seats,” compared to the 20,000 seats used for concerts at the space.
Guests of all ages enter the venue through an elaborate wraparound atrium where Oz-themed food and drink await, as well as merchandise kiosks scattered throughout a landscape that includes recreations of Dorothy’s Kansas, the Wizard’s chambers in the Emerald City, and even the Wicked Witch of the West’s skywriting messages over and above.
In collaboration with Google and Magnopus, “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere” needed to utilize the latest generative AI technologies alongside traditional visual effects to create a final visual that fits Sphere’s 16K resolution media since the Sphere’s 160,000-square-foot interior display plane boasts the highest resolution LED screen on Earth at 16K.
Actress Lorna Luft, 72, daughter of Judy Garland, a familiar headliner at casino showrooms along the famed Las Vegas strip, attends an opening night screening of “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere” in Las Vegas with her daughter and grandchildren over the Labor Day 2025 weekend. (Philip Potempa/for Post-Tribune)
Because of the need to cut scenes and dialogue, the Sphere version is choppy and disjointed at times, which is distracting to the story.
As anticipated, the environmental trickery and effects are out of this world. The twister tornado effects are created with three high-powered fans, 20 fog units, and nine haze machines, all blended into gusts interspersed with flying paper leaves at wind levels high enough to knock a baseball cap off an unsuspecting head.
There are floating butterflies, flying foam apples (Sphere folks say they have a stockpile of more than 25,000 spongy red apples for the angry screen trees to throw 500 orbs per showing into the audience), snowflakes generated by 38 snow machines, several full-size drone-disguised Winged Monkeys, and eight flame tower units to simulate the Wizard and Wicked Witch of the West’s fiery powers.
I didn’t detect any aromas or scents floating about the environment during the movie.
Much of the movie is vivid and vibrant with never-before-reimagined landscapes like Scarecrow’s endless cornfield and Lion’s limitless, far-reaching forest. A few odd Oz animals are tossed in, but feel needlessly random given the characters’ narrative, such as a herd of deer outside the Emerald City and a sauntering white tiger on the forest fringe, shown only for a fleeting moment.
Most troubling are the scenes that feature large crowd interactions, like the arrival in Munchkinland and later Emerald City. Many of the tiny faces are blurry and oddly unrecognizable at best. Some of the same faces are AI replicated more than once in the same scene and sport strange zombie-like staring leers or appear out of scale with other surrounding character identities.
“The Wizard of Oz” has been a long-welcomed fantasy friend theme that’s right at home in Las Vegas.
Neighboring MGM Grand Casino and Hotel, which opened in 1993, originally devoted a large stretch of casino and hotel lobby space to “The Wizard of Oz,” with branding that included “The Oz Buffet,” a full-scale walk-through recreated the Land of Oz complete with the Yellow Brick Road, with animated and real costumed characters for photo ops. Even the carpet of the casino sported giant red poppy flowers as a floral wink at the film’s witch’s spell scene. All of this was removed with remodeling in 1996.
I think “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere” with some further fine-tuning will have a much longer lifespan than the previous MGM property tribute. I don’t see any pails of water threatening ticket sales, considering that as of Friday, more than 215,000 tickets have been sold, with the film now scheduled to continue at least through March 2026, according to www.thesphere.com.
In tasty tribute to the rebirth of interest in “The Wizard of Oz,” this recipe for “Emerald Green Split Pea Soup” is from the actor Bert Lahr, who played the Cowardly Lion in the iconic film. Georgina Motts was his longtime cook, and his daughter Jane recalled this recipe among the family favorites.
Columnist Philip Potempa has published four cookbooks and is a weekly radio show host on WJOB 1230 AM. Email him at PhilPotempa@gmail.com or mail your questions: From the Farm, PO Box 68, San Pierre, Ind. 46374.
Emerald City Split Pea Soup
Makes 8 servings
1/2 cup dried split peas
1 quart cold water
1 ham bone
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
Pinch of black pepper
1 cup milk
Directions:
Soak dried peas overnight and drain.
Add hambone and cold water to a soup pot and simmer for 4 hours or until meat is soft to remove.
Remove meat bits and return to simmering stock pot, and discard bone.
Rub the softened peas through a sieve, set aside.
In a skillet, melt butter and add flour to make roux, season with salt and pepper and slowly add milk.
Add the prepared pea mixture into roux and blend until smooth before adding to soup pot.
Simmer additional 10 minutes and serve hot.
