Nearly a century after it first enchanted audiences, “The Wizard of Oz” has taken up residence in a place even more dazzling than the Emerald City. Las Vegas! More specifically, the Sphere in Las Vegas. There, “Oz” has moved beyond just a classic movie and become a full-on experience — a 4D show created by Sphere Studios in collaboration with Warner Bros. Discovery, Google and Magnopus.

To enhance the audience’s immersion into L. Frank Baum’s fantastical world, Sphere’s infrasound and haptic seat technology has been used for the first time to not only create vibrations but also emit tones that emphasize moments in the film experience. The 4D elements, meanwhile, range from butterflies to flying apples to winged monkeys engineered to sync seamlessly with the story unfolding on the screen.

The film’s major effects sequence — the tornado that sweeps Dorothy Gale from Kansas to Oz — is recreated indoors with three high-powered fans, 20 fog units, nine haze machines and 18 GMEP machines, a visceral sequence that has been perfected through more than 360 hours of in-venue testing. Meanwhile, 38 snow machines are used to create snow effects in the poppy field scene, while flame effects are created by eight fire units so audiences can feel the heat as the Wizard interrogates Dorothy and her friends.

This version of “Oz” has been an unqualified success since opening on Aug. 28. In fact, the latest Wolfe Research estimates have the movie pushing James Dolan's unique Sin City venue to $500 million in gross profits next year, which may bode well for the venue to recreate other classic titles. Indeed, Bloomberg News recently reported that Dolan has already held preliminary talks with Warner Bros. about the “Harry Potter” movies and with Disney about “Star Wars.”

Time Has Been Powerless to Put Oz’s Kindly Philosophy Out of Fashion

But does any title have the lasting power of the 1939 classic starring Judy Garland? I asked film historian and reviewer Michael Sragow about the movie’s enduring appeal and multi-generational legacy. He believes its power depends on an enveloping nostalgia whose source cannot be pinned down.

He remarks, “After Dorothy proclaims the Scarecrow and Tin Man ‘the best friends anyone ever had,’ she says, ‘I feel as if I’ve known you all the time — but I couldn’t have, could I?’ The shiver she summons in even the most jaded viewer has something to do with the way her dream oscillates between fantasy and reality. It also comes from the movie’s eerie, comical grasp about how we create our own destinies wherever we go, often replicating what we think we’ve left behind. For us, and for Dorothy, Oz becomes the second home that makes us appreciate our first home all the more.”

Sragow wrote the definitive biography of Victor Fleming, the director of “The Wizard of Oz” and a number of other classic motion pictures. Titled “Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master,” the book shows how Fleming became known as the “director that MGM once trusted with everything,” as the New York Times previously wrote.

Fleming passed away in 1949 and did not live to see “The Wizard of Oz” become what it is today. He didn’t even live long enough to see it become the perennial TV favorite it was via yearly CBS airings for decades. As his biographer, how does Sragow think he would have reacted to his film becoming, really, the ultimate classic and a Las Vegas spectacle people from all over the world will travel to and pay more than $100 a seat to see?

“Like most directors whose careers spanned the movie’s pioneer days and the Golden Age of Hollywood, he would have been surprised that it was remembered at all!” Sragow states. “Directors like Fleming did their damndest for the audience, putting everything they knew and every skill and talent they possessed at the service of making enthralling entertainment. But film preservation was unknown — half of Fleming’s silent films have been lost — and only the best movie critics, and cultural outposts like MOMA, were beginning to consider American movies as an enduring popular art.”

INTIX Professionals Are Also Going Over the Rainbow

But endure the movies have done and “The Wizard of Oz,” in particular, has become one of the most enduring and endearing. Even ticketing professionals, who have witnessed all forms of entertainment, are finding themselves being little kids again and making plans to see “Oz” at the Sphere.

Amy Graca, Senior Vice President of Entertainment for Caesars Entertainment Corp., was in attendance opening night and is still buzzing from the experience. She says, “When the house lands, and Dorothy reaches for the door to open to Munchkinland, the colors are so vibrant and real! You become truly immersed in the movie in an entirely new way. Follow the Yellow Brick Road now has a whole new meaning. It's also unbelievable to think that this movie was made in the 1930s and to see it now modernized with technology and yet still honor the originality of the movie.”

Roger Jones, owner of VegasTickets.com, had a very similar reaction. “I wasn’t sure what to expect at first since I’ve seen ‘The Wizard of Oz’ so many times, but it honestly felt like a totally new experience. I think my favorite part was when Dorothy first got to Oz and everything turned to color. The way the whole Sphere lit up made it feel like we were actually inside the movie. It was really cool and made the whole thing feel magical in a way I wasn’t expecting.”

Making plans to attend soon is Graca’s colleague, Lindsay Radic. The Senior Ticketing Director for Caesars Entertainment Corp. states, “Since the movie is almost 90 years old, a vast majority of us have fond memories of watching the film as a child. I know I do. I am most excited to experience it with fresh eyes all over again.”

Equally excited is Rob McSparron, Operations Manager for VegasTickets.com. “I haven’t had the chance to see ‘The Wizard of Oz’ at the Sphere yet, but it’s definitely on my list. What excites me most is how this feels like a return to that shared movie-going experience we’ve lost a bit in the streaming era. There’s something special about enjoying a film alongside an audience. Although I haven’t seen ‘Oz’ there yet, I’ve been lucky to catch a few other shows at the Sphere, and the staff and production quality are always top-notch. I have no doubt this will be every bit as epic.”

Radic and McSparron may be rubbing elbows with colleague Toby Baptist, Vice President of Operations for LasVegasTickets.com, at some future screening. He says, “I've heard only great things. I'm interested in taking in this totally immersive experience, seeing and feeling how they put the whole experience together.”

There’s No Place Like Dome

For Sphere — OK, officially, there’s no “the” — this new version of the film is being projected on three football fields of bright 16K LED screens that curve around its domed interior, with another 10 on the outside that light up Vegas day and night with rotating animations.

Full disclosure. Purists have taken issue with this being a 70-minute version of the classic movie with beloved sequences like The Cowardly Lion’s “If I Were King of the Forest” completely edited out and other scenes being enhanced with the most cutting-edge CGI effects. Also, the original film’s Academy Award-winning score had to be re-recorded for Sphere Immersive Sound.

Sragow comments, “From everything I’ve read and seen about the Sphere presentation, it devalues the performances at the expense of spectacle and effects. [Legendary film critic] Pauline Kael once worried that movies would become ‘jolts for jocks,’ but the Sphere version of ‘Oz’ seems to present jolts for the jock inside of everyone.”

Nevertheless, screenings are selling out. And don’t let some of the leaked cell phone camera footage showing up on social media fool you. Although the arena seats 17,600 when full, only the middle section of the venue is open for seating at “Oz” screenings, roughly a third of its capacity, to ensure maximum audience enjoyment visually and aurally.

And audiences have proven over the decades they are open to and even eager to continue experiencing and re-experiencing “The Wizard of Oz” in different forms, whether it’s the 1970s hit musical “The Wiz” or the stunning Broadway and cinematic triumph “Wicked” or even Tim Burton’s well-meaning 2013 quasi-sequel, “Oz the Great and Powerful.”

Sragow concludes, “It’s so flexible a story because it’s also a foundational story. The BBC commissioned a poll in 2018 to determine the most influential story in all literature. The winner was ‘The Odyssey,’ the tale of a man who masters fantastic and formidable challenges and renews his emotional strength and deepens his wisdom as he battles and maneuvers his way home. ‘The Wizard of Oz’ is ‘The Odyssey’ of popular culture, all the more primal for having as its heroine a child, and all the more accessible for being told through song-and-dance and jokes and the magical visual poetry of American storytelling movies.”