As some of you probably know, maybe even because I’ve told you, The Wizard of Oz is not in Kansas anymore. It’s in Las Vegas. 

And it’s incredible. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, Steven Hickson, director for AI foundation research at Google DeepMind, The Wizard of Oz project was “Very, very, very big and very, very difficult.” 

In fact, when the team behind the Las Vegas Sphere decided to show The Wizard of Oz, even Google’s engineers thought it might be impossible. The Sphere’s screen wraps around 17,600 seats and covers 160,000 square feet — a curved, ultra-high-resolution canvas built for brand-new films, not one shot on 35 mm film. And certainly not one shot in 1939.

To make Dorothy and her friends “Sphere-ready,” Google Cloud and DeepMind invented new AI tools to restore and expand the movie’s world.

“There are scenes [in the original film] where the scarecrow’s nose is like 10 pixels,” Mr. Hickson added. “That’s a big technological challenge,” he said about getting the character ready for the massive screen. 

“Traditional techniques involve multiplying a shot’s existing pixels. Google instead used AI to generate new pixels as it increased the size of the visuals.”

They also invented new methods to enhance resolution and extend backgrounds to include characters and scenery not in the original shots. Google calls these techniques “performance generation” and “outpainting.” 

The technology filled in scenery that never existed, widened rooms, and even added characters once kept off-camera. In one scene, Uncle Henry finally appears in the kitchen with Aunt Em and Miss Gulch — visible for the first time in eighty-six years.

Every frame was reconsidered, recalibrated, and rebuilt until the familiar story felt alive again. It wasn’t rewritten, but it’s definitely now more clearly seen.

Darren and I got tickets for earlier this month and I was excited, for sure.  But I was not prepared for how big and daunting — and REAL — it would feel to actually be witnessing it inside The Sphere.

There are huge blowers blowing, real clouds forming, and tissue leaves swirling, foam apples dropping and robotic monkeys flying! And even without all of those additions, I was still absolutely stunned by the COLORS in that film. They are truly indescribable. 

I’m sure the colors were there in the original, but I had never seen them like this before. 

Shannon Ables says this, “If we accept that in order to live well growth must be involved, no matter what our age, then layers have to be shed from time to time. If we shed layers regularly, it isn’t difficult, but routine –- healthy and non-disruptive to ourselves and others. However, if what we are shedding is something that has not changed in years or ever, then there is no doubt it will be hard. We held on to that relationship, that job, that habit for a long time for a reason; however, now we have [more] self-awareness.

If the original The Wizard of Oz film represents the “old version” of us, then the remastered version could symbolize how we revisit old stories once we’ve developed that increase in self-awareness — and more nuanced tools.

Maybe we’ve ‘remastered’ some things, too.

• Our emotional vocabulary — we’re now able to name myriad feelings beyond “fine” or “stressed.”
• Our self-compassion — we can revisit old pain without the old self-criticism.
• Our regulation skills — we can use breathing, grounding, or pausing before reacting as tools that help steady us.
• Our perspective-taking — we can better see how our past selves were doing the best they could with what they knew.
• Our clarity — we can stop editing ourselves to please the crowd and use the ability to “restore” our true tones instead of fading them out.

I can’t wait to hear where things are starting to look a little remastered for you. And if you want some company while you’re refining the picture, let’s talk.

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PS If you liked this post – or any others, I’d love you to pass me and my work on to a friend.  They can find out much more about me here if they’re interested!