After a trip to Las Vegas in April, I wrote about how beautiful the outside of The Sphere is, but it was highly unlikely I would pay to go inside. But I was back in Vegas this week and my old friend Bill flew out to join me. He really wanted to see what it was like, so I figured what the hell and agreed to join him.
So, which band did we see? None. Instead, the attraction was “Postcard From Earth,” a movie directed by Darren Aronofsky. I was wary, because he’s the man who made “mother!” — yes, with a small m — a movie I named one of The Worst Of 2017. I also wasn’t particularly fond of his more recent effort, “The Whale,” for which Brendan Fraser won an Oscar he didn’t deserve (read my review here).
“Postcard From Earth” is ostensibly a nature documentary which features species and locations from around the globe. I don’t know how much of it is actual footage and how much is CGI, but the visuals are stunning. I have enjoyed OmniMax movies at the St. Louis Science Center, but this dwarfs those. Displayed on the domed interior of The Sphere, the images are so large they go beyond the limits of my peripheral vision, so I kept looking around to take it all in. There are some scenes in caves where I had to look straight up to see the ceilings, complete with stalactites.
There’s no disputing the brilliance of the technology and its appeal to all of our senses. Aronofsky showcases a large variety of people, places, traditions, and architecture, using a lot of color, which really pops at this resolution (16,000 by 16,000 pixels). There are also haptics built into every seat, so I felt the rumble when elephants strolled by or a thunder cracked during a lightning storm. To involve even more of our senses, there were points when cold air blew across the audience. At one point, while watching people picking oranges, a distinct citrus aroma filled the air.
Sadly, Aronofsky frames “Postcard From Earth” as a flashback being replayed for the benefit of two astronauts who have landed on a distant planet way off in the future. We see them being awakened at the beginning onboard a spacecraft (full of CGI nonsense) that has just touched down, but never hear them speak. Instead, we hear voiceovers telling them to remember the past, when humans lived on Earth. That narration continues throughout, showing us the stunning landscapes and species that have populated our world, then building to a warning about using up our natural resources and polluting our surroundings. The environmental message is fine, but Aronofsky’s script is absolutely insipid and off-putting, and the voices speak as if to a six-year-old.
The film concludes with the astronauts stepping out onto this new world and being told by the voices that humans had to leave Earth and find new places to begin again. Then it tells them, “You know what your job is.” Um, have a lot of sex and make babies? After all the pro-science points touched on earlier — including how life invented itself, then adapted via evolution — did we really end up with a new Garden Of Eden story?
Yep.
Incidentally, the astronauts are a Black man and a South Asian woman. Thus, when they procreate, their children are going to have the same racial makeup as Kamala Harris. Aronofsky couldn’t have planned that, since the movie was completed in 2023, before she became the Democratic candidate, but it’s an interesting coincidence.
As lovely as the 45-minute global nature tour of “Postcard From Earth” is, it is still a movie, and not worth over a hundred dollars (some seats cost double that!). As for the rest of the interior experience of The Sphere, I wasn’t impressed.
First, we were told to arrive 45 minutes before the show time on our tickets, then forced to stand in the lobby and wait amid a crowd of a few thousand people doing nothing. There should be something to keep attendees entertained, maybe monitors with clips of some of the bands that have performed at The Sphere (U2, Dead & Company, The Eagles). But no.
When we were finally allowed into the atrium for The Sphere Experience, the major attraction was five animatronic robots talking about technology and answering questions from the public. Too bad they’re not very impressive, just a few steps better than those I saw at the New York World’s Fair in 1964 (including an Abraham Lincoln robot that moved while it talked, too). The robots — which look like Alicia Vikander’s character in Alex Garland’s “Ex Machina” — seem as if they’re supposed to showcase artificial intelligence, but I’ve had better, smoother conversations with Siri and Alexa (which both have better language skills, too).
The only two things that impressed me in the atrium were some holograms and the souvenir cup Bill bought that lights up — and there was no reason to spend 45 minutes wandering around before going up to take our seats.
My doctor went to The Sphere several months ago to see Dead & Company, and told me about the steepness of the steps, warning me not to sit in the top level because of my vertigo. Fortunately, Bill got tickets in section 207, so I didn’t have to worry about inner-ear problems, but I did have a problem with my height. The rows were too close together for my long legs, made worse by haptics boxes on the backs of the seats taking up valuable space. Before the show started, I moved over to the next section, which was mostly empty, so I could put one leg out into the aisle and the other over the seat ahead of me. If we’d been at a concert packed with people, I would have been very uncomfortable.
In retrospect, the best features of The Sphere were the clever images appearing on the outside, which you can watch for free! On the inside, some of the visuals in “Postcard From Earth” were riveting, but not enough to make it worth paying over $100 to see.
My advice is to save your money and watch David Attenborough’s nature documentaries on Netflix, including his latest, “Secret World Of Sound” (my review is here). The screen won’t be as big, but you’ll have a lot more legroom.