adurot:

gunrunnersarsenal:

cookingwithroxy:

silverscreenx:

pun-ishment888:

silverscreenx:

thehoneydukes:

Tolkien: By the end of the Third Age, Sauron’s physical power is so diminished that his presence is confined to the tower of Barad-Dur. However, he is still immensely powerful in his ability to watch and predict the movements of his enemies, and his understanding extends so far that he could metaphorically be referred to as a Great Eye, constantly watching and planning his next move. And because his gaze is so piercing, it is sometimes likened to fire.

Peter Jackson: Okay but…hear me out…what if Sauron was literally….a Great Eye.

Tolkien: What.

Peter Jackson: What if he was literally a giant eyeball on the top of Barad-Dur.

Tolkien: That’s not quite what I inten-

Peter Jackson: Made of FIRE. A LITERAL GIANT FIERY EYEBALL.

So Sauron was just chillin in Barad-Dur?

I think it means Sauron was more or less like a spirit or “an aura”. Kind of like Acererak in DnD who loses his body to fuse with a wave of magic, existing as a consciousness instead of flesh and soul

Could that wave of magic look like a flaming eyeball?

I think that the canon was also that he’d spent centuries imprisoned until just a bit before the events of The Hobbit, and finally escaped around then to return to Mordor to attempt to regain power. So he did have a body at that point at least.

after his defeat, he was a non-corporeal spirit for like some 1000 years, after which he had gathered enough strengths to recreate a body. he took over Dol Guldur - the Hill of Sorcery as “the Necromancer” and then more or less chilled there for the next 1950 years - running away every time gandalf came by to check. meanwhile the ringwraiths kept murderhobboing everyone around and then stuff happened.

I like the detail you see in the Hobbit, where he’s not so much a giant flaming eyeball, as he is just seen as a silhouette surrounded by a flaming aura, giving the appearance of a slit pupiled eye.