What Was SAURON Actually Doing During The Lord of the Rings? | Middle-Earth Lore

Everyone asks “Where was Sauron?” Nobody asks “How was Sauron?”

Having limited access to viewing Sauron's physical form made him a much more intriguing and mysterious villain. As a kid I REALLY wanted to see Sauron manifest and wreck sh*t, but him not doing that made me start reading the lore and source material to satisfy that.

You failed to mention the must important error Sauron made, his inability to conceive that his enemies might come into possession of the One Ring and not use it. He was looking for a challenger to his power welding the One Ring against him, not a humble halfling looking to destroy the Ring. As one who was consumed by a lust for power, he thought someone in possession of the Ring would necessarily claim its power for himself. Gandalf’s plans worked because Sauron could not imagine anything other than a challenger for power.

I actually liked the flaming eye...I interpreted it as Sauron had poured so much of himself into the One Ring that when it was separated from him, his physical living body was destroyed. I had always believed that he never appeared outside of that flashback because he had no physical form and if he got the One Ring back he would once again be flesh and blood.

It makes a lot of sense for the movie to have the objective that "Sauron can never get the ring". Having Sauron as a spirit and needing the ring to recreate his physical body, and being clear he is at his most powerful when he is in his physical form, gives the audience a straightforward simple goal for the movie. It's a helpful tool to create tension whenever it looks like the ring will be caught by the Nazgul and it gives a great sigh of relief when the ring is finally destroyed

Ironic that Sauron launched a battle as a distraction so Gollum could escape, and yet it never entered his mind that the battle launched against him could be a distraction for a different hobbit to infiltrate his lands.

I think the eye representing Sauron was a good idea for the film representation. We got to see a brief representation of his physical form in the first sequence of the Fellowship of the Ring. I feel it was far more powerful to not see him in a body after that great opening scene, especially for the newcomers to the series. It's like the opening of the trilogy gave us a taste of what he actually may have looked like (which blew my mind when I first saw the movie as a kid), and then we see that he is something larger than just a villain. First time viewers of the films (that haven't read the Lotr trilogy, or the Silmarillion) don't know about the Valar, Maiar, or Eru unless they knew about some of the lore. In my opinion, by not showing his physical form again for the rest of the trilogy, it managed to accomplish something similar to the feel of Sauron in the books (although he did have a body in the books); being more of an unseen evil so great, so powerful, that he doesn't even need to be seen in order for the characters to feel his influence from great distances. It goes along with the idea that he is pretty much an evil ethereal being. What I love most is that in the books and films, Sauron is just as much a mystery to most of the characters as he is to the readers, and viewers. He is almost like an evil so great, and so powerful that it's almost difficult for lesser beings to fathom, and at the same time, Sauron also can't understand or comprehend the strength, or motivations of lesser beings (the least powerful) that he would consider useless slaves such as Hobbits.

Gandalf did say in the movies ‘he cannot yet take physical form’. Sounds like that’s a difference from the books. For your question, I think Sauron being less physical makes him more terrifying. We see the great eye and all the power he has and we’re told he’s not at full strength. It shows how important the ring is to him, and adds stakes to the movie.

Is Sauron the main character? The books are named after him

To be somewhat fair to Sauron, his biggest miscalculation is not just arrogance. He doesn't consider they'd try destroying the ring because from his perspective, that's impossible. He knows no one has the strength of will to resist the temptation of the ring long enough to actually cast it in the fire and... turns out he's right. Frodo got told in no uncertain terms "If you can't do it, no one can." and in the end, he can't. If fate/god/sheer luck hadn't intervened the way it did, the ring could never have been destroyed, so it makes sense for Sauron to not consider this a realistic situation.

I was fine with the flaming eye, as I never took it to be Sauron's physical form, but rather a symbolic projection of his power. It did get a bit silly in the third film when it started acting like a giant searchlight. I really wish they'd gone with concept of Aragorn partially hypnotised at the Black Gate, first seeing a vision of Annatar, only for Gandalf to work his magic, with it then morphing into Sauron. That breaks the spell, and Aragorn then leads the attack. "For Frodo..."

Sauron was busy directing the war, it takes an incredible amount of psychic effort to fill everyone involved with the dark strength of will to continue their evil.

The Hobbit movies, at least, sort of introduced the concept of Sauron not being an eye but a shadow of a humanlike figure surrounded by a fiery aura that just kind of looks like an eye from a distance. That's actually a cool middle ground that makes sense in the movie's lore but still pays homage to the book lore (which Jackson's movies actually do a lot, actually.)

During the whole story he would sit at his desk, reading his own poetry, quoting his own verses to Frodo and whoever else was under the influence of the ring with a creepy voice. Spouting basic science trivia such as "there is no live in the void" etc. Making up new mottos, naming objects with dark names like: Dark Tower, Mount Doom, Black Gate... Designing new clothing styles for Orcs such as war skirts, war booty shorts, rusty helmets, rugs with mould on it and so on, making sure the fashion of Mordor is recognizable on and off the battlefield. Designing dirty and rotten flags for orcs to take to the battles. Keeping his realm as dirty and disgusting as possible to make sure nobody ever wanted to join him, which took the most effort of all his works. He was quite busy and yet he lived for the moment.

I liked the eye as the representation of Sauron in the movie. Not being able to see an enemy or a villain is always more terrifying. They could have maybe shown that Sauron did have a body at some point but the eye seemed very effective in evoking the terror when you thought of Sauron.

I started reading Tolkien's works over 50 years ago and what Jackson did with his interpretation of the all-seeing eye of Sauron in my opinion works perfectly.

I understand why the Flaming Eye was show as litteraly as Eye, but when we are talking about movie adaptations I preffer Sauron from Hobbit movies, but really I love it, just a black shadow form from nothing but still so powerfull with that dark voice! James as always great and interesting video!

It's a cinematic problem; to portray menace, power and intimidation in just a humanoid body. I think the films use of a "lidless eye, wreathed in flame" was more significant as a means of torture and cruelty than a bodily form was likely to have been.

The eye in the movies works for me . Sauron dont really appear as a person in the books in the sense that you see him doing things and having a person represent him in the movies could have maybe lead to a more cartoonish villain with him having to say and do things that just did not happen and you would have to had Aragorn fight him which of course did not happen and this i think would have lead to a lot of criticism of the movies being way to " Hollywood" garbage. I think they did ok showing the eye as this evil presence that is always there and not over doing it

A long time reader of LoTR, I feel Peter Jackson did ok portraying Sauron as an eye. In my brain and forever I always thought the Eye of Sauron was more like a scary telescope than the actual embodiment of the character.