I have discussed Sauron before on this blog, in the context of my McGarry and Ravipinto series. The Dark Lord actually earned himself two posts there – one on his character motivations, and one on various other points, such as the fact that he was not a disembodied Eye. Today, in light of some online discussion, I thought I would return to our Mordorian friend, and look at how the character is depicted in the visual media of film, television, video games, and art.

The curious thing about Sauron is that notwithstanding his importance to Tolkien’s story, he gets vanishingly little screen-time in the book. The Lord of the Ring is kept off-screen throughout most of The Lord of the Rings, the most noticeable exceptions being Pippin’s after-the-fact account of his palantír conversation, and a last-moment Sauron POV, once he realises what is happening on Mount Doom. I have seen the suggestion that Tolkien was wary of a Paradise Lost effect, and feared the reader would feel Sympathy for the Devil if Sauron were given too much limelight, though seeing as Morgoth (and Sauron) get amongst the action in The Silmarillion, I am sceptical of the idea. The Lord of the Rings focuses on hobbits, because… it’s a story about hobbits, as (in-universe) written by hobbits. Neither Frodo nor Sam are privy to the goings-on in the Dark Tower.

This Dark Lord-in-the-shadows has, however, a strange side-effect. Namely that there is no concrete description of Sauron’s actual appearance, outside that time he turned himself into a wolf against Huan. We know he could take a Fair Form in earlier ages, and became stuck with a Foul Form after the sinking of Númenor… but that’s really it. Not a lot to go on, even by the standards of an author who never specifies the colour of Legolas’ hair. Luckily, we do know that Sauron was not a Giant Disembodied Eye, since Tolkien specifically has him as a (nine-fingered) humanoid:

“Sauron should be thought of as very terrible. The form that he took was that of a man of more than human stature, but not gigantic.” (Letter – 1963)

Sauron in appearance is… a large, terrifying man, having previously looked fair to Elves and Men. Let us now consider what people have done with this…

I. The Films

(i) The 1978 Ralph Bakshi Sauron

Sauron shows up as a shadowed figure in the prologue of Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. There’s not much to remark on him here, other than that the silhouette preserves his shadowy mystery quite nicely. They’ve given him a horned helmet, which some may consider a bit silly, but I’m fine with it. It helps him stand out.

(ii) The 1980 Rankin-Bass Sauron

Note that Sauron does not feature on-screen in the 1980 Rankin-Bass Return of the King, which was a loose attempt at a sequel to Bakshi’s unfinished effort.

A re-watch of the animated 1980 Rankin-Bass Return of the King has yielded an interesting find. Sauron does appear briefly, in Eye form:

While quite creepy, and indeed looking rather like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, it is actually rather hard to determine that this is an Eye. The film generally contents itself with shots of the (rather tame-looking) Dark Tower.

(iii) The 2001-2003 Peter Jackson Sauron

Sauron in Jackson’s films has two forms: the big bloke in the spiky armour, and the Eye atop the Dark Tower.

The former appears in the Prologue to Fellowship of the Ring, and would reappear in silhouette in later Hobbit movies. The look is likely borrowed from John Howe’s depiction of Morgoth, seeing as Howe was involved in the Jackson movies:

Big bloke in spiky armour, with a face obscured by his helmet. The design gets across the notion that this guy is Evil, while, again, giving him a bit of obscurity. As with Howe’s Morgoth, we never see the face of Jackson’s Sauron.

As for the Eye atop the Dark Tower, well, that is a Jackson invention, whereby the Dark Lord cannot yet re-take physical form during the War of the Ring. It’s been mockingly called a Giant Flaming Vagina, but I think it makes him look like a lighthouse. I can understand what Jackson was going for here – it’s an image of Sauron the ever-watchful – but I think it looks a bit silly myself.

II. Television

The only television version of Sauron is the 1993 Finnish adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, Hobitit. Alas, at some point in the last few months, Hobitit has been scrubbed from YouTube, and I cannot find a still image of how they portray Sauron. You will just have to take my word for it: Sauron here is a Giant Disembodied Eye.

In contrast to Jackson, there are no stylised elements to the design. It is not flaming, and looks nothing like a vagina… Sauron is just an ordinary, literal, Eye, floating in Mordor. It looks gloriously cheap, but then cheapness is the great charm of this series.

(Someone needs to restore Hobitit to the internet!)

[Edit: See here]

III. Video Games

Small confession: save for rogue-likes and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2002), I have little personal experience of Middle-earth games. With that caveat, I am aware that Sauron pops up in a couple of forms in Shadow of Mordor (2014) and Shadow of War (2017):

The latter is, of course, the faceless Howe/Jackson Dark Lord, with spiked helmet and full armour. It’s a standard “look” for Sauron, at least how he’s imagined by the late Third Age. The former, however, is our first look at the third major category of Sauron depiction (after Bloke in Spiky Armour, and Giant Eyeball)… sexy Sauron.

You see, in the Second Age, Sauron did canonically have a Fair Form, which he used to seduce the Elves of Eregion and the Men of Númenor. He eventually lost the ability to appear anything other than horrid, but prior to that, Sauron as a Maia had the ability to appear as attractive as he wanted. The Fair Form shown above is a depiction of his time as Annatar (‘Lord of Gifts’), when he was working with (and tricking) Celebrimbor. It imagines his Fair Form as basically Elvish, plus creepy eyes.

(Infamously, these are also the games that gave us sexy Shelob. Now there’s an original concept…).

IV. Art

In terms of Sauronian artwork, there is a fairly simple divide: the drawing by Tolkien himself, the professional art, and the much more copious fan-art by everyone else:

(i) Tolkien’s Art

This is Tolkien’s unfinished sketch of the Fall of Sauron – the moment after the destruction of the Ring, when the great dark hand reaches out in futility. It is actually quite neat to have such an image survive, because it is one of the few depictions of Sauron that do something different with the character. He looks genuinely scary, without being yet another Bloke in a Helmet. For me, it’s more intimidating than anything in Jackson.

(It’s also funny how Tolkien’s own depictions differ from popular imagination. The image at the top of the page is Tolkien’s drawing of the Dark Tower… it’s the only depiction of Barad-dûr I’ve ever seen that leaves you wondering about Orkish bricklayers).

(ii) The Professional Art

Ted Nasmith has his own version of the post-destruction scene:

Nasmith makes the shadow of Sauron more overtly a cloud than Tolkien’s effort, while also tying it more to the ruin of Mordor. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find other professional depictions of the scene.

Of the other professional pieces, Sauronian art seems to be much more the domain of the less well-known artists*. Soni Alcorn-Hender, aka Bohemian Weasel, has produced a triptych of First and Second Age Sauron, which runs with the sexy Sauron, and is literally three studies of seduction. Morgoth seducing Sauron, Sauron seducing Celebrimbor, and Sauron seducing Ar-Pharazôn:

With that as a theme, of course they run with sexy Sauron…

* Morgoth seems a more popular subject among the Big Names of Tolkien Art, for some reason.

(iii) The Fan Art

Recall the basic trichotomy of Sauron depictions: Sauron in Spiked Helmet, Sauron as Giant Eye, and sexy Sauron. This carries through into the fan-art… the stuff you find on DeviantArt.

Well, no. It doesn’t. This is the internet, so, apart from rare exceptions, it’s sexy Sauron that predominates. This tongue-in-cheek version of Eye Sauron from the old Tolkien Sarcasm Page is actually one of the rare exceptions:

But, yes. Google images of Sauron fan-art (or Mairon fan-art – Mairon was Sauron’s original name), and you will notice a particular theme. Right up to, and including, actual Sauron/Morgoth slashing, aka the hilariously-named Angbang pairing.

It is a frequent source of irritation in some quarters that Tolkien’s Dark Lords – not exactly the most obvious candidates for such things – are treated as subjects (or rather objects) for drooling Yaoi fangirls. Ugly Saurons are few and far between on the internet, while there seems to be a strange preference for making the character a ginger.

However… and, yes, I can’t believe I am saying this, there is a method to this madness. Namely, that building off Milton’s portrayal of Satan in Paradise Lost, there has been a longstanding interest in making Evil sexy. In the first half of the nineteenth century in particular, the Romantic Movement went to town (or rather the countryside) with its brooding, misunderstood, and incredibly good-looking Byronic Heroes. Tolkien himself even gets into the act with his literary portrayal of Feanor.

A famous artistic example are the sexy Satan statues, produced by the Geefs brothers in 1842 and 1848:

So, in a strange way, the fangirls’ conversion of monstrous Dark Lords into attractive art-objects is not without long-standing precedent, even if it rather overwhelms other online depictions of the characters. And Sauron, if not Morgoth, who is all about using brute force and raw power, is at least canonically seductive and Fair at various points in his career. Good-looking Deceivers face an easier time in winning people over than monstrous ones.

***

That concludes our look at visual depictions of Tolkien’s Sauron. A character who operates nearly entirely in the shadows, he is a figure more well-known for his deeds and his story-role than for his decidedly vague appearance. In approaching the task of transferring Sauron to a visual medium, this ambiguity has been resolved via an evolving trichotomy of conventional styles… one that, curiously, has left Tolkien’s own artistic sketch of Sauron very much in the rear-view mirror.