Nah, the eye wasn’t Sauron himself. Nobody ever implied that in the movie that I can recall. It was an extension of his power
It was the sole embodiment of his power shown in the movies after Isildur struck him down. It’s really quite reasonable that people would think that is Sauron.
I mean I always assumed it was just the form his leftover power took in the physical world while his real body was slowly reforming in some dark shadow realm.
Like a little window for Sauron to see the mortal plane through and push his influence through
Far off the shadows of Sauron hung; but torn by some gust of wind out of the world, or else moved by some great disquiet within, the mantling clouds swirled, and for a moment drew aside; and then he saw, rising black, blacker and darker than the vast shades amid which it stood, the cruel pinnacles and iron crown of the topmost tower of Barad-dûr. One moment only it stared out, but as from some great window immeasurably high there stabbed northward a flame of red, the flicker of a piercing Eye; and then the shadows were furled again and the terrible vision was removed. — The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter III “Mount Doom”
I get it.
Tolkien’s prose!
I hear frequent bitching about Tolkein’s complexity or over-attention to detail, then I revisit something like The Stormlight Archive and wonder how millions of people are actually out there drooling over Brandon Sanderson’s work, which (at least in that series) feels like the creative and visual equivalent of a mostly empty dust pan lying about in a vacant dirt lot somewhere on an undeveloped piece of land in the middle of Idaho, with a single tiny glass bead illuminated inside of it. It’s so fucking bland that getting through those books felt like I was waiting at the DMV with several strangers I didn’t like or care about.
Edit: To be fair, Dalinar was likable.
It was a phenomenal visual device for the medium of film.
