Indis wrote:

His phsysical appeareance was reduced to a single Eye, which makes it very hard to rage around Middle Earth, but as we read in the ROTK, it was his will that moved creatures around ME as though it was a big chess-board.

Actually Indis, this is a misconception made fairly common by a mistake in the movies. They depict Sauron as the Lidless Eye and imply (or, perhaps, state - I don't recall) that this was his physical form after his defeat by Isildur at Dagorlad.

This is simply incorrect.

Sauron was able to take many forms, as his shape-shifting in his battle with Huan the Hound indicates. In the Second Age he was able to take a "fair seeming form", such as the one he used to deceive the Numenoreans, but he lost this ability with the fall of Numenor.

But in the Third Age he definitely had a human-like form. As JRRT details in one of his letters:

"In his actual presence none but very few of equal stature could have hoped to withhold it from him. Of 'mortals' no one, not even Aragorn. In the contest with the Palantír Aragorn was the rightful owner. Also the contest took place at a distance, and in a tale which allows the incarnation of great spirits in a physical and destructible form their power must be far greater when actually physically present. 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. In his earlier incarnation he was able to veil his power (as Gandalf did) and could appear as a commanding figure of great strength of body and supremely royal demeanour and countenance>"
(Letter No. 246)

Gollum confirms this when he remembers that " ... the Black Hand has only nine fingers." during the journey to Mordor. Pippin also seems to have seen Sauron in his true form when he looked into the palantir:

"Then he came. He did not speak so that I could hear words. He just looked, and I understood.

The Lidless Eye is a largely symbolic manifestation. It is what those who put on the Ring see and, it's how Frodo sees him in Galadriel's Mirror. But the quotes above make it clear that the screenplay writers got this wrong - Sauron was not a Lidless Eye, he did have a human form.

Cheers,
Thiu

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