Or is he a free agent?
Movies or TV shows where the bad guys SHOULD win, but the good guys have God or A God on their side, even if the intervention is miniscule sometimes.
Deep Space Nine
Excalibur
LOTR
Arguably Conan.
Sauron is the servant of Melkor (aka Morgoth), who is currently on an extended vacation beyond the Door of Night and therefore can’t provide him with any assistance.
Sauron is the top servant of Melkor, which is the Middle-Earth name of Satan. Melkor is (or at least was) one of the Valar, the highest order of angels, and who are roughly equivalent to the pagan gods (lower-case g). Sauron (and Gandalf and the other wizards, and the Balrog, and a few other incidental characters) are Maiar, of the same qualitative nature as the Valar, just lesser in power. None of them is remotely comparable to God (upper-case), who in Tolkien’s works is referred to as Eru or Illuvatar. None of the Valar interfered directly in the War of the Ring: Melkor is currently imprisoned, and so couldn’t, and the rest of them don’t want to risk breaking the world, as tends to happen when they act too directly. Illuvatar did, as He’s able to interfere in a subtle enough manner that He doesn’t break things.
Sauron is a demi-god, as is Gandalf.
Middle Earth was created by Eru, with the assistance of greater and lesser angelic beings, the Valar, and the Maiar. Sauron and Gadalf are the physical incarnations of two of the lesser angleic beings.
I have occasionally speculated that Sauron’s long-term game was to bring about the return of Morgoth (Melkor).
Thanks all. Just the word Silmarillion usually makes my mind go blank. Then you throw in Melkor, Eru, Arda, etc…some old Elven names…etc…and I just scamper to the Third Age where I have some kind of grip on what’s going on.
Could be… but I suspect he was ambitious enough that he enjoyed being the Big Bad. Why be the lieutenant when you can be the captain?
Technically correct, but I feel compelled to point out that he was the one who created the angelic beings in the first place. He pretty much created existence, not just Middle Earth.
I had the same problem for the longest time, until one day I happened upon a modern english version of it and found it to be a great read.
That’s one of the subtlest jokes I’ve heard in a long time!
In the Akallabeth, you have Sauron, a favored guest of the king (Ar-Pharazon), encouraging the people of Numenor to turn away from the Valar and worship the (supposedly) elder and superior god, Melkor. Hence, my supposition about Sauron’s long-term goals.
Movies or TV shows where the bad guys SHOULD win, but the good guys have God or A God on their side, even if the intervention is miniscule sometimes.
Isn’t* Raiders of the Lost Ark* pretty much the Alpha and Omega of this?
Depends on how loosely you define “a god”. Like, does the Force count? If so, then Star Wars is a good example. Even the best pilots couldn’t hit the shot to take down the Death Star, but some rube farmboy shuts off his targeting computer and instead trusts in a sad devotion to an ancient religion and that’s what saves the day.
Hmmm… now we need some non-Lucas examples.
I remember that, but it was an easier sell for Sauron to encourage worship of an unseen god of supposedly-unsurpassed power than to worship him, who stood right before them, and although powerful was not omnipotent.
I can’t see God being on anyone’s side in that one. Had Indy and Marian opened their eyes, they would be toast too.
I can’t think of so much as the slightest bit of help in the third one either. That was all down to Indy’s knowledge, right?
NuBSG would be a complex one to look at since to “God” there are no good and bad guys…I’m going to leave it at that. An in-depth discussion would spoil the entire theme of the series.
The Avengers have a god on their side (Thor) and beat a god (Loki) + an alien army.
In the episode where the Enterprise first encountered the Borg, they only escaped because Picard did what Q wanted and said that they needed his help to get away. Otherwise, the Borg would have assimilated them all.
Of course Q put them in that situation in the first place, so he was basically both the “God” and “Satan” figure in that scenario at the same time.
I don’t think he interfered even subtly at the end. Gollum could have or could not have lost his footing during his victory “dance”. The closest Eru came to interfering was sending Gandalf back after Gandalf had already shown compassion to Smeagol. Without that compassion Smeagol would never have come back and Frodo would never have accepted Gollum. That happenstance saved all creation.
With the One tapping the inherent power Morgoth put into Arda at the creation, Sauron was as powerful as what remained of Morgoth’s power after he squandered it and was put beyond the door of night. Bringing Morgoth back would necessitate a showdown between Morgoth and Sauron over who gets to wield the One, and that wasn’t a fight that Sauron could hope to win. Sauron never wanted Morgoth back, as that would be giving up his own power to dominate and be cruel as he wished. And Sauron wasn’t under any delusion that Ar-Pharazon and his fleet would defeat the Valar. He laughed at the Numenoreans because they were so easily entranced and fooled, getting his captors to attack his other enemy and destroy themselves.
Shouldn’t we stop right there and say that this “Morgoth-antium” (or whatever) element, inherent in the every atom of Arda, and in everything you just said above, isn’t canon? I’m told the concept of Morgothium is part of HOME, but not everything in HOME is canon. And Morgothisulfatisidium (or whatever) isn’t. Am I misinformed?
I was going to point out; this (or something very close to it) did happen a few times in reality.
Another thing to bear in mind, at least so far as Sauron is concerned, is that Tolkien was a… student, let’s say, of G.K. Chesterton, a fascinating writer in his own right, who was vehemently Catholic in a way that clearly influenced J.R.R. Tolkien’s works (also C.S. Lewis’s; I’m not sure how J.K. Rowling escaped); one of the ways this manifests is the perception of evil as not only an objectively defined force, but an inherently destructive one, incapable of creation. Sauron may have (and indeed did) have a being of tremendous cosmic power (Morgoth) on his side- or on the same side, at least), but that being was always going to be weaker than (if not subordinate to) a greater good one- Eru, in this case.
But shouldn’t the ring have been trying to protect itself, even if Gollum wasn’t paying attention?