Well if you’re comparing 333 Commerce St building (topped out in 1993) with Barad-dûr, as depicted in Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy (released in 2001-2003), then you maybe should ask why Peter Jackson’s art inspiration (specifically illustrator Alan Lee) based their depiction of Sauron’s tower on the AT&T building (although maybe the architect of the building in Nashville did also draw their inspiration from Alan Lee’s art, timeline become muddled here).
I could find no other depiction of Barad-dûr prior to Jackson’s which had that same forked design, most artists drew a sinister-looking but traditionally spired tower design, with the eye peering through a window in the clouds to some effect.
Tolkien’s book describes the tower like this:
“Then at last his gaze was held: wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement, black tower of adamant, he saw it: Barad-dûr, Fortress of Sauron. All hope left him…
…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”
No mention of the two-prong fork design that I could find.
I did try to read the books but, though I enjoyed The Hobbit, I didn’t make it through the first LotR book; as such, the movie depiction is the only one I really know. Not to say that makes it more accurate or anything, just my only experience with it.
Well if you’re comparing 333 Commerce St building (topped out in 1993) with Barad-dûr, as depicted in Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy (released in 2001-2003), then you maybe should ask why Peter Jackson’s art inspiration (specifically illustrator Alan Lee) based their depiction of Sauron’s tower on the AT&T building (although maybe the architect of the building in Nashville did also draw their inspiration from Alan Lee’s art, timeline become muddled here).
I could find no other depiction of Barad-dûr prior to Jackson’s which had that same forked design, most artists drew a sinister-looking but traditionally spired tower design, with the eye peering through a window in the clouds to some effect.
Tolkien’s book describes the tower like this:
“Then at last his gaze was held: wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement, black tower of adamant, he saw it: Barad-dûr, Fortress of Sauron. All hope left him…
…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”
No mention of the two-prong fork design that I could find.
It’s interesting that Peter Jackson’s depiction was so good that people now just assume that’s how it always was.
I did try to read the books but, though I enjoyed The Hobbit, I didn’t make it through the first LotR book; as such, the movie depiction is the only one I really know. Not to say that makes it more accurate or anything, just my only experience with it.
Probably same applies for most people. Those books are very slow at times and hard to get through.