Beauty isn't always the only thing in the eye of the beholder.

Sometimes, what's in the beholder's eye can be a bit sinister. And sardonic.

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That's been the case surrounding the online reaction to a drone-taken photo of the Chicago skyline recently posted to Reddit. The photographer, whose screen name is Craig_VG, captured the Trump Tower reflecting the light of a sunset in such a way that it put some people in a J.R.R. Tolkien frame of mind.


"Trump Tower is the Great Eye in [Lord of the Rings]. It's Mordor!" wrote user CHI-CHI-, referencing Tolkien's fantasy saga about Middle-earth. The Great Eye is the manifestation of Sauron (also referred to as the Eye of Sauron), the big baddie in the British writer's Lord of the Rings books, and the kingdom he rules is Mordor.

You might remember the Eye of Sauron from Peter Jackson's award-winning film adaptations of Tolkein's books:


Nowadays, going online to draw comparisons between Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump and a malevolent personification of pure evil bent on oppressing the masses has become an almost-unconscious reflex reaction, much like saying, "Bless you," after someone sneezes. You don't think about saying it, it just comes out of your mouth automatically.

That's why, much like the sunset in the original photo, it was inevitable that the photographer would post a doctored, Sauron-centric version:


Other individuals followed different muses when it came to expressing themselves in the post's comments thread after being inspired by the picture. User professorpan channeled Tolkien and waxed poetic, reworking a famous passage from The Fellowship of the Ring:

"Thither, westwards, Uncle Sam's eye was drawn. It passed the ruined bridges of Brooklyn, the grinning gates of Appalachia and the haunted Mountains, and it looked upon Dixie, the valley of terror in the Land of Red States. Darkness lay there under the Sun. Fire glowed amid the smoke. Mount Donald was burning, and a great reek rising. Then at last his gaze was held: wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement, silver tower of adamant, he saw it: Barad-dôn, Fortress of Trump. All hope left him."

Another user, dexterpine, channeled Trump himself to give a glimpse of how the real estate mogul-cum-unscripted TV host-cum-professional attention-seeker-cum-presidential candidate would view the photo:

"Let me tell you, folks, this tower is so magnificent. People mistake it for the sun. It's really tremendous. And look, I had this guy design it for me and Dubai was so impressed with it they had him design a tower for them too. The Muslims love me. And I got a great deal on the building too. I love making deals. I'm really great at it. And when they were showing me the final sketches, I said we need to make the tower 10 feet taller. And we did. Look, I get things done."

Two other commenters, however, were a bit more apocalyptic in their assessments:

"I guess I have been watching to many disaster movies," wrote user BaronElectricPhase. "First glance had me thinking it was the very beginning of a nuke blast."


"That's God trying to burn Trump Tower down," added user bigoldgeek.

PHOTOS: Chicago's Trump Tower during sunset in April/May 2016. (Craig_VG | Reddit)

GIF: The Eye of Sauron from The Lord of the Rings films (New Line Cinema | giphy)

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