Last year, Prime Video’s series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power took J.R.R. Tolkien fans somewhere they’d never seen before: the Second Age. The show, which became the streaming service’s most-watched series ever, takes place thousands of years before the fellowship formed, and Rings of Power director, J.A. Bayona (The Impossible), was tasked with finding and setting that tone at the helm of Episodes 1 and 2. Before Collider’s Q&A with cast and creatives following our LA screening, Editor-in-Chief Steve Weintraub spoke with Bayona about the challenges of such an ambitious project.
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With such a large and passionate fanbase, Rings of Power was a huge responsibility from the start. Bayona, a Tolkien fan himself, tells us that in order to bring this never-before-seen Second Age to life, he prepared by rereading the books, but also explains why he didn’t take influence from the beloved Peter Jackson trilogy. They talk about swiping sequences, the challenges faced to create Lord of the Rings in television format, and shooting during the pandemic. Weintraub also asks about whether Bayona will return to direct for Season 3 when his feature Society of the Snow is wrapped. The film is about a famous plane crash that happened in the Andes in 1972.

The Rings of Power stars Morfydd Clark as Galadriel, Ismael Cruz Córdova as Arondir, Charlie Vickers as Halbrand, Lenny Henry as Sadoc Burrows, Robert Aramayo as Elrond, Maxim Baldry as Isildur, Owain Arthur as Prince Durin IV, and Sophia Nomvete as Princess Disa. You can check out the full interview in the video below or read along with the transcript.

COLLIDER: I’ve said this to you before, I’ll say it again, I really loved your work on this series, and I just want to say thanks, you did a great job.

J.A. BAYONA: Thank you so much.

I am curious, I know you’re a Lord of the Rings fan, and I know you obviously did tons of pre-production, you worked a long time before you stepped on set, but what was it actually like for you stepping on set for the first time and realizing, “I’m gonna be directing Lord of the Rings?”

BAYONA: You know, I have a perfect memory of that feeling, and it was after shooting for six or seven weeks. So I didn’t have time, I couldn’t find the time to go through that feeling until that moment because it was so demanding every single day of the shoot that I didn’t have time to think about it. I remember that we were shooting in front of the Elves’ tree, the big Elves’ tree, and I saw that set and then some of the extras started to arrive dressed in the Elves’ suits, and suddenly I realized, it’s like, “Oh my God, I’m shooting the fucking Lord of the Rings thing!” [Laughs] It was an amazing feeling in that moment, but it took me weeks to have the time to fight for that for that moment.

Talk a little bit about, if you don’t mind, deciding on the visual language that you wanted to use to tell the story. How much were you reading the books and thinking about the way Tolkien framed it versus Peter Jackson in the movies, and the way you wanted to do it?

BAYONA: Well, I read the books again, they were an incredible help because Tolkien is so detailed in everything that he describes that it was a great help. But also, we started to look for art, not the movies because we are talking about a different age, so the movies were not really helpful, it was more about focusing on art. I remember that talking to Kate [Hawley], the costume designer, or Ramsey [Avery], the production designer. I reference paintings and movies, but not not Peter Jackson’s movies. I remember talking about the Dwarves, I referenced a lot of [Andrei] Tarkovsky movies, and Russian movies, to Kate, the costume designer, and she loved all those references, and we use them for the show. But most of them were references of old movies or paintings, not recent movies, because we were creating a world from scratch that had nothing to do with anything we have seen before.

Image via Prime Video

You obviously helmed the first two episodes, and you were not directing Episodes 3 through 8, but was there a sequence in Episodes 3 through 8 that you wish you could have directed?

BAYONA: Yeah, lots of them. I really enjoy the show, the whole show. Actually, I stole one of the sequences of, I think it was, Episode 3 because that scene, the fight in the kitchen with the Orc, that was taken from Episode 3. I love that scene so much that we convinced the showrunners to put that sequence on Episode 2.

[Laughs] You’re in pre-production, you haven’t stepped foot on set, it’s coming; what are you most nervous about as a director to pull off filming on set with everything you had to deal with?

BAYONA: In general, it’s the massive scale of everything, you know? We need to fit that massive scale into a television schedule. I’m glad that Amazon had the ambition to take television to a place that’s totally different from anything we had seen before, it was totally different from anything we had seen before. But it was very demanding, it was very challenging to create all those set pieces. Set pieces require time of preparation, shooting and postproduction, and to fit so many, only in the first two episodes, was something that definitely was the most demanding thing in terms of what we had to do.

Well, the other thing is, to me, it’s an eight-hour movie. This isn’t a TV show to me, this is just just an eight-hour film.

BAYONA: Actually, I did a big, big two-hour movie. It was like shooting a blockbuster, like a big, big Hollywood movie because we had so many set pieces and so complicated– but also, to create those worlds from scratch, because there was nothing, almost anything, before I got there, so we had to create that from scratch. So it was not only two episodes, it was to create all those worlds to build up all those worlds that will need to last for the rest of the season.

So you filmed this in New Zealand. I’m curious, how long did you actually spend in New Zealand? Were you working on preproduction before you got there? What was the time commitment that you put in to do the series?

BAYONA: Actually, we started to develop the show in Barcelona, in my hometown. I sat down there with the production designer and we started to create lots of designs there, then we jump in, briefly, to LA, and then we finally went to New Zealand. It was supposed to be nine months, and because of COVID, we spent there a year and a half, but it was great because at the end, that extra time gave us more time to finish our work. And actually, spending COVID in New Zealand was hard because we were very far away from our families, but at the same time, the way they manage COVID in New Zealand was extraordinary, so we were able to keep shooting while the rest of the world was in lockdown.

Image via Prime Video

Also, New Zealand has the best dairy products I’ve ever had, so the ice cream there is incredible.

BAYONA: [Laughs] Yeah, I know, I know, exactly, it’s the place where you should go to find the best ice cream in the world.

It’s crazy down there. So you’re not directing any of Season 2, but assuming the show comes back for Season 3, which I’m guessing it will, have you talked to them about coming back?

BAYONA: Yeah, I would love to. I mean, the thing is that I’ve been so, so busy, shooting a film that I’m still working on, so it has been impossible to be working with them, but I’ve been in contact with them, with all the actors, and I would love to maybe someday in the future.

Actually, you bring up Society of the Snow, which is your movie. As a fan of yours, when will I be seeing this, and for people that aren’t familiar with it, what is it about?

BAYONA: It’s a famous plane crash that happened in the Andes in 1972. There was this movie from Frank Marshall, Alive, shot in 1993, but it’s a movie based upon a different book. It’s been a very incredible experience because we’ve been working with a cast of newcomers, all Uruguayan and Argentinians, shooting in Spanish, and with all the survivors in contact all the time. They were on set, or all the time on the telephone, so we were able to recreate exactly what happened in front of the camera, in contact with them in the same places that the story happened sometimes… It was extraordinary, and I had the chance of doing that, but in a much more aggressive environment because shooting in the Andes is one of the most demanding things that you can imagine.

Do you know when it might be coming out, when will people get to see a trailer?

BAYONA: Not really, not really. We are still working on the cut, we started to work on the music, but no plans yet for the release. I’m hoping later this year, maybe a film festival, maybe, I don’t know.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 1 is available to stream on Prime Video. You can check out our interview with Morfydd Clark below.