In a season where helmers for “Succession,” “House of the Dragon,” “Better Call Saul,” “Andor” and “The Last of Us” will likely dominate the Emmy conversation, there is one director who deserves a bigger spotlight and, frankly, a nomination, J.A. Bayona. The Spanish filmmaker had the unenviable task of bringing “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” to life, a prequel to “The Lord of the Rings” that is so ambitious it might have even given Peter Jackson himself, pause.
Shepherded by executive producers J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay, the entire series begins with a flashback that sets the stage for the drama that will unfold years later. Under a seemingly glorious everyday tree and an almost setting sun, a young Galadriel (Amelie Child-Villier) is whispered some sage advice from her older brother, Finrod (Will Fletcher). Advice, at that time, she perceives as being too simple to matter. After reassuring her, Finrod then walks up a hill to reveal The Two Trees of Valinor, important vestiges in this First Age of Middle Earth.
“That was, of course, that idea of childhood, a world of balance, beautiful landscapes, of beautiful light,” Bayona explains. “We shot that scene very quick because we use the last light of the day to increase the beauty of it. So it was very challenging because there was a child involved, and we have to shoot a very long dialogue in only 20 minutes. So, we set up two cameras and we prepare the scene for a long time, like half a day, and then we shot it very quickly in order to get that light. That’s not the kind of thing that you do for television. Television is getting better and better and better in that sense. But it felt very challenging when we were preparing the show because to me it was cinematic storytelling.”
The opportunity to shape the worlds of “The Rings of Power” was not even remotely on Bayona’s radar when he was initially approached to consider the project way back in 2019.
“I was preparing a different film, and we decided to have a rewrite on the script, and I thought, ‘That’s going to be a long time, so what I’m am I going to do next?’ And at that moment, I was asked to sit down with Patrick and JD, and I was intrigued,” Bayona recalls. “I loved the books, but I was scared of the show being like a remake of the movies. So, the first time I sat down with them, I didn’t know what the show would be. And then everything they said felt great because they had this idea of following ‘The Appendices,’ creating new stories, but with a plan that was already set up by Tolkien himself.”
Bayona continues, “So suddenly, I was involved with ‘Lord of the Rings.’ And it was very exciting but very demanding because we had to suddenly be recreating seven worlds for the first two episodes in a short time. We barely had less than a year to prepare that.”
As with the six Peter Jackson films, “The Rings of Power” decided to initially shoot in New Zealand. The original plan was to work down under for just nine months but when the COVID shutdowns arrived, their stay was extended for a year and a half. Bayona says that production was not trying to escape or overly embrace the Jackson films, but finds its own visual aesthetic.
“We love the Peter Jackson movies, and we think that he did an amazing job of capturing the spirit of the books,” Bayona explains. “But we had a very different story. So, we had to start from scratch. There was nothing that really, we can use from the movies. So we went back to the books and we started to think about references that had nothing to do with the movies because it was something totally new.”
In fact, Bayona’s visual and tonal influences may surprise you. He reveals the crew watched a lot of Russian cinema including movies from Tarkovsky and Eisenstein.
“All those silent movies from Eisenstein were very helpful to recreate the world of the dwarves,” Bayona reveals. “If you take a look at those movies and you see what [costume designer] Kate [Hawley] did, that was a huge influence. And then we look for references that were more about art, like paintings, but not movies because we were creating a world that was never before on the screen.”
The biggest challenge for Bayona and his team was, simply, the scale of the project.
“We had to recreate seven worlds and had lots of set pieces only in the first two episodes, into a television schedule. So that was very challenging. Every day felt like a battle,” Bayona says. “I mean, it felt massive every day. We shot that scene in the storm with Galadriel and Halbrand in two days and a half, which is probably the most complicated shoot that you can imagine when you’re talking about nighttime water and special effects. And that was shot in two days and a half. So it was very, very challenging.”
Bayona’s first two episodes of “The Rings of Power” earned positive reviews not only from critics but longtime “Lord of the Rings” fans, as well. He admits, “We all felt the responsibility of bringing this world again to the screen. see their reactions from people and how much they love it, to me, was a big relief.”
After two studio films and a major streaming series production, Bayona has shot his first Spanish-language film since “The Orphanage” in 2017,” “Society of the Snow.” The upcoming Netflix release tells the true story of the “Miracle of the Andes,” an airplane disaster that saw 19 survivors fight for their lives in the Andes mountains for two months. Prestige disaster films are nothing new to Bayona, who achieved massive acclaim for 2012’s “The Impossible.” An epic that earned Naomi Watts her second Oscar nomination and introduced the world to an actor you might have heard of since, Tom Holland.
“We are now very into the post-production because it’s a very challenging project. It’s been a long shoot,” Bayona says. “We’ve been shooting for more than 140 days, which has been my longest shoot. Yeah. So it’s been an experience, but I’m super happy with it. And we are working. We are very into the post-production right now. I don’t know. We still don’t have a release date.”
“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” is available on Prime Video
