J. A. Bayona Talks Directing The Rings of Power, His Favorite Moment from LOTR & the Sundering Seas

As a fan of J. A. Bayona’s films like A Monster Calls, The Orphanage, The Impossible, and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, I had high hopes when he signed on to directed the first two episodes and executive produce The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power on Prime Video. But after watching the first two episodes, not only did he exceed my lofty expectations, but he also shattered the baseball like Roy Hobbs in The Natural. One of the many reasons I was so impressed with his direction is he had to not only make you believe you were back in Middle-earth, but he also had to introduce a number of new characters and make you care about them almost immediately. The fact is, with the amount of incredible content airing on multiple platforms, if you don’t pull people in quickly, they’re likely to watch something else. But like I said, Bayona knocked it out of the park. Before getting to watch the first two episodes, I spoke to Bayona at a long lead press day for the series. During the interview he talke