Ever since the release of the Lord of the Rings fan films (Hunt for Gollum and Born of Hope), I’ve wondered why a Harry Potter fan film doesn’t exist (the fan musicals don’t count!) and wished that someone would create one!

Well, now someone has. It’s called “The OMEn Chronicles”, and it is not a singular film… It is a web series, hence the name “Chronicles”. It is set 15 years after the Battle of Hogwarts. Judging by the non-British accents of the characters, my guess is that it is set in the United States somewhere, but that is never explicitly mentioned. You won’t be familiar with any of the characters, but you will be very familiar with the spells that they use. The first episode is just over ten minutes long.

Watch it below! Like it, share it, subscribe for more, etc. Stay tuned for some commentary from me.

The Good

• The spell effects and cinematography are beyond excellent. Whoever did the special effects for this film deserves commendation!
• The apparation-smoke effects in particular are almost exactly the same effects as what we see in the fifth through eighth films.
• The pacing, during the dueling scenes especially, is spot-on.

The Bad

• The acting talent is somewhat-to-severely lacking (depending on the actor).
• Even more than that, I don’t like the writing. Introduced in this story is an orb-like object called the “Fire of Olympus”. In other words, this is a bit like “Harry Potter meets Percy Jackson”, which is absolutely not okay with me. Percy Jackson is a great series, but it doesn’t hold a candle to Harry Potter—the books or (especially) the movies.

Even though Harry Potter is heavily rooted in mythology, J.K. Rowling fairly cleverly didn’t reference where any of her mythological creatures or objects came from—Greek, Roman, or otherwise—within her novels. She simply made the creatures or objects or other mythological concepts her own. This makes us believe that her mythology is the real mythology, since the Greeks and Romans are never mentioned by name.

This story, however, mentions “Olympus” by name. I think it would have been much more effective if the orb was simply a orb we were already familiar with—a prophecy—rather than invent an entirely new orb. I think I would have been much more curious to find out what prophecy was inside and why people are after it (a central conflict in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix), rather than “what is this powerful new (non-canon) object?”

Despite being a very powerful object—it has the power to destroy any wand that tries to cast a spell at it (or at the person who holds it?)—there’s also an interesting effect where the holder’s eyes turn black, which for me implies that this orb is not only very evil, but perhaps it has more control over the holder than the holder does over it. Then again, perhaps this particular wizard who holds the orb in this episode simply doesn’t know enough about it, or how to use it, to be able to control it as properly as a more knowledgable wizard might.

The Ugly

• Despite that it only took two days to shoot this 10-minute film, it took eight months to edit and produce all the spells’ special effects. This means that we’ll probably have to wait until sometime next year to see the second episode. Perhaps the second episode could premier at LeakyCon 2014? Now there’s a thought…

What did you think of the first episode of “The OMEn Chronicles”? Share your thoughts in the comments!