Noah Ringer in M. Night Shyamalan’s "The Last Airbender." Photograph - Allstar NICKELODEON MOVIES Sportsphoto Ltd.

As the film industry grows, I have become tired and continuously disappointed with each adaptation of a book or comic. Adaptations often take away from the thrill and enjoyment of the original. Even worse, the films dull the richness and complexity of the themes and characters that are key aspects of the original works. These works of art lose their spark in the process of translation between literature and film.

A single movie cannot capture the complexity of a book or a comic’s storylines within its limited time frame. Therein, by nature, important elements will get left out. Since it is difficult to replicate written works on the screen to convey the nuances of the literary and graphic originals, filmmakers must take “creative license” and shortcuts that inevitably shortchange the audience’s understanding of the original on which the film is often loosely based.

In 2004, the film adaptation of the best-selling children’s novel “Ella Enchanted” by Gail Carson Levine completely misses the point of the book, where the female lead wasn’t saved by a man–in the film, she inevitably was.

Upon executing these adaptations, films often cater more to box-office appeal rather than doing the book or comic justice. `There have been various more comic-to-film adaptations of “X- Men”, “Wonder Woman” that suffer the same issue as previously discussed. Wonder Woman’s original character was the peak of female empowerment and one of the biggest comic representations of female struggles. However, on the big screen, her problems and stories have been minimized to emphasize action sequences that highlight her revealing costumes and male love interest, leaving her story incomplete, doing injustice to her character’s original background and struggles.

“X-Men” comics paid special attention to incorporating civil rights in their story as the characters had experienced discrimination in ways people of varying races, ethnicities, and religious backgrounds experience in the real world. However, as their story was brought to the screen, the “X-Men” movies lost the real, raw version of their struggles as the mutants experienced discrimination and had to navigate the struggles of constantly being feared and misunderstood.

“Avatar: The Last Airbender” is a comic that incorporates major themes of Asian and Indigenous cultures, which gave deep background to the characters and the setting of the overall story. However, once it was projected to the big screen, the filmmakers essentially “whitewashed” the characters and the story, stripping away the authenticity of their cultural background. This was to make the film more marketable at the cost of the characters’ and stories’ cultural identity, which made “Avatar: The Last Airbender” what it originally was.

Time and time again, the film industry has capitalized on popular books and comics, which is why I encourage readers to seek out the originals and see what they are missing.