When we think of adaptations, we think first of the page-to-screen kind. While numerous other forms of adaptations exist -- everything from musicals to memes (yes, memes) -- the transformation of a well known text into a live-action or animated performance is the kind of adaptation we're most familiar with.

This familiarity is historical, as some of the earliest films ever made were adapted from literature: Frankenstein's monster first reared his bolted head on cinema screens in 1910. Before then, Mary Shelley's novel had already been adapted for the stage three times. But the production of adaptations has increased exponentially since then, particularly as our modern, digital age means we're consuming culture faster and faster across an ever-widening range of media.

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Currently, it feels like we're drowning in a culture of things that are based on other things. Remakes and reboots also fill these crowded waters, most controversially: Disney's stream of live-action retellings of its own animated work. "Pointless" is a description that often proceeds the news of each one. It seems that Disney, and Hollywood in general, no longer has the patience to wait for new hit novels to feed the hit movie-making machine, and with enough of its own history to pull from now, the industry is eating itself to survive.

Because of this, we feel more suspicious of the creative worth of adaptations and remakes than ever before. We might be living in a Golden Age of television and record-breaking box office smashes, but literary sources retold by film and television still haven't totally shaken their "culturally inferior" status.

The fact of the matter is, adaptations and remakes are here to stay, and as "Old Ben" Kenobi says of the Tusken Raiders, "in greater numbers." Some of them will be "culturally inferior," but to dismiss them all as mere derivatives before giving them a chance to prove themselves turns us into The Last Jedi's Luke, embittered hermits guarding our sacred texts from the threat of a fresh perspective. What could help us feel more comfortable with never-ending reappropriations is an attitude shift. Adaptations are never pointless and originals are not sacred.

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To unpack our complex relationship with adaptations and remakes -- and change it for the better -- we're going to examine three things: faithfulness, originality and medium snobbery.

NEXT PAGE: How Much Does Faithfulness to the Source Really Matter?

WATCHMEN: DOES FAITHFULNESS MATTER?

We appreciate adaptations a lot more when they're our first point of contact with a story. While knowledge of the source material can make our entry into an adaptation's world easier, this knowledge interferes without our ability to judge it as a work of art in its own right. "Adaptations should not be judged on fidelity to their source," says Linda Hutcheon, professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, in A Theory of Adaptation.

So, if not total faithfulness, what should they be judged on? The answer is distillation. There is always a danger that the process of adapting something from one medium to another will dilute the original, that something will get lost in translation. While books are private, contemplative experiences, performative mediums have long had a bad reputation for being bigger, brasher and more passive. Nothing should be off-limits to adapters in theory, but in practice, "some kinds of stories and worlds might be more easily adaptable than others," Hutcheon notes.

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Zack Snyder's divisive Watchmen adaptation in 2009 is the perfect summation of all of this, proving, as The AV Club's Tom Breihan writes, "you can be faithful to a comic and still miss its whole damn point." Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' seminal deconstruction of the superhero genre was adapted by Snyder with a jarring mix of reverence and confident dismissal of its source. Using the comic as a storyboard, Snyder's impressive panel-to-shot recreations established his version as a superficial remake of Moore and Gibbons' work, only to disestablish this premise by jettisoning anything too literary or divergent from the main plot, which Moore's narrative depends on. In a sense, he was faithful to Gibbons' art, but not Moore's words.

Newcomers can look past this problem, but for us to find value in adaptations and remakes of things we're familiar with, it's important for us to able to understand an adapter's aim -- aside from just financial gain in exploiting a pre-existing fanbase. In the case of Snyder's Watchmen, what we got was neither a straightforward remake or a successful distillation of what made the comic resonate. Nor did Snyder offer his own perspective on the story. Not a pointless adaptation, but certainly an aimless one.

NEXT PAGE: What Even is an Original Work Anymore?

GAME OF THRONES: WHAT IS AN "ORIGINAL?"

Cultural critic Walter Benjamin once wrote that "storytelling is the art of repeating stories." In today's transmedia buffet of franchises, interconnected universes and cross-media tie-ins, this quote feels more relevant than ever. Professor Hutcheon argues that “multiple versions” of something can exist “laterally, not vertically.” We can see this in practice in things like supplementary comic books to comic book movies, like a dog chasing its own tail.

She also emphasizes how our definition of "original" can be easily undefined, and not just because every artist borrows from what came before. The dictionary definition of "original" is "the source or cause from which something arises; a work composed firsthand," and most importantly: "not secondary [...]" The problem is, by this definition, the Game of Thrones TV series has become the original work by overtaking the publication of the literary source, which will become the "secondary" one.

As Martin and the show's creators are walking different paths to reach the same destination, the authority of singular authorship becomes harder to define. The adapters have become the originators and co-authors, a head-screwy fact that avid fans of Martin's book series have been trying to make peace with.

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It's not just Game of Thrones, either. If a video game tie-in for a film is made concurrently with the film it's based on, which is the original? Anime versions of serialized manga overtake their source so frequently that "filler arcs" -- literally filling for more time until more plot is published -- have become an accepted convention.

By dismantling the word "original," we can erase the chronological privilege it has, even if what we think of being the original is just the original to us. Take Disney's recycling of fairy tales and folklore, for instance. What an adaptation does or doesn't do better than its source is subjective, but we shouldn't always assume that something will be superior just because it happened to come first, and there’s plenty of room for a story to be told in multiple, separate ways to multiple, separate audiences.

NEXT PAGE: Have We Actually Been the Problem All Along?

DISNEY'S REMAKES: ARE WE ALL MEDIUM SNOBS?

Though we’ve grown accustomed to studios resurrecting old classics for new audiences, we're particularly cynical when Disney do it to their own back catalogue. We’ve entrusted the company for decades with the keys to our childhood memories, preserved forever in (mostly) 2D cartoon cels. That’s why the voracious speed at which the House of Mouse is now regurgitating them in cold, shiny 3D feels like a violation of that trust.

These remakes look rich and take riches to produce. In the way that the studio once dazzled audiences with 1937's groundbreaking Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, these lavish updates are also clearly being sold as upgrades. And, despite our discomfort, we’re buying into this hook. 2017’s Beauty and the Beast made over $1 billion worldwide.

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As much affection as we have for cartoons, at a certain age, we’re supposed to put away childish things. Medium snobbery, distinct from personal medium preference, is something we’re all probably guilty of. While live-action is considered universal in appeal, the mediums of film and television still have to contend with literature: the book was better. You might also be familiar with these preconceived stereotypes about other mediums: cartoons and comics are for kids, video games aren't art, all anime is pornographic and ultra-violent, too much CGI makes something bad.

Adaptations retold across different mediums allow a story to bypass these prejudices and reach new audiences. Someone who doesn’t play video games, for instance, might instead engage with the great stories they have to offer through quality adaptations like Netflix’s Castlevania series. While nostalgia undeniably factors in, if we had less medium snobbery, Disney probably wouldn’t see the financial merit in cannibalizing itself so eagerly.

While preserving classics in their original form is important, adaptations and remakes ensure that stories that shouldn’t be forgotten aren’t, even as our changing tastes and technologies threaten them with irrelevance. In the spirit of that, it bears repeating: “Storytelling is always the art of repeating stories, and this art is lost when the stories are no longer retained.”