In the book, the "pretties" were kinda described like uncanny valley-esque, like their eyes were made bigger and "flaws" ironed out, but in a way that made them seem like they looked like Bratz dolls in real life. All of them. But the movie just puts them all under a basic snapchat filter and calls it a day
I remember a scene in the books where tally finds a magazine from the old world and thinks that the models are all super ugly. Their standard of beauty is radically different than ours
The book also describes the "operation" requires breaking almost every bone in the body and rebuilding that person entirely. Some of the post-op teens sound like they have actual Barbie doll proportions and the last book emphasizes the love interest's anime eyes (which in real life would be horrifying, but in the book it's supposed to make him super dreamy). Given how far CGI and special effects have come this shouldn't be impossible, but then the main character and co would be horrifying to look at, and we can't have that.
To emphasize the difference, I think they should've gone for a CGI meets reality thing. Space Jam style. Uglies are normal people, Pretties are uncanny valley looking computer models
The funny thing is the book has emphasis that “uglies” are anything NATURAL. Pretties are unnaturally and superficially pretty. There’s a conversation between two characters talking about getting gems implanted into their eyes that tell time. It’s incredibly absurd. Which is the point. Pretties are ABSURD. It’s a great book honestly. The fact that the movie is just awful is sad.
@@lilysong1321 I recently reread the series, and even as an adult in my 30s, I thoroughly enjoyed it. And the love triangle is a lot better handled in how the feelings are developed. Like, we spend time with both guys and it makes sense why Tally has feelings for both.
Yeah, I disagree with Alex on Joey King's casting. There's a substantial difference between that picture he used to show how hot she is and her much more natural look in the movie. I do agree with him however that it simply works better as a book. I had a roommate who was super into these books when they first came out, and I remember immediately thinking that it was probably going to become a movie at some point and that it probably wouldn't work. Like he said, when you're reading, you can decide what "ugly" (or even average/natural) means to you. And even if they'd cast someone less attractive than Joey, the kind of person this book's message is aimed at would probably still think she's prettier than she's supposed to be because we often perceive actors as being more attractive, even if they look roughly on par with tons of people we meet every day. Plus, like another commenter pointed out, there's a part in the books where they find a magazine from our era and don't think the models are pretty. To really portray the Pretties correctly, they'd need to all look like Valeria Lukyanova, that Ukrainian woman the press used to refer to as "the Human Barbie doll." And I've seen some pictures where even she looks more normal than what the book wants you to imagine when you think of the Pretties, which makes me think some of those older pictures of Valeria were a lot more touched up than the magazines were claiming. So it would take a lot of prosthetics to really make the Pretties work.
@@maryannclementiii-uw5pk I've heard some people say it work better as an animated film, and I agree. The world building and augmented characters would work much better in an animated format
I have a question lol where do parents live??? Cuz they're pretty but the children are ugly so do the kids live in pretty society until a certain age or?
Can you imagine your own best friend giving you a nickname based on your most unflattering quality? "Oh, hey there, Receding Hairline!" "Nice to see you again, Ball-Sized Goiter!"
Yes! It’s been about a decade since I read the series but from what I can remember, it is a story about an oppressive government giving the public the illusion of freedom and luxury in exchange for their free will in a broken, destroyed, post apocalyptic world.
@@moni_dtthat's exactly what it is, I think I've read it about six years ago or something, so not many details, but that's for sure what happens in the books. I haven't watched the movie (I even thought it was a tv show), but it was honestly stupid to adapt a book where characters look completely different from regular people and do not use more than a filter
@@XCaptianXChaosXthe whole point of the book is that the “uglies” aren’t even ugly they look normal/good the pretties look like uncanny valley/AI like not real kind of outerworldly but in an uncanny way (the movie didn’t do a good job of showing this lol) - their society:gov manipulates them into thinking they’re ugly when they’re literally not so they can do the surgery and they can mind control them basically - so if the casting directors explained the book correctly they shouldn’t be offended because the uglies in the book weren’t ugly 😂
The Korean film "Human Form" did the aspect of unnatural beauty better than "Uglies". Similar to Uglies, the world in Human Form considers natural faces ugly. To them, surgically made porcelain doll faces are beautiful. And they did a good job showing how unnaturally perfect, sharp, and wax-like the surgically made faces were compared to a normal face
I think they really didn't handle the whole turning pretty thing well. I've seen a lot of people be like "they are not ugly" and "they pretty ones are actually uglier", but the whole point is that they are not ugly, they are just told they are. In their eyes we all would be ugly. There is a scene in the book that has Shay and Tally reading an old fashion magazine from "our time" and they see the models and they are like "is that what people thought was pretty? They are so ugly!". The whole pretty thing was like their face would be perfectly symmetrical after the surgery, hence we are all naturally ugly bc no one has a perfectly symmetrical body. I always thought that the pretties would look scary rather than "pretty"... There is a very beautiful message in this story, I wish the movie was better so we could have seen the whole series.
With only the context of the movie and Alex's review, I thought the premise was so corny and ridiculous, but with the way you describe it makes it sound a lot more interesting. I wished they adapted it better.
This is a message that only children should benefit from. Its so insanely basic that one should have concerns if they havent learned these things by 17 or so. it really is a phenomenon how girls get sucked into all this and end up thinking absolutely insane things about themselves and society.
I remember that when I turned 17 I was watching the last season of 13 reason why cause I wanted to know how Justin's story ended ans I was like '🥲 he's my age..poor baby' like, that story was showing a reality I was never gonna live but it still hits hard, you know? And now I'm 21 and I'm still watching shows where the characters are 16/17 and I'm like 'yeah...don't be dramatic' and I can only relate to the Sturniolo triplets cause they're my age and we think alike 🙃
Makes sense. Would've been easier to put a prosthetic on him as an ugly than to find a way to make his nose look smaller as a pretty. And, uh...actors wearing prosthetic noses isn't perceived too well this days.
In the book before you were 16 you were normal, not ugly. Society made them feel ugly so they would undergo the procedure. The surgery elevates your appearance to uncanny levels of beauty, but they also messed with your brain. The surgery was essentially just a cover up to mess with your brain. The books were so good, it's such a shame.
@@malloryoates8580 Sincerely, making a serie would have been better than a movie. There are so many things happening and it would help the people who didn't read the books to understand what is really going on.
there is no way people who think peris actually got prettier after this „metamorphosis” exist right? netflix just took all his beauty and uniqueness turning him into oli london
Apparently people who read the book said this wasn’t even enough, the pretties should have looked even more uncanny and similar to each other. That’s part of the point, that you’re more beautiful as yourself.
If I had a nickel for every time a pre-2008 novel featuring teenagers and a dystopian future was adapted into a boring and gray rip-off of the first Hunger Games movie.
The cool thing about reading the book is when you stop and you're like, wait, these kids aren't ugly, they're just normal, and the pretties are very unnatural. Putting it in a visual format loses that initial shock, plus the pretties just have a snap chat filter on them.
Exactly! Every reviewer seems to forget that and is like “why arent the uglies UGLY?” Ummm because theyre not…. Theyre people like u and me without cosmetic surgery
i agree to an extent but not all he way because it's true looking like an everyday normal person is considered ugly by society. plain and average is ugly . i felt like they explained well in the book by telling us about the pre rusties and how the parental system works
In the book there was never this whole “David is going to blow up the city” conflict. Tally simply went to betray the smoke because they told her if she didn’t then she and her friend would be ugly forever. Her attraction to David despite him being “ugly” is what makes her think about “inner beauty” or whatever and then when she meets his parents her whole perspective changes.
Which the only threat to Tally betraying a friend being "if you don't you'll never be pretty" honestly showed way better the societal brainwashing and Tally's personality
@@19Rena96 ya in every class they ever took they learned that the rusties would fight over looks and that the reason the only people who would get into fights are the uglies because of their human nature being so heavily focused on looks. The books even go into real things like how wars were even fought over race (Tally still had a hard time believing that one) the surgery was framed as the equalizer. The pretty committee (the team David’s parents were on) designed the specs that the pretty’s would be based on each generation. They had healthy clear skin so that people would think wow they are healthy I should want to have a family with them they gave you wide child like eyes so that you could be seen as someone to protect etc… it was their explanation for why pretty’s never got into fights because when you’re pretty you don’t have ugly problems. The surgery adds a lesion to your brain that makes you happy, agreeable and easy to control
Yeah like..I’m sorry? What happened? 💀 and Shay was the most flip flop character in the book David even comments on it how she didn’t want to go then was all of a sudden like “the smokes the best place ever!” And she just continued to do that as the books went on.. She wasn’t a bad character by any means just kind of funny about the flip floppyness
@@DaniMalfoy22 I haven’t watched that series yet bc I wanna finish all the books before I watch the movies but I’m really excited to watch it (I’m on book 6 rn)
also they had a whole auditorium thingy for the kids turning 16 but like they all must have different birth dates so do they do that "ceremony" like almost every single day????
They actually explain that in the book, but I don't remember 100% what the explanation was. I'm pretty sure it was similar to being enrolled in Kindergarten (at least, Kindergarten in the US) where you have to be the right age by a certain date, or you need to wait till the next year. e.g. The school term starts on September 1st, so you need to be 5 years old before October 31st to enroll in that term. That type of thing.
As weird as it sounds, i think it would've been a good idea to have the Pretties all in Uncanny Valley Makeup and the Uglies stay as they are. I think this would show the dramatic difference between what their dystopian society considers to be pretty and why it had such a big influence on Tally and other Uglies
They just translated it for modern audiences that didn't read the books. We already have these feelings thanks to the "beautifying" filters, and that's why they went with that instead of the freakish monsters the books describe as "the pretties". That scene when Joey looks at her prettified version and then it turns off and catches a glimpse of her normal reflection is the kind of horror and dread that a lot of people have felt when the filter accidentally turned off, and they suddenly started considering plastic surgery because thry felt so ugly in comparison.
I agree. I think that they all should have been given fake botox and super exaggerated James-Charles-esque makeup. MAKE THEM LOOK LIKE 2016 ERA RUclips MAKEUP INFLUENCERS.
@@keerahh2378 that’s what they were supposed to be like they’re eyes were supposed to be big and reflective like a cats with over the top symmetry and almost an exact replica of everyone else but in different shades although not too far from the norm in the pretty’s Zane dyes his hair black with pen ink because they won’t let him have hair that’s actually black
It's a funny line but it also made me wonder if he actually missed the point or if he was missing it intentionally for comedy sake. I mean, he even included the bit where they talk about the lesions. And he knows this is a dystopian world where anyone who doesn't elect to get the procedure is forced. A lot of the commenters seem to think the movie is just saying that pretty people are dumb. But it's more about a society that pushes conformity to standards as a distraction from the things people should be more worried about. I'm not saying you didn't get that. But good grief, it's incredible how many of these comments missed it entirely. The movie glosses over a lot of beats that were in the book that make it more obvious, but even this 15-minute video gives enough information to piece it together.
The pretties are supposed to be freakish good-looking with symmetrical faces and every thing to the T perfect. The pretties in the movie just look like attractive people with eye contacts in. They should have used CGI.
From everything I've seen the specials and adults don't look that different which is just wrong. The Specials are meant to be predatory and the main one we see is described as with wolf-like features iirc.
This is why some books just shouldn't be adapted, because you can't really have "perfect people" and portray that in a believable way. Beauty is subjective, so this story in book form actually works really well because anyone reading it will have their own interpretation on what these beautiful people look like BUT in movie form... it doesn't work as well.
Y'all remember Warm Bodies?? The zombie romance book-turned-movie based on Romeo and Juliet? (the zombie's name is R, the girl he falls in love with is named Julie, and his best friend is M like Mercutio lol). I really enjoyed it (they changed the ending of the movie from the book a bit to try to redeem Julie's father though) but no one else ever talks about it.
I love that movie. I have it in my library of films I keep just to remember they exist and are good. It was heart felt, a little cheesy and just fun to watch. The intro always made me laugh.
I didn't realize that was also a book. Or, for that matter, that it was a Romeo and Juliet story, lol (haven't watched the movie, only heard bits and pieces about it)
i read the first book as a teenager and it was good but got boring halfway in. all i remember is her eating something called spagboil on what i think was a side of a mountain for literal days. it was so many pages of eating spagboil to survive so i ditched it
Fun story: there was one time I was crying and my cousin was comforting me. In the middle of it, my cousin says to me: "Don't take this the wrong way, but you kinda smell like a book I read once." I ask her what book and she pulls up on her phone the cover, and I just see big ole letters "UGLIES." I immediately burst out laughing, tears gone. The best part was that she didn't even think about the title, she thought I would be offended that I smelled like a book.
I think a better way to have done this would be to have all the 'uglies' be the same as they are, but to make the 'pretties' CGI/animated, like Ready Player One or something. Hard to get more of an unattainable beauty standard than literal cartoons. Plus, they could be making a point about the expectations set by characters like Elsa from Frozen.
Based on various comments I'm seeing under this video explaining how the book described the "pretties", I'm imagining them looking like Alita Battle Angel if you scaled up the size of Alita's eyes twice as much as they were already scaled up from the actress's real eyes. Just take the Alita concept and go much more outlandish with it. As freakishly cartoonish as they can possibly CGI the actors' faces to look.
@@MuljoStpho yeah, i agree i don't think it's work well to do a really literal adaptation of the book, visually, but that kind of thing would be a good idea
@@scytheseven9173 It wouldn't. It would just look like garbage. There are plenty of ways they could make the pretties book-accurate just by using prosthetic makeup. And this commenter's living in a fantasy world if they think anyone actually wants to look like Elsa lmao. They just want Elsa's dress, hair, and possibly superpowers.
I remember reading this book in a book club. I mostly remember that when Tally was heading to the village, she kept eating spaghetti bolognaise all the time and got sick of it. I don't know why I remembered that detail. It's just one of those weird things that sticks to your mind.
I get what ppl are saying about the actors already being conventionally attractive, but that's the point. They aren't ugly, but society is telling them they are and need to change. Peris being called "Nose" when he doesn't even have a large one proves that they search for flaws that aren't there to back up society's manipulation of people. Even if the surgery barely changes anything, you're still manipulated into thinking you are now good enough when you already were.
@mansouralshahri4938 I mean that wasn't the point of the book either. The whole thing was about freakish beauty standards that suddenly turn regular, average-looking people into freakish monsters that no one would ever think to love. If the actors were non conventionally attractive that would actually make the message even more bland, not saying that would be a bad idea but still
From what I've heard, in the books it's not just about gaslighting people into thinking they're ugly but it's also about making them overgo actual harsh and violent physical transformations for them to fit society's definition of pretty. Like imagine if when you turn 16 the government was forcing you to undergo a surgery because you're too chubby for their standards. There's an amazing message to it which I really hoped the movie could've done it better 😅
@@mansouralshahri4938you’re missing the entire point and yet still agreed with the og comments point at the same time lol. These people are considered “ugly” because they are not fitting in with societies standards of attractive.
The book is a soft commentary on beauty's subjectivity and the pursuit of perfection being unhealthy, but it's lack of angst and cartoonish action keeps it from thinking too highly of itself. That's why it's one of my favorite dystopians. Scott Westerfield is one of the better YA writers. This series deserves better.
I hate the rhetoric that being pretty and being smart are mutually exclusive. I was your stereotypical gifted kid growing up, and I spent years being completely ashamed of enjoying popular media and liking makeup because I was afraid I would be seen as dumb for it. I don't get why you can't enjoy doing a full face of makeup and still be a straight-A student with social awareness.
Part of the message of the book is that the uglies arent ugly. In the book Shay actually likes how she looks and doesnt want to change, and she is also a gifted badass like Tally.
Yeah they just look like normal people, the point is the "pretties" are freakishly perfect. Shay, idek if she's in the movie, talks about how it's just societal conditioning.
It really bugs me that the movie goes to such lengths to drive home their point. Like call them children for gods sake, we aren't calling our kids "dummies" even though they are extremely dumb compared to adults. And as if you need any artificial pressure to get people to take the surgery. Offer this kind of surgery to any 16 year old today. Odds are most of them are going to do it. Make it the norm and part of growing up (like drinking alcohol or taking a drivers licence) almost all are going to do it.
For anyone who sees the shred of a good idea - please read the books. The world building, characters, and ideas are much better flushed out and relevant.
I was obsessed with the books and the spin off series Imposters. The movie really did not represent the books whatsoever and was way too rushed. There wasn’t any character development or world building and there was barely even a plot. My favorite parts of the books was how much of it was just the characters in the wild trying to not die and there wasn’t any of that in the movie.
Tally was absolutely fitting into the trope of a “ Mary Sue”. She was very easily good at everything and somehow was able to jump and climb bridges and shit to get away from soldiers with insane technology
@@livvlife a Mary sue is someone who doesn't have any flaws or weaknesses and everyone loves them and they can do no wrong. and if someone doesn't like them then it's because they're a villain. Being good at stuff alone doesn't make a Mary sue.
alex the "uglies" not being actually ugly is kinda of the point? it's that their beauty standards have gotten so out of control that everything about you is ugly until you get plastic surgery to "fix" yourself
“everyone is hot girl this, hot girl that. Well why don’t you take a HOT SECOND and go to your local library-“ LMAOOOO ALEX UR CONTENT JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER
They whole "pretty" point is that in their world EVERYONE who hasn't had the operation is considered "ugly" - at one point, they even find a magazine from before the operation and they talk about how ugly all the people are - so yes, even the most amazingly beautiful person you could imagine would be considered ugly in their world because they hadn't had the opportunity to make them basically into a plastic doll. Also, the major issue with the "pretty procedure" isn't the changing of their looks - it's the removal of their inner self - they lose their free will, their ability to think for themselves - they are basically turned into a living doll for their government!!
I thought the pig mask to sneak into a pretties party was spot on. At first I thought it was just a mask, which would work probably, but then it actually morphed her too that was brilliant.
In book it didn't. In book she crossed river, in an expedition outfit that got muddy, got the pig mask, snuck into the party but had to run from everybody anyway and when she hugged Peris she got his tux vest muddy so nope she doesn't glam into a dress and the pretties chase her down cuz she's in a pig mask at a white tie party
10:43 as someone, who lived in a village a few years and took part in growing food... no, it doesn't taste better when you grow it yourself. It's the same food.
@@koraorion4506honestly me and my sister both love the series and enjoyed the film. It's not perfect and GOOD GOD the hover boards are goofy but it's decent.
I loved the Ugliest series when I was younger. I re-read them more recently (within the last year or so) and it's not bad, but it absolutely was written for a younger targeted audience in a way that most YA books weren't/aren't. Not by the topics but by the word choices and writing structure which makes the books easy to read for the younger audience but also feel slow on every page.
I've never seen the movie or the books but I have to wonder, if everyone gets their surgery at 16 and gets sent to pretty town, does that mean that all the babies born in pretty town are just kicked out into ugly town to be raised by who?
Yea. the parents send their kids to be uglies. In a flashback, you can tell that Tally's parents were pretties (cause they pretty much say her eyes are ugly). The assumption is that all the kids there were born from pretties that when they reach a certain age (like 5-6) they get sent to this dormitory for a decade... Who raises them : Computer screens that constantly tell them what is important (their looks) every day. The system raises them.
There's multiple "stages" to the life cycles of the people in that city. It's been a bit since I've read the books, so some of my information might be a little off, but not by too much. The young children, while they still live with their parents, are called Littlies. Then when they're taken from their parents and put into the dorms, they're called Uglies. At 16 most go through the surgeries and become Pretties. Then later on Pretties will go through more surgeries that turn them into Middle Pretties. This is when they start settling down and getting jobs and having kids (I think there might be a limit on how many kids they're allowed to have). Then eventually the Middle Pretties will have a third and final set of surgeries that turn them into a Late Pretty. With the exception of Littlies, who live with their parents, all the different stages live separately from each other, though there is some visitation between stages.
In the books she was scared and they put lesions in her brain to make her dumb and not fight back and it was not a fate you’d wish upon anyone especially when another pretty took pills to cure him and got his brain eaten by whatever ate the lesions
You're going off of a truncated RUclips video by someone who intentionally misses and ignores details in films all the time. Notice he had absolutely no footage to accompany his bit about how her brain is unaffected. They were clearly gunning for a sequel, in which fighting the brain lesions is pretty much the biggest part of the plot. Solid chunk of the beginning of it is literally just people trying to get her on track because she's forgotten her mission. This movie gives no indication they would have dropped that.
@@yannickgullentops6857 That's exactly what it means. It's explained more in the second book, but she basically underestimated how severe the lesions were and how quickly they took hold. So she just completely forgets her reasoning for getting the surgery in the first place.
UGLIES, the books, were insane. The description of the process of the plastic surgery is insane. They lengthen your bones so you're super heights, they add GLITTER and reflective bs in your eyes, your lips gets plumped, etc! And they're all supposed to be uniform height too. A live-action makes ZERO sense. All the actors are way too ugly to play any of the actual beauties. They could have made an animation movie of EPIC storytelling.
This really feels like a story that would really hit if you read it for the first time as a young teen. Seeing the movie clips and premise as a 26 year old feels ridiculous but I'm sure it had a lot of charme back then for many people.
@@TimothyRobert93 I could almost guess that this was the case. It's a shame that most movie adaptations fail to capture the same charme of the book. The message itself is good so would you recommend the book to someone my age as well?
I've read the books as a teen (I'm in my 30s now) and from what I remember, those books were great. Now that I see those movie clips I understand how people from other fandoms feelt, when the movie slaughters their precious. And yes, that movie would have been so much better as an animated movie.
@@ChiakiHatori I'm 23 and will probably read the books again after this wave of nostalgia. I remember them being pretty great, though they could feel pretty rushed in parts of the story. But I really liked the world building, and I remember really loving the pictures that it painted. So I would recommend it, but part of that could be influenced by my nostalgia. Also some great messages about self-acceptance and how harsh beauty standards can quickly turn dehumanizing.
@@anjonaebenton4248exactly. It should’ve been a series. It’s annoying that a lot of the finer details were stripped away because Netflix, ONCE AGAIN, was too lazy and cheap to properly adapt something
Even reading this when. I was younger I thought the concept was dumb. The entire World is based on 16 year olds who want to be hot and that is the only thing that matters. Who does the jobs, makes the buildings, or harvests the food? Doesn't matter, just hot. I thought it was dumb when I was 12 and I still think its dumb.
I saw my mom looking at this on Netflix, and I seriously started laughing uncontrollably at the trailer and summary. It sounded like such a bland, edgy thing that a middle-schooler would write in a notebook. Of course, it made sense when I found out it was a book written in 2008
Hahaha same, I remember getting the series at like 12 cus the premise sounded interesting but I couldn’t get past the first book, just low quality execution of a decent idea
@@neetpride5919hotness is relative. Hot people get so many privileges because they’re rare. You can’t give privileges to literally everyone over 16. Who’s producing the food, doing the work? The under 16 year old ugly kids? I don’t see them in coal mines.
I never read these but the premise is just a twilight zone episode from the 60s, like beat for beat. That the procedure to make you beautiful ruins your brain and personality, and the main character wants to be smart and herself instead of changing to conform
The book has some extra layers that the Twilight Zone episode doesn't. One of the biggest being that it isn't just about the beauty standards. In the books, you learn that getting rid of the transformation surgery doesn't actually solve anything because that was never truly the crux of the problem.
That’s not the point though, it’s the societal definitions and consequences behind “ugly” and “pretty”. Media literacy below the surface level is important.
That isn't the point at all. Have you read the books or are you just making stuff up? In the books, even many models would be considered ugly because of the extreme beauty standards that everyone is subjected to. It doesn't seem to create a dichotomy of "you can be smart or you can be pretty," though that trope was very common in that time.
Its a little weird they have a trans actor as a villain who is trying to force surgery upon kids because they need to have their outward appearance reflect how they think they should look….
That whole scene is some of the cultiest shit I've ever heard. I was like, oh cool, it's not the Good Guys vs the Bad Guys, both groups suck in opposite ways. But that would have been more interesting than this movie is capable of.
@ethanharvey omg yes that would be interesting but nooooo instead of world building we need ofc a love triangle like the whole story is irrelevant in ya need ofc focus on the mid romance part only
@@ethanharveyYeah you clearly didn’t understand either the books or the movies if you think that community is cultish or just as bad as the Pretties society but go off 💀💀🙏🏾
@@zandikhetwayo7444 I haven't read the book and don't plan to. I don't think it was intended to be portrayed that way. I'm saying they did a terrible job of NOT making it seem cultish in the movie. (And accidentally gave me higher expectations for the movie plot than it deserved.)
I promised myself as a young adult I wouldn't hate on YA fiction when I'm older, yet here I am, scratching my head trying desperately to keep that promise.
I loved this series as a kid and was excited when i saw it pop up on Netflix. I wish they could've made it into a series though, even a short one to give more time to things, especially her time in the Smoke. Also, being "ugly" doesn't actually mean, ugly in the full sense. It's just that they haven't been made to look unrealistically perfect (her symmetry comment highlights this as scientifically it has been said we are drawn to faces that are more symmetric, though it's near impossible to actually have a symmetric face). Their nicknames just hone in on that one trait that really stands out for making them seem "unattractive". They're really just normal people which I do think they handle well. I felt like things moved fast, but for the time they had to work with, it wasn't a bad adaption imo. Plus the Pretties city did look fking amazing. They did a great job bringing that to life and showcasing why people would be enthralled with the lifestyle awaiting them.
I have read she was a fan of the book when she was young, so I imagine her inner fangirl jumped out and took control. I can't say I wouldn't have done the same.
@@fairycat23 I feel pretty bad for her in that case, since it sounds like the book was way better than the movie and she isn't a bad actress or anything like that. Netflix is doing her dirty.
I genuinely like the concept and thematic of this story, modernization and technologies effect on what we see as pretty and how we view ourselves and this sort of dystopia...a part of it feels like strong messaging giving us an extreme futuristic depiction of thing we see for in todays youth with surgeries and filtering everything ect. Genuinely if the writing was actually good this would be cool.
The sad part is that the book series is actually very well written with characters who react how people would actually react to things. But it was never as popular as the other series.
Stories for pre-teens were usually more subtle back then now it's just straight up "THEY CALL US UGLIES BUT WE NEED TO ACCEPT OURSELVES NO NEED FOR SURGERIES:)"
honestly im just kinda glad theyre bringing back (hopefully) movie adaptions of dystopian-world stories. it took over in the 2010s: Divergent, hunger games, maze runner
The books were better, but it's good to see Joey King in a role where she actually gets some type of agency and isn't just a crying mess the entire time.
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oil up Alex
PLEASE DO A VIDEO ABOUT DISNEY'S "ZAPPED"!!! 😓
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My farts are better than Alex’s farts 💨
I'm really sick so you did make my day better thank you!
In the book, the "pretties" were kinda described like uncanny valley-esque, like their eyes were made bigger and "flaws" ironed out, but in a way that made them seem like they looked like Bratz dolls in real life. All of them.
But the movie just puts them all under a basic snapchat filter and calls it a day
they were just like "eh, good enough"
For Midnighters they'd probably just put a blue filter over the entire screen.
I remember a scene in the books where tally finds a magazine from the old world and thinks that the models are all super ugly. Their standard of beauty is radically different than ours
ah ok that would make more sense... still stupid, but i can see how the movie choices vs the book make it exceptionally ridiculous.
The book also describes the "operation" requires breaking almost every bone in the body and rebuilding that person entirely. Some of the post-op teens sound like they have actual Barbie doll proportions and the last book emphasizes the love interest's anime eyes (which in real life would be horrifying, but in the book it's supposed to make him super dreamy). Given how far CGI and special effects have come this shouldn't be impossible,
but then the main character and co would be horrifying to look at, and we can't have that.
The funniest thing in this whole movie is that “turning pretty” is just them putting the bold glamour filter on from tiktok
The best part it this movie THINKS that is the deep message of the movie.. but its so poorly written that it is lost
EXACTLY me and my sister have been laughing about this the entire time watching this
To emphasize the difference, I think they should've gone for a CGI meets reality thing. Space Jam style. Uglies are normal people, Pretties are uncanny valley looking computer models
My sister really just yelled: “IS THAT JUST THE PERSONA FILTER?!?!”
@@jannyjan90 yeah its really sad for people who loved the books...
Imagine getting an email saying you got cast for a movie and the movie was called ‘Uglies’ 😭
thing is, money, i think that's all these actors really see or care about, how much they''ll be paid
@@notthegreatestdetective True, but my ego would be completely obliterated. (Depends on the role, of course)
It shouldn't be if you read the book? Ugly people are literally just normal people. The pretties are lobotomised
@@麦わらのウィロー ah, well i guess that's where people differ, personally i don't really have an ego like that, no self-esteem so i wouldn't care
"We wanna hire you cause you have an um interesting physique😅"😂😂😂😂
The funny thing is the book has emphasis that “uglies” are anything NATURAL. Pretties are unnaturally and superficially pretty. There’s a conversation between two characters talking about getting gems implanted into their eyes that tell time. It’s incredibly absurd. Which is the point. Pretties are ABSURD.
It’s a great book honestly. The fact that the movie is just awful is sad.
@@lilysong1321 I recently reread the series, and even as an adult in my 30s, I thoroughly enjoyed it. And the love triangle is a lot better handled in how the feelings are developed. Like, we spend time with both guys and it makes sense why Tally has feelings for both.
Yeah, I disagree with Alex on Joey King's casting. There's a substantial difference between that picture he used to show how hot she is and her much more natural look in the movie.
I do agree with him however that it simply works better as a book. I had a roommate who was super into these books when they first came out, and I remember immediately thinking that it was probably going to become a movie at some point and that it probably wouldn't work. Like he said, when you're reading, you can decide what "ugly" (or even average/natural) means to you. And even if they'd cast someone less attractive than Joey, the kind of person this book's message is aimed at would probably still think she's prettier than she's supposed to be because we often perceive actors as being more attractive, even if they look roughly on par with tons of people we meet every day.
Plus, like another commenter pointed out, there's a part in the books where they find a magazine from our era and don't think the models are pretty. To really portray the Pretties correctly, they'd need to all look like Valeria Lukyanova, that Ukrainian woman the press used to refer to as "the Human Barbie doll." And I've seen some pictures where even she looks more normal than what the book wants you to imagine when you think of the Pretties, which makes me think some of those older pictures of Valeria were a lot more touched up than the magazines were claiming. So it would take a lot of prosthetics to really make the Pretties work.
@@maryannclementiii-uw5pk I've heard some people say it work better as an animated film, and I agree. The world building and augmented characters would work much better in an animated format
That makes way more sense. It kind of sounds like the fashion of The Capital in Hunger Games.
I have a question lol where do parents live??? Cuz they're pretty but the children are ugly so do the kids live in pretty society until a certain age or?
Can you imagine your own best friend giving you a nickname based on your most unflattering quality?
"Oh, hey there, Receding Hairline!"
"Nice to see you again, Ball-Sized Goiter!"
I don't what your saying, but i already do that.
yeah
I call my brother Bald because his forehead is so ginormous but go off I guess
😅
yes bc it's just normal for Chinese aunties/uncles now imagine family gatherings
So many opportunities to make this into a horror film. Just the description of how they turn you pretty is enough to make anybody disturbed
Or worse when they made them "Special" replacing their bones with hollow metal bones like a bird.
@@Zeracheil oh yeah! Freaking terrifying
Yes! It’s been about a decade since I read the series but from what I can remember, it is a story about an oppressive government giving the public the illusion of freedom and luxury in exchange for their free will in a broken, destroyed, post apocalyptic world.
@@moni_dtthat's exactly what it is, I think I've read it about six years ago or something, so not many details, but that's for sure what happens in the books. I haven't watched the movie (I even thought it was a tv show), but it was honestly stupid to adapt a book where characters look completely different from regular people and do not use more than a filter
watch the substance it does this so much better
This movie should've been animated and I'll die on that hill
Dying right along with you
just like da Minecraft movie
edit- HOLY BALLS THIS IS THE MOST LIKES I EVER GOT MUCH THANKS :3
Ugly dolls maybe?
@@JohnPork-rm6qcI was thinking stop motion for some of it
Omg yea, it would’ve saved them so much time on CGI and not having a lot of creative freedom for the Pretties.
I love how them being hot is just them basically putting a gold filter on them
Technically that's only for a few characters. Tally wanted that and so they gave it to her.
I keep thinking about the extras they pull in to play the background "Uglies". Like, how does that conversation go?
@@XCaptianXChaosX 😂 they go hey you know how you think you’re at least decently attractive, we got a movie for you
reminded me of xerxes in the 300 movie
@@XCaptianXChaosXthe whole point of the book is that the “uglies” aren’t even ugly they look normal/good the pretties look like uncanny valley/AI like not real kind of outerworldly but in an uncanny way (the movie didn’t do a good job of showing this lol) - their society:gov manipulates them into thinking they’re ugly when they’re literally not so they can do the surgery and they can mind control them basically - so if the casting directors explained the book correctly they shouldn’t be offended because the uglies in the book weren’t ugly 😂
The Korean film "Human Form" did the aspect of unnatural beauty better than "Uglies". Similar to Uglies, the world in Human Form considers natural faces ugly. To them, surgically made porcelain doll faces are beautiful. And they did a good job showing how unnaturally perfect, sharp, and wax-like the surgically made faces were compared to a normal face
Literatally what I was thinking, similar concept but executed 10 times better
Ooo looking forward to watching it!
I think that’s exactly what the book is supposed to be like. According to some comments I’ve read
This was what instantly came to mind. Second closest was Stepford Wives just because of the general idea of being uncannily perfect.
where can I find it? @@JoannaEve
I think they really didn't handle the whole turning pretty thing well. I've seen a lot of people be like "they are not ugly" and "they pretty ones are actually uglier", but the whole point is that they are not ugly, they are just told they are. In their eyes we all would be ugly. There is a scene in the book that has Shay and Tally reading an old fashion magazine from "our time" and they see the models and they are like "is that what people thought was pretty? They are so ugly!". The whole pretty thing was like their face would be perfectly symmetrical after the surgery, hence we are all naturally ugly bc no one has a perfectly symmetrical body. I always thought that the pretties would look scary rather than "pretty"... There is a very beautiful message in this story, I wish the movie was better so we could have seen the whole series.
+
I really love this (I’ve never read or seen) but it seems like they didn’t find a way to emphasize this for the movie….
With only the context of the movie and Alex's review, I thought the premise was so corny and ridiculous, but with the way you describe it makes it sound a lot more interesting. I wished they adapted it better.
This is a message that only children should benefit from. Its so insanely basic that one should have concerns if they havent learned these things by 17 or so. it really is a phenomenon how girls get sucked into all this and end up thinking absolutely insane things about themselves and society.
You mean it's not even about "inner beauty VS outer beauty" ...???
Your comment has taken me from _uncaring_ to *contemptuous.*
The older I get the more I realize how insane it is for these main characters to be between 15-17, they’re so young 😭
Or that they hire older and mature-looking actors for the protagonist roles continuously
I remember that when I turned 17 I was watching the last season of 13 reason why cause I wanted to know how Justin's story ended ans I was like '🥲 he's my age..poor baby' like, that story was showing a reality I was never gonna live but it still hits hard, you know? And now I'm 21 and I'm still watching shows where the characters are 16/17 and I'm like 'yeah...don't be dramatic' and I can only relate to the Sturniolo triplets cause they're my age and we think alike 🙃
I will die on the hill that they should have gotten a 16 year old to play Katniss. It would have added so much to the story.
The whole thing is basically a con. It's harder to con adults than it is kids who don't know themselves.
RIGHT Like why are we calling children ugly and putting them on their own sad concrete island? 😭🙏
it's the fact that peris' nose din't change AT ALL lmaoo
Makes sense. Would've been easier to put a prosthetic on him as an ugly than to find a way to make his nose look smaller as a pretty. And, uh...actors wearing prosthetic noses isn't perceived too well this days.
It's a part of him 🤷♂️
@thenamesiannado you know what the stories about
why does the plot of uglies remind me of those tiktok hero pov where the main person clicks the air at 18 and gets their superpower
Those content were Cringe tbh!
@@Moon-oh1fjomg those were all over my fyp😭 they were so cringe but so addicting
Those were a guilty pleasure of mine 😅 so cringe but wanted to see more
fr
@@Moon-oh1fjfr
In the book before you were 16 you were normal, not ugly. Society made them feel ugly so they would undergo the procedure. The surgery elevates your appearance to uncanny levels of beauty, but they also messed with your brain. The surgery was essentially just a cover up to mess with your brain. The books were so good, it's such a shame.
it is such a shame. should have been a tv series like 13 Reasons Why. that book came out around the same time.
@@malloryoates8580 Uglies came out in 2005, I was in middle school. And definitely agree, it would be a good show. HBO should pick it up
@@malloryoates8580 Sincerely, making a serie would have been better than a movie. There are so many things happening and it would help the people who didn't read the books to understand what is really going on.
Like where are their parents. Are the kids in school. Like how are people born. This whole world seems confusing
@@katherineminor3402you should know by now that YA kids don’t have parents
there is no way people who think peris actually got prettier after this „metamorphosis” exist right? netflix just took all his beauty and uniqueness turning him into oli london
tbf i think that's part of the point, makes the pretties' look more artificial and shows how rigid their society's beauty standards are
Apparently people who read the book said this wasn’t even enough, the pretties should have looked even more uncanny and similar to each other. That’s part of the point, that you’re more beautiful as yourself.
If I had a nickel for every time a pre-2008 novel featuring teenagers and a dystopian future was adapted into a boring and gray rip-off of the first Hunger Games movie.
Well you would definitely have more than two nickels, that's for sure
@@wildste which isn't a lot, but it's dissapointing it happened more than once...
I appreciate the phineas and ferb reference 👆
You know Uglies acme before Hunger Games right.
@@TimothyRobert93acme
The cool thing about reading the book is when you stop and you're like, wait, these kids aren't ugly, they're just normal, and the pretties are very unnatural.
Putting it in a visual format loses that initial shock, plus the pretties just have a snap chat filter on them.
This movie needed a bigger budget😭
Exactly! Every reviewer seems to forget that and is like “why arent the uglies UGLY?” Ummm because theyre not…. Theyre people like u and me without cosmetic surgery
Or maybe that just shows how use we have gotten to filtered beauty
i agree to an extent but not all he way because it's true looking like an everyday normal person is considered ugly by society. plain and average is ugly . i felt like they explained well in the book by telling us about the pre rusties and how the parental system works
The pretties just look like they got contact lenses on and makeup aswell as dyed hair 😂
When they yassified Peris and Shay, I couldnt stop laughing. It looked they just Facetuned them 😅🤣🤣🤣
In the book there was never this whole “David is going to blow up the city” conflict. Tally simply went to betray the smoke because they told her if she didn’t then she and her friend would be ugly forever. Her attraction to David despite him being “ugly” is what makes her think about “inner beauty” or whatever and then when she meets his parents her whole perspective changes.
" would be ugly forever" 😂
Which the only threat to Tally betraying a friend being "if you don't you'll never be pretty" honestly showed way better the societal brainwashing and Tally's personality
@@panko213 but they were brainwashed?
@@19Rena96 ya in every class they ever took they learned that the rusties would fight over looks and that the reason the only people who would get into fights are the uglies because of their human nature being so heavily focused on looks. The books even go into real things like how wars were even fought over race (Tally still had a hard time believing that one) the surgery was framed as the equalizer. The pretty committee (the team David’s parents were on) designed the specs that the pretty’s would be based on each generation. They had healthy clear skin so that people would think wow they are healthy I should want to have a family with them they gave you wide child like eyes so that you could be seen as someone to protect etc… it was their explanation for why pretty’s never got into fights because when you’re pretty you don’t have ugly problems. The surgery adds a lesion to your brain that makes you happy, agreeable and easy to control
Yeah like..I’m sorry? What happened? 💀 and Shay was the most flip flop character in the book David even comments on it how she didn’t want to go then was all of a sudden like “the smokes the best place ever!” And she just continued to do that as the books went on.. She wasn’t a bad character by any means just kind of funny about the flip floppyness
Who would’ve guested bleaching my hair blonde and getting gold eye contacts would fix my insecurities 😂
If you've been brainwashed all your life to believe that will fix you insecurities, it might work... for like, a few months.
Real 😂
@@DaniMalfoy22hello fellow hp fan
@@Blu3.Cooki3s hello😆 I loved Alex’s Harry Potter series 🤭
@@DaniMalfoy22 I haven’t watched that series yet bc I wanna finish all the books before I watch the movies but I’m really excited to watch it (I’m on book 6 rn)
also they had a whole auditorium thingy for the kids turning 16 but like
they all must have different birth dates so
do they do that "ceremony" like almost every single day????
I was thinking the same thing
They actually explain that in the book, but I don't remember 100% what the explanation was. I'm pretty sure it was similar to being enrolled in Kindergarten (at least, Kindergarten in the US) where you have to be the right age by a certain date, or you need to wait till the next year. e.g. The school term starts on September 1st, so you need to be 5 years old before October 31st to enroll in that term. That type of thing.
yeah in the book it made sense and wasnt like this. was no auditorium, you just went in on your specific day
As weird as it sounds, i think it would've been a good idea to have the Pretties all in Uncanny Valley Makeup and the Uglies stay as they are. I think this would show the dramatic difference between what their dystopian society considers to be pretty and why it had such a big influence on Tally and other Uglies
So your idea is literally just to adapt the book as it was written? Novel concept.
@maryannclementiii-uw5pk Sure, we can go with that, lol. I think you missed the point of my comment.
They just translated it for modern audiences that didn't read the books. We already have these feelings thanks to the "beautifying" filters, and that's why they went with that instead of the freakish monsters the books describe as "the pretties". That scene when Joey looks at her prettified version and then it turns off and catches a glimpse of her normal reflection is the kind of horror and dread that a lot of people have felt when the filter accidentally turned off, and they suddenly started considering plastic surgery because thry felt so ugly in comparison.
I agree. I think that they all should have been given fake botox and super exaggerated James-Charles-esque makeup. MAKE THEM LOOK LIKE 2016 ERA RUclips MAKEUP INFLUENCERS.
@@keerahh2378 that’s what they were supposed to be like they’re eyes were supposed to be big and reflective like a cats with over the top symmetry and almost an exact replica of everyone else but in different shades although not too far from the norm in the pretty’s Zane dyes his hair black with pen ink because they won’t let him have hair that’s actually black
“Hot girl this, hot girl that, how about you take a hot second and go to your local library.” Lol
"I don't want to be hot. I just want to read"
Can they make reading a sexuality already?
It's a funny line but it also made me wonder if he actually missed the point or if he was missing it intentionally for comedy sake. I mean, he even included the bit where they talk about the lesions. And he knows this is a dystopian world where anyone who doesn't elect to get the procedure is forced. A lot of the commenters seem to think the movie is just saying that pretty people are dumb. But it's more about a society that pushes conformity to standards as a distraction from the things people should be more worried about.
I'm not saying you didn't get that. But good grief, it's incredible how many of these comments missed it entirely. The movie glosses over a lot of beats that were in the book that make it more obvious, but even this 15-minute video gives enough information to piece it together.
@@maryannclementiii-uw5pk it’s probably easier to just assume he said it for comedy sake. Requires less thinking on our part at that point.
The way I howled at Alex pausing to say "Oh My Goodness, is that Stig from Tall Girl?! This has been where you've been this whole time?"
I cracked when Alex said this!!!
And in my mind I was like:
"He's also been stealing hearts with his band Voilá" 🥴🥴🥴
When I read that sentence I hear his voice so clear for some reason
I swear the day Joey King is in a genuinely good film is the day pigs fly
She was in "The Act", although granted, it wasn't a movie.
She was in Bullet Train which is a pretty good popcorn movie.
Bullet Train. Oink oink.
She needs to fire her agent.
Ramona and Beezus
The pretties are supposed to be freakish good-looking with symmetrical faces and every thing to the T perfect. The pretties in the movie just look like attractive people with eye contacts in. They should have used CGI.
They should have used prosthetic makeup on them like they did Shallow Hal.
From everything I've seen the specials and adults don't look that different which is just wrong. The Specials are meant to be predatory and the main one we see is described as with wolf-like features iirc.
This is why some books just shouldn't be adapted, because you can't really have "perfect people" and portray that in a believable way.
Beauty is subjective, so this story in book form actually works really well because anyone reading it will have their own interpretation on what these beautiful people look like BUT in movie form... it doesn't work as well.
@@Hannah_The_Heretic Even if they had "perfect" people, this is just a very bad premise for a movie
@@koutsioj4762 well no that's not what I'm saying. This is fine in book form but as a visual medium this story quickly falls apart
Y'all remember Warm Bodies?? The zombie romance book-turned-movie based on Romeo and Juliet? (the zombie's name is R, the girl he falls in love with is named Julie, and his best friend is M like Mercutio lol). I really enjoyed it (they changed the ending of the movie from the book a bit to try to redeem Julie's father though) but no one else ever talks about it.
Yess I love that movie!! I've only seen it twice but it's so good ✨️✨️
I've been unironically looking for that movie lmao. I loved it so much as a kid
My fav zombie movie I watched it like 5 times now 😂
I love that movie. I have it in my library of films I keep just to remember they exist and are good. It was heart felt, a little cheesy and just fun to watch. The intro always made me laugh.
I didn't realize that was also a book. Or, for that matter, that it was a Romeo and Juliet story, lol (haven't watched the movie, only heard bits and pieces about it)
“Imagine deciding ur whole life at sixteen”
British people: 😢😢😢😢
Yup
GCSEs were utter dogshit
Any country where 16 yos graduate: "That hurts".
@@darthtepes CBSE's 💀💀
@@poisionbladenot gcses, a levels
When I saw the film title i wasn’t expecting YA dystopian
My farts are better than Alex’s farts 💨
@@p-__ you must stink then
@@p-__good for you
no same-
I mean the books were.
i read the first book as a teenager and it was good but got boring halfway in. all i remember is her eating something called spagboil on what i think was a side of a mountain for literal days. it was so many pages of eating spagboil to survive so i ditched it
Fun story: there was one time I was crying and my cousin was comforting me. In the middle of it, my cousin says to me: "Don't take this the wrong way, but you kinda smell like a book I read once." I ask her what book and she pulls up on her phone the cover, and I just see big ole letters "UGLIES." I immediately burst out laughing, tears gone.
The best part was that she didn't even think about the title, she thought I would be offended that I smelled like a book.
I really thought you were going to cry even more lol😅it’s good it made you laugh 😊
That's such a sweet story, lol
My immediate reaction was that books smell good so why would that be a problem? Made the end bit funnier 😂
tht is such a cute story 💀😭😭
I think a better way to have done this would be to have all the 'uglies' be the same as they are, but to make the 'pretties' CGI/animated, like Ready Player One or something. Hard to get more of an unattainable beauty standard than literal cartoons. Plus, they could be making a point about the expectations set by characters like Elsa from Frozen.
I would've loved that!
Based on various comments I'm seeing under this video explaining how the book described the "pretties", I'm imagining them looking like Alita Battle Angel if you scaled up the size of Alita's eyes twice as much as they were already scaled up from the actress's real eyes. Just take the Alita concept and go much more outlandish with it. As freakishly cartoonish as they can possibly CGI the actors' faces to look.
@@MuljoStpho yeah, i agree
i don't think it's work well to do a really literal adaptation of the book, visually, but that kind of thing would be a good idea
@@scytheseven9173 It wouldn't. It would just look like garbage. There are plenty of ways they could make the pretties book-accurate just by using prosthetic makeup. And this commenter's living in a fantasy world if they think anyone actually wants to look like Elsa lmao. They just want Elsa's dress, hair, and possibly superpowers.
I remember reading this book in a book club. I mostly remember that when Tally was heading to the village, she kept eating spaghetti bolognaise all the time and got sick of it.
I don't know why I remembered that detail. It's just one of those weird things that sticks to your mind.
I love diet Divergent, which was already diet Hunger Games.
Uglies came out before both of those series btw
Not saying it's better just saying it didn't copy them
@@im_an_oysterIt's definitely better than Divergent. And yes, came here to say what you said.
Diet entertainment
@@im_an_oysterare you talking about the books or movies? The first Hunger Games book came out in 2008.
@@MildlyPerturbed at 15:18 you can see that Uglies came out in 2005 :)
I get what ppl are saying about the actors already being conventionally attractive, but that's the point. They aren't ugly, but society is telling them they are and need to change. Peris being called "Nose" when he doesn't even have a large one proves that they search for flaws that aren't there to back up society's manipulation of people. Even if the surgery barely changes anything, you're still manipulated into thinking you are now good enough when you already were.
This is what I was gonna say!! I completely agree but I don’t think the movie executed it well
@mansouralshahri4938 I mean that wasn't the point of the book either. The whole thing was about freakish beauty standards that suddenly turn regular, average-looking people into freakish monsters that no one would ever think to love. If the actors were non conventionally attractive that would actually make the message even more bland, not saying that would be a bad idea but still
From what I've heard, in the books it's not just about gaslighting people into thinking they're ugly but it's also about making them overgo actual harsh and violent physical transformations for them to fit society's definition of pretty. Like imagine if when you turn 16 the government was forcing you to undergo a surgery because you're too chubby for their standards. There's an amazing message to it which I really hoped the movie could've done it better 😅
THANK you!!!
@@mansouralshahri4938you’re missing the entire point and yet still agreed with the og comments point at the same time lol. These people are considered “ugly” because they are not fitting in with societies standards of attractive.
5:37 she got her miraculous
LMFAO🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
The book is a soft commentary on beauty's subjectivity and the pursuit of perfection being unhealthy, but it's lack of angst and cartoonish action keeps it from thinking too highly of itself. That's why it's one of my favorite dystopians. Scott Westerfield is one of the better YA writers. This series deserves better.
EVERYTHING with Joey king as the main character is hilariously dumb
I generally dont like her movies too, but "The Act" was good. And uglies gave me major nostalgia so i liked it 😅
except Ramona and Beezus, but that's old school
She's also in "We were the lucky ones " and that was absolutely amazing
@@mariesina_ I was going to say the same thing. That show genuinely hit me at times 😭
@@nonameless2 ramona and beezus hits home! ❤
2:11 was that lucky blue😭
Yup 😅
@@MaryTosin that is so random lol
Yessss
i was just trying to think where i knew that face from
I hate the rhetoric that being pretty and being smart are mutually exclusive. I was your stereotypical gifted kid growing up, and I spent years being completely ashamed of enjoying popular media and liking makeup because I was afraid I would be seen as dumb for it. I don't get why you can't enjoy doing a full face of makeup and still be a straight-A student with social awareness.
This is why I love legally blonde
Part of the message of the book is that the uglies arent ugly. In the book Shay actually likes how she looks and doesnt want to change, and she is also a gifted badass like Tally.
U are pathetic
That’s what I was saying
Well, using make up isnt related to "being pretty", also... yeah, real "problem"
The Uglies weren’t really ugly in the first place. They just wanted everyone to get an operation.
Yeah they just look like normal people, the point is the "pretties" are freakishly perfect. Shay, idek if she's in the movie, talks about how it's just societal conditioning.
It really bugs me that the movie goes to such lengths to drive home their point.
Like call them children for gods sake, we aren't calling our kids "dummies" even though they are extremely dumb compared to adults.
And as if you need any artificial pressure to get people to take the surgery. Offer this kind of surgery to any 16 year old today. Odds are most of them are going to do it. Make it the norm and part of growing up (like drinking alcohol or taking a drivers licence) almost all are going to do it.
@@temeraire8329 its baseed off a book bae
@@melaspink2535 Alright, then it really bugs me that the book goes to such lengths to drive home its point.
For anyone who sees the shred of a good idea - please read the books. The world building, characters, and ideas are much better flushed out and relevant.
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I was obsessed with the books and the spin off series Imposters. The movie really did not represent the books whatsoever and was way too rushed. There wasn’t any character development or world building and there was barely even a plot. My favorite parts of the books was how much of it was just the characters in the wild trying to not die and there wasn’t any of that in the movie.
*fleshed
I really enjoed Uglies as a preteen😂 it just made sense on the book. Not so much on screen
Tally was absolutely fitting into the trope of a “ Mary Sue”. She was very easily good at everything and somehow was able to jump and climb bridges and shit to get away from soldiers with insane technology
That alone doesn't make a character a Mary sue
@@yasminemixon9340 it literally does that’s kinda the point of a Mary sue
@@livvlife a Mary sue is someone who doesn't have any flaws or weaknesses and everyone loves them and they can do no wrong. and if someone doesn't like them then it's because they're a villain. Being good at stuff alone doesn't make a Mary sue.
@@yasminemixon9340 you literally described our main character. ☠️
@@yasminemixon9340 not sure what you're yapping about, that's literally Tally's character.
6:23 omg I love your animations 😂😂
alex the "uglies" not being actually ugly is kinda of the point? it's that their beauty standards have gotten so out of control that everything about you is ugly until you get plastic surgery to "fix" yourself
If these characters want to see ugly, they should look at me. 😒
@@ashleyr6809Same, I look like a potato.
@@ashleyr6809 I know right
I think he gets their point but his issue is that their being too heavy handed and on the nose with the message
@@ashleyr6809damn, self burn, that's rare.
13:20 the way he casually drops David's dads neck being snapped is crazzyyyy 🤣🤣
IKR i thot david wld b more pissed?????
“everyone is hot girl this, hot girl that. Well why don’t you take a HOT SECOND and go to your local library-“ LMAOOOO ALEX UR CONTENT JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER
6:10 Nose looking like the Human Ken is not what I'd call pretty but eh, what do I know about prettiness anyway? *goes sob in a corner*
What kind of ugly ass Ken dolls did you own as a kid?
11:54 Is it really the surgery that causes brain damage or is it really just a futuristic brain rot because of that lifestyle?
They whole "pretty" point is that in their world EVERYONE who hasn't had the operation is considered "ugly" - at one point, they even find a magazine from before the operation and they talk about how ugly all the people are - so yes, even the most amazingly beautiful person you could imagine would be considered ugly in their world because they hadn't had the opportunity to make them basically into a plastic doll.
Also, the major issue with the "pretty procedure" isn't the changing of their looks - it's the removal of their inner self - they lose their free will, their ability to think for themselves - they are basically turned into a living doll for their government!!
I thought the pig mask to sneak into a pretties party was spot on. At first I thought it was just a mask, which would work probably, but then it actually morphed her too that was brilliant.
In book it didn't. In book she crossed river, in an expedition outfit that got muddy, got the pig mask, snuck into the party but had to run from everybody anyway and when she hugged Peris she got his tux vest muddy so nope she doesn't glam into a dress and the pretties chase her down cuz she's in a pig mask at a white tie party
10:43 as someone, who lived in a village a few years and took part in growing food... no, it doesn't taste better when you grow it yourself. It's the same food.
“Ok, guess I’ll go walk into the ocean then” caught me completely off-guard. Lol
Scott Westerfeld's really good book deserved so much better
I didn't know this was made into a movie and I loved the books, so I think I'm going to pretend I still don't know
@@koraorion4506honestly me and my sister both love the series and enjoyed the film.
It's not perfect and GOOD GOD the hover boards are goofy but it's decent.
The books were good? I remember them being boring and poorly executed, not dissimilar to the film
@@cuca_ don't do my childhood like that lol. I remember loving the books but I've not reread them for years!
I loved the Ugliest series when I was younger. I re-read them more recently (within the last year or so) and it's not bad, but it absolutely was written for a younger targeted audience in a way that most YA books weren't/aren't. Not by the topics but by the word choices and writing structure which makes the books easy to read for the younger audience but also feel slow on every page.
I've never seen the movie or the books but I have to wonder, if everyone gets their surgery at 16 and gets sent to pretty town, does that mean that all the babies born in pretty town are just kicked out into ugly town to be raised by who?
Yea. the parents send their kids to be uglies. In a flashback, you can tell that Tally's parents were pretties (cause they pretty much say her eyes are ugly). The assumption is that all the kids there were born from pretties that when they reach a certain age (like 5-6) they get sent to this dormitory for a decade...
Who raises them : Computer screens that constantly tell them what is important (their looks) every day. The system raises them.
There's multiple "stages" to the life cycles of the people in that city. It's been a bit since I've read the books, so some of my information might be a little off, but not by too much. The young children, while they still live with their parents, are called Littlies. Then when they're taken from their parents and put into the dorms, they're called Uglies. At 16 most go through the surgeries and become Pretties. Then later on Pretties will go through more surgeries that turn them into Middle Pretties. This is when they start settling down and getting jobs and having kids (I think there might be a limit on how many kids they're allowed to have). Then eventually the Middle Pretties will have a third and final set of surgeries that turn them into a Late Pretty. With the exception of Littlies, who live with their parents, all the different stages live separately from each other, though there is some visitation between stages.
@@timothymarzelli3874 that's literally the dumbest thing I've ever heard of in a book buahahahahha
“Imagine deciding your entire life when you 16” GCSEs 😢
Trust me GCSEs don’t decide your life
The fact that she basically gets both in the end like "in the end you don't want to be pretty so you get to be it free of repercussion" is so wild 😂😂😂
In the books she was scared and they put lesions in her brain to make her dumb and not fight back and it was not a fate you’d wish upon anyone especially when another pretty took pills to cure him and got his brain eaten by whatever ate the lesions
@@KiaStout that's nice. Was talking about the movie though.
I really assumed that the ending meant that she doesnt go back for the cure. Aka, that she gets corrupted to.
You're going off of a truncated RUclips video by someone who intentionally misses and ignores details in films all the time. Notice he had absolutely no footage to accompany his bit about how her brain is unaffected. They were clearly gunning for a sequel, in which fighting the brain lesions is pretty much the biggest part of the plot. Solid chunk of the beginning of it is literally just people trying to get her on track because she's forgotten her mission. This movie gives no indication they would have dropped that.
@@yannickgullentops6857 That's exactly what it means. It's explained more in the second book, but she basically underestimated how severe the lesions were and how quickly they took hold. So she just completely forgets her reasoning for getting the surgery in the first place.
Also the specials! They were supposed to be wolflike and scary/ intimidating. Thwy just gave them strength and tron suits?
UGLIES, the books, were insane. The description of the process of the plastic surgery is insane. They lengthen your bones so you're super heights, they add GLITTER and reflective bs in your eyes, your lips gets plumped, etc! And they're all supposed to be uniform height too.
A live-action makes ZERO sense. All the actors are way too ugly to play any of the actual beauties.
They could have made an animation movie of EPIC storytelling.
for real
This really feels like a story that would really hit if you read it for the first time as a young teen.
Seeing the movie clips and premise as a 26 year old feels ridiculous but I'm sure it had a lot of charme back then for many people.
The books are great. The movie just wasn't done that well
@@TimothyRobert93 I could almost guess that this was the case. It's a shame that most movie adaptations fail to capture the same charme of the book.
The message itself is good so would you recommend the book to someone my age as well?
@@ChiakiHatori It's worse when you realize they could have done this fully 2d or 3d animation and kept closer to the premise.
I've read the books as a teen (I'm in my 30s now) and from what I remember, those books were great.
Now that I see those movie clips I understand how people from other fandoms feelt, when the movie slaughters their precious.
And yes, that movie would have been so much better as an animated movie.
@@ChiakiHatori I'm 23 and will probably read the books again after this wave of nostalgia. I remember them being pretty great, though they could feel pretty rushed in parts of the story. But I really liked the world building, and I remember really loving the pictures that it painted. So I would recommend it, but part of that could be influenced by my nostalgia. Also some great messages about self-acceptance and how harsh beauty standards can quickly turn dehumanizing.
I had completely forgotten this book existed until this video. What a callback wow
6:40 CACKLING
💀💀💀
There should be a writing competition for who can make the worst YA novel/film. Alex would genuinely be the best judge
Alex cant read silly
The book was actually amazing the movie did it dirty
@@anjonaebenton4248exactly. It should’ve been a series. It’s annoying that a lot of the finer details were stripped away because Netflix, ONCE AGAIN, was too lazy and cheap to properly adapt something
@@mkwhite5054 Not only too lazy, but using the wrong medium. Live action does the book little favors because it becomes limited.
i would win
1:22 sponsorship is over
Thank you so much
I love that premium let's you skip the in video ads , worth the 10$ to me😅
It’s midnight and I’m trying not to die laughing in my dorm at Alex laughing at the Ugo police
Even reading this when. I was younger I thought the concept was dumb. The entire World is based on 16 year olds who want to be hot and that is the only thing that matters. Who does the jobs, makes the buildings, or harvests the food? Doesn't matter, just hot. I thought it was dumb when I was 12 and I still think its dumb.
You do realize they get jobs when they become middle pretties?
To be fair, nothing matters if you're hot. Even in the apocalypse hot people do pretty well
I saw my mom looking at this on Netflix, and I seriously started laughing uncontrollably at the trailer and summary. It sounded like such a bland, edgy thing that a middle-schooler would write in a notebook. Of course, it made sense when I found out it was a book written in 2008
Hahaha same, I remember getting the series at like 12 cus the premise sounded interesting but I couldn’t get past the first book, just low quality execution of a decent idea
@@neetpride5919hotness is relative. Hot people get so many privileges because they’re rare. You can’t give privileges to literally everyone over 16. Who’s producing the food, doing the work? The under 16 year old ugly kids? I don’t see them in coal mines.
I never read these but the premise is just a twilight zone episode from the 60s, like beat for beat. That the procedure to make you beautiful ruins your brain and personality, and the main character wants to be smart and herself instead of changing to conform
The book has some extra layers that the Twilight Zone episode doesn't. One of the biggest being that it isn't just about the beauty standards. In the books, you learn that getting rid of the transformation surgery doesn't actually solve anything because that was never truly the crux of the problem.
@@maryannclementiii-uw5pk Well, I'd hope that there are extra layers lmao. It would be awfully hard to write a whole series on such a short plot.
You can tell the books were written in 2005 when the message is the classic "Pretty dumb girl bad, ugly smart girl good" you'd find in a Facebook meme
That wasn't the message of the book at all though?
@@ellencoleman4604And I will die on this hill. People need to admit they didn’t read the books and move on lmao
That’s not the point though, it’s the societal definitions and consequences behind “ugly” and “pretty”. Media literacy below the surface level is important.
@@kendra4932 exactly exactly exactly!!!!
That isn't the point at all. Have you read the books or are you just making stuff up? In the books, even many models would be considered ugly because of the extreme beauty standards that everyone is subjected to. It doesn't seem to create a dichotomy of "you can be smart or you can be pretty," though that trope was very common in that time.
YALL DON'T SKIP THE AD, THERE'S ALEX AT THE GYM. Got me blushing and shi
Fr,clean up on aisle..my pants! Amirite😂
gay
@@Delsin42 gay
He has a girlfriend
oh shi, lemme go back.
DRINK YOUR OVALTINE - Christmas Story deep cut. Appreciated that.
at SIXTEEN they get a greenlight for a glow up??? They're STILL TEENAGERS OMGGGG
Look up japans plastic surgery standards & responses, your mind will be blown
Its a little weird they have a trans actor as a villain who is trying to force surgery upon kids because they need to have their outward appearance reflect how they think they should look….
I mean seems realistic
Oh wow. Thats really something
@@karimeortiz2349 and you seem dumb
that's what they auditioned for
@@chaosspy6723 ohh, so thats how that works…
not the bold glamour BYEEEEE
As someone who came from the books, Netflix really fumbled on this one…
13:55 im literally holding a makeup sponge rn💀
Put it down then 😂💔
And pick up a book 👊😭
"is that steeg from tall girl" had me dying 🤣
"Eveyone has to work even our eldest " yeah girl that doesn't sound good
That whole scene is some of the cultiest shit I've ever heard. I was like, oh cool, it's not the Good Guys vs the Bad Guys, both groups suck in opposite ways.
But that would have been more interesting than this movie is capable of.
@ethanharvey omg yes that would be interesting but nooooo instead of world building we need ofc a love triangle like the whole story is irrelevant in ya need ofc focus on the mid romance part only
@@ethanharveyYeah you clearly didn’t understand either the books or the movies if you think that community is cultish or just as bad as the Pretties society but go off 💀💀🙏🏾
@@zandikhetwayo7444 I haven't read the book and don't plan to. I don't think it was intended to be portrayed that way. I'm saying they did a terrible job of NOT making it seem cultish in the movie. (And accidentally gave me higher expectations for the movie plot than it deserved.)
I promised myself as a young adult I wouldn't hate on YA fiction when I'm older, yet here I am, scratching my head trying desperately to keep that promise.
The books are pretty good. This movie is not.
“ i dont trust you”” you dont have to trust me just follow me” dumbest line ever
Not this coming out just after I finished watching the movie
sameeee lol😂😂
This didn't come out after I finished watching the movie either. What a coincidence.
same
I loved this series as a kid and was excited when i saw it pop up on Netflix. I wish they could've made it into a series though, even a short one to give more time to things, especially her time in the Smoke. Also, being "ugly" doesn't actually mean, ugly in the full sense. It's just that they haven't been made to look unrealistically perfect (her symmetry comment highlights this as scientifically it has been said we are drawn to faces that are more symmetric, though it's near impossible to actually have a symmetric face). Their nicknames just hone in on that one trait that really stands out for making them seem "unattractive". They're really just normal people which I do think they handle well. I felt like things moved fast, but for the time they had to work with, it wasn't a bad adaption imo. Plus the Pretties city did look fking amazing. They did a great job bringing that to life and showcasing why people would be enthralled with the lifestyle awaiting them.
3:40 that chick has been playing a teenager for the past 10yrs.😂
The way Alex draws thicc hips, he should make a patreon.
I just feel like Joey King should be past this point by now as an actress. This is some of the oddest typecasting I've ever seen.
I have read she was a fan of the book when she was young, so I imagine her inner fangirl jumped out and took control. I can't say I wouldn't have done the same.
@@fairycat23 I feel pretty bad for her in that case, since it sounds like the book was way better than the movie and she isn't a bad actress or anything like that. Netflix is doing her dirty.
the worst part about this is that everyone is like 30
It's called 'acting'
@@DarkSeraphtoo bad Joey King can’t act 😂
@@DarkSeraph no..?
@@Arctis326 Yeah it sucks
@@DarkSeraphwell age is part or making the acting believable and late 20s and 30s aren’t very great at passing for 16 year olds.
When will you do the “Muppets Christmas Carol”
That’s the *_REAL_* question.
The fact that Alex didn’t respond is proof we aren’t getting “Muppets Christmas Carol” I’m sorry yall
I genuinely like the concept and thematic of this story, modernization and technologies effect on what we see as pretty and how we view ourselves and this sort of dystopia...a part of it feels like strong messaging giving us an extreme futuristic depiction of thing we see for in todays youth with surgeries and filtering everything ect. Genuinely if the writing was actually good this would be cool.
The books were much more like that, they were actually quite good!
The sad part is that the book series is actually very well written with characters who react how people would actually react to things. But it was never as popular as the other series.
Stories for pre-teens were usually more subtle back then now it's just straight up "THEY CALL US UGLIES BUT WE NEED TO ACCEPT OURSELVES NO NEED FOR SURGERIES:)"
Yooooo!!! As I was watching this movie yesterday, the only thing in my mind was "I hope Alex Meyers does a videoabout this"
Saaaame
honestly im just kinda glad theyre bringing back (hopefully) movie adaptions of dystopian-world stories. it took over in the 2010s: Divergent, hunger games, maze runner
As a kid I was obsessed with the hoverboards. It's sad that the book was turned into this mess.
Uglies is just the filter bold glamour as a movie LOL
I love how turning her pretty just means dying her hair blonde, and doing her make up lol 😂
SHE GETS THE SURGERY AT THE END?! 😂😂😂😂
so dumb 🤣
lol yeah and then she gets another type of surgery in the later books that she again, doesnt want to get lmao
Her face card being declined is peak comedy
reading the book a few years ago and seeing this video now i can’t stop thinking about that one episode of the twilight zone with the pig masks
The books were better, but it's good to see Joey King in a role where she actually gets some type of agency and isn't just a crying mess the entire time.