That…was the point? That all those teens being forced to have massive plastic surgery already look fine. They don’t need it, they look attractive as they are, yet the beauty standard created by the culture they live in still makes them feel absolutely ugly, inadequate and less than. Which is the average experience of most girls (and even boys), who grow up absorbing the idea, that no matter how pretty they look, they must still, eternally, strive for the beauty of magazine models, pop stars and influencers
That ending was so confusing to me because Tally seemed to want the surgery THE WHOLE TIME. Then she found out about the tumors, and was momentarily like «nah», then comes the all fixing cure, and is like «guys, I have an idea, what if I do the operation?🤯» So what? She gets to be hot and «ugly»? She manipulated them all and got what she wanted is what it seemed like to me😂
I understood it as - yes she wanted to become pretty - yes during the smoke she changed her mind - the good doctors refuse to try the cure without consent - and since shay got the surgery and is now pretty (which also changes their whole personality, she basically went from a thinking person capable of making her own choices to a stereotypical blond ”oh ma gawd, this is AWWWESAME” bimbo) she can’t consent anymore - however tally consents to be their test subject while she can think for herself - the cure must be tested on a pretty person therefore she needs the surgery so they can do the tests
You are so real for saying begin an pretty would be so much better 😭 the movie had one job and it fail to get the message around ,so nah i am siding with the easier pretty life 11/10
I did get that EVERYONE is essentially being lobotomised, but unless I misremembered, the actual discovery that it can also kills them was a possibility not a certainty, meaning lots don’t? While obviously lesions aren’t great either if I got to vibe in a rich city a bit brain dead I’d probably take it tbh 💀
I don't remember risk of death being part of the books, but everyone gets the lesions and then during your second life-phase surgery they can be removed depending on your career path like if you're going to be a firefighter or a doctor or anyone who actually needs to use their brain for anything
I think a midsommar attestupa sort of reveal would have made the dystopia a dystopia. Like you're in the pretty party for your young adulthood, reproduce, and then you're killed off before you get old. That would introduce some stakes. I noticed that we didn't really learn much about the next phase except for a vague 'you have kids and you're just slightly less pretty so you stay in the suburbs' Idk seems like 'the farm upstate full of dead dogs' to me
Did they even explain where the uglies come from. I mean they are logically the children of the pretties but when are they taken from their parents? at birth, at ten? This whole society makes no sense.
This movie was painful and hilarious 😂 also, I appreciate that your commentary videos are ACTUALLY full of your own opinions instead of just 95% summary and 5% commentary. (Love the mic as well 👍👍)
Hey I actually appreciate this so much, I love watching in depth discussions about stuff I like (or dislike) and this current trend of RU-vidrs just giving a basic plot, then an additional “yeah it was good” is just so pointless to me. “Today I saw mean girls and it is about mean girls, it was pretty funny with good pacing, as much as I want to talk about what it has to say about being a teenager, unfortunately we’ve hit the 6 minute mark and I have to go nap, 7/10”
I have MASSIVE respect for your POV. It's absolutely the best read with the given circumstances of the movie as you've related them. I read the books a _long_ time ago. Like, I think the last one came out while I was reading them. Or maybe just became available at the library while I was reading. The impression I got from the *books* as a child (haven't seen the movie) is that the pretty surgery also includes a free lobotomy that you can't opt out of. The sacrifice that I got from the individual in the book was 'when I'm going for the surgery, who comes out of it WILL NOT BE ME. I will have been transformed into something less than human. *I* will be dead. What is in my body will not be able to make rational, informed decisions because they are literally brain damaged to be compliant to the ones who provide surgery. I am sacrificing my life now, so that you can have a body of a willing victim. From the moment of this decision I am dead, and when you find the creature that has my body after the surgery, I want you to see if you can recover ME, so we can recover everyone else who didn't have a choice at the time.' As a depressed adult, I don't blame any individual that was told "we'll jiggle this thing behind your eyeball and then you won't be depressed anymore. You'll be able to have dinner with your family tonight, free from depression." If I really believed someone could do that, I'm sure I'd be first in line. It's concerning how often the most interesting and complex deconstruction of concepts seems to happen in YA books, but then they get shit on or banned if the wrong person realizes they're discussing complex social issues. Also it now occurs to me this may have added to my reluctance to try medication to help my issues. So like.... My opinion is probably actually wrong.
People get emotionally numb and get tumors? Isn't that what we do anyways? We drink and do other stuff on weekends in order to dull our senses and deal with existential dread. Which leads to health problems 🤷♂️
Regarding consent, while I agree that the scar should not serve as consent in the real world, I think the scar was meant to serve as a DNR. Like, consent given prior to the point where they are unable to consent.
the lobster did the whole ‘desirable trait have privilege and the rest are outcasts’ with the division of single and coupled ppl SO much better than this
Maybe if inclusivity wasn't a huge selling point of the society. I think there's hints to a previous genocide in the books because everyone's supposed to be white in pretty town but that doesn't really fly in the film industry today.
I don't want to be mean to Joey, but I think she's looked the same, it just sucks that she is so shit at acting considering she grew up a child actor. There should be more average looking actors to be more believable and relatable 😅 but compared to a ton of other actors getting their face fat sucked out, she looks no different to me, which is actually kind of nice
I couldn’t quite understand why I hated this movie so much but you explained it perfectly! It felt so empty and unnecessary because there was no REAL downside to being pretty in the society so what are they actually fighting for/ against?? Absolutely nothing.
It was a bad, clunky movie, but it was made obvious the downside of the procedure is you become lobotomised husk of your former self, who barely retains any of your former feelings or convictions. You lose your individuality and ability to think.
I so love it when Marshall gets to have a consent rant. I think the first one was during a MAFS consent debacle. And once again he's right. Consent is not transferrable from day to day to even minute to minute. It expires with just a single no. I suspect this film is produced by the Ozempic makers subversively pushing their skinny pills.
It's funny how Netflix simultaneously puplished one of their worst (Uglies) and best (Rebel Ridge) movies of the year and the audience put Uglies on #1
The movie is awful. I liked the books as a kid. You did miss that EVERYONE gets brain lesions purposely to make them air-headed and easy to control by the government lol.
The book is actually better and explains more than the movie ever did. But it connects to the fact that teenage girls were pressured to look like a magazine. It was made more of a response to the pressures to confirm in the early 2000s but I suppose you’d have to be a girl to really get that. This isn’t really a thing that men and boys are pressured on.
While i agree its not as bad for men i do have to push back slightly, i remember the body standards for me and my friends were insane in school, what they felt they needed to achieve etc, might be self perpetuated but particularly with what fitness brands and superheroes were doing there was a definite societal component.
Yeah they should've made the pretties weird looking. In the book she sees a picture of a model in an old magazine and all of the models used to look like uglies. In the movie the pretties look like models. Yeah Peres should have been gay. Then the love triangle is between Shay and David but with Shay having subtle bisexual/pansexual feelings towards Tally. That way when Zane appears in tge seconf book, it is between Tally, David and Zayne.
The movie is crap compared to the books. I think the pacing has a lot to do with that, everything goes by too fast. you only get a feel for the basics. The book is much better at taking everything to a much deeper level of understanding. Hate to be this person but the reason why the pretty surgery is considered so bad is because as soon as you get it, you become a shell of who you once were. You lose yourself, lose your old traits, your old likes and dislikes. You become nothing but 'pretty'. That is now your entire personality. The surgery gives you brain lesions that take away your personality and make you conform to what people tell you to be. The second book does a really good job of explaining this, tally basically forgets everything that she previously was and becomes vapid. Obviously I see how the movie fucked up with that message and made it seem appealing. Focusing more on the fact that people die from it, and not that basically you are no longer you.
I re-read the books last year not knowing the movie was in production, but they do nothing to actually explain the world they live in. Obviously Tally doesn't know how her world /actaully/ works, but they don't even allow the audience to stay with anything long enough to understand the surface level stuff that was so much fun in the books. The pacing made me so upset, I kinda wish it was an animated short series instead ?? I feel like they could've made the differences between the uglies vs prettiest a lot more obvious and don't need the mix of live action with wack cgi to show the cool tech either 💀 Edit: Also the specials suits are so fucking ugly 😭😭
Totally agree! CGI has come a long way, but animation is just THAT medium and there are definitely stories that are really only successfully adaptable through animation.
The movie was based off a book series by the same name. It is a trilogy so it’s another divergent situation.. the book series is just as confusing and arbitrary as the movie was and also had a lot of the same armful rhetoric
The book in fact DID NOT do it better 😂 I haven't watched the movie yet but when I read the book I had all the same questions you're having now. The book might have some tiny differences but the overall concept is just as messy as you're describing
I actually really liked the movie. A few corrections: - no one has a choice, everyone HAS to get the surge. It is not an option. - the brain lesions, aka lobotomization, is also everyone, not a possibility, its everyone. - the deaths are because of how extreme the surgery is. Like everything including bones and skin are regrown. It kind of seemed like you understood that Ugly doesnt actually mean ugly as it just means normal... but you also seemed to not understand why the normal people looked concentionally attractive? Theres a scene in the book where she sees an old magazine with models and she still called them Uglies.
Yeah that's absolutely not how consent works you're right. That's why DNR tattoos aren't accepted. Because when the moment comes, people change their minds and are allowed to!!
Wait, I thought I forgot something when you talked about the brain tumors but when you said they had a cure for the tumor I realized you missed something. It isn't a tumor. Well they might develop tumors but what you missed is the brain lesion was part of the surgery that makes you docile and happy and possibly stupid. The pills cured the lesions so you could think clearly again. The society must also have had something to cure it because the f you were to become a doctor or something that needed brains they had to cure you anyway. Otherwise at mid life they just left you dumb and docile.
But you’re missing the whole point? The world shouldn’t be set up that way, they’re not fighting for everyone to live like them, they’re fighting to get rid of that system
