Can't believe Kappa revealed he was in a polyamorous triad with Onision and YandereDev at the end of the video. That was definitely a twist I didn't see coming.
It’s a shame cause in the books the “pretties” are supposed to be basically horrific in their “perfection”. Like if they got addicted to plastic surgery, with overly sharp cheek bones and shit. The point kinda being that the “uglies” are actually just normal, often attractive, people.
You’re remembering slightly wrong- the horrific faces with ultra-sharp cheekbones are called Specials. The Pretties are deliberately soft, innocent, and nonthreatening looking
I remember reading the books back in 09 and thinking, "They BETTER not make a movie. They'd make the 'Uglies' Hollywood gorgeous and it would undercut everything." 15 years later, when I thought it was safely forgotten...
The Pretties and Specials in the movie do look silly, but I think they should have leaned into the unnatural look even more. The book actually has Tally compare our beauty standards with the Pretties, and she finds our models and celebrities ugly. The Pretties are all wide-eyed homogenized caricatures, and the Specials are a sharp, dangerous, wolflike kind of beauty. It's also silly how central they made Nose (Peris) in the movie when he's a minor character in the books and not even part of the complicated love triangle. Also, does anyone else question the decision to cast a trans woman as the evil scientist trying to control society with forced cosmetic surgery?
OH MY GOD THANK YOU!!!! i watched this movie with a friend and Cable’s character and casting bothered me SO MUCH but i haven’t seen anyone else say anything about it!!! like it is certainly a Choice to cast the trans woman as the evil doctor forcing surgeries on the youth to control them. like. why did no one in the casting crew maybe think that one through😭
It's a specific casting and character writing problem I've seen in media recently where the writer/casting director gives a character a certain minority status (sometimes if it's an adaptation it's a minority status that the character did not have in the source material) while not thinking through the implications that said minority status paired with that character creates. Another example that springs to my mind is in the fantastic beasts movies where the Jewish character Queenie ends up joining the wizard Nazis.
@@pengunny_ Yeah, and I don't know if they meant for Cable to be read as a trans woman (I didn't watch the movie), but I think that casting combined with how Shay looks before and after the surgery gives the impression of "We can excuse trans people, but we draw the line at tomboys," which is very weird.
I mean the character isn't trans in the book. So I don't think they specifically got a trans woman to play this role, I think they just got a popular actress from a different Netflix show to be in their movie. I mean tbh I wouldn't even know she was trans if I didn't watch Orange is the New Black.
i read this book series in late elementary/early middle school and i really do hope they make the sequels because at some point the "pretties" start intentionally looking like shojo anime characters and i really, really need to see that uncanny valley on screen with my own eyes. this isn't just a funny description i'm giving, the book genuinely says "anime" in reference to their appearance. this and a handful of other small tidbits are the only things i remember from these books at all. as a bonus i don't think they would ever put in the movie, in the sequel tally is with shay getting ready for a "pretties party" and tally asks the near magical high tech wall that dispenses whatever she could want or need for fake cigarettes for her and shay to have to match the party's theme. i do not remember the party's theme.
I want to chime in solely because I do remember: the Pretties Party was "semi-formal," and Tally was losing her Pretty little mind over not knowing what that meant. Then she got word that the theme had been changed to "Smokies," to drive home how Prettytown had successfully propagandized that the Smoke was totally over as a rebellion, and now just an entertainment phase, like "hippie" or "disco." The theme-change was a RUSE to help actual Smoke members blend in at the party on their way to Tally. :D I would also love to see the IRL anime people and the magic instant fabrication wall, too :D but thanks for unlocking that memory for me!
I thought there was going to be a point after Nose got attacked by fire where he ends up with a pretty narly scar and thus Isnt Pretty Anymore :0, and that'd be a hint of some of the commentary on how society percieves people with physical disabilities as undesireables that you mentioned in the beggining but no that would've been too interesting
Your skin is exceptionally smooth today father, please entertain us with your unique Australian witticism, such that we may enjoy entertainment to go with our food, like a king having his jester perform for the royal family's dinner
So, as a teen, I LOVED these books. The handsome actors makes sense. In the book, they are in an old library, they mention how there are magazine filled with Uglies. So, uglies are what we consider beautiful now. The pretties did not look correct. They are supposed to be otherworldly beautiful. I didn’t hate this adaptation, but I think it’s really hard to do as live action.
I do kinda get the point with the flower thing. its Prioritizing Beauty over Ecological Stability... which general fits the vibe they are going for. Ecological conservation is Not about looking good. its about Being good and sometimes Good is ugly or just not very appealing for some. But its necessary for the survival of the area. Some may think X animal is ugly/annoying and should be gone so their either exterminate them or introduce a predator into the environment. Which then goes out of control and causes a new issue to spring up in its place
I was passionately into the books as a kid as the series continued on: Uglies, Pretties, Specials, and Extras. If they had more books after that, I had aged out, but I feel like what I would have wanted from a film adaptation most was for the Pretties to be like... more STYLISTICALLY unsettling in their prettiness? Like the same uncanniness of VTubers or cutscenes in AAA video games. They are literally too pretty to be real. So, don't use real people to portray the Pretties and Specials. And yes, I would have liked there to be more visual diversity among the Uglies and the Smoke, but even as a kid I got that the dystopian message was about how enforcement of unrealistic standards would create a pathology of the ordinary. What a crime, to be regular! How dare you be a normal kid! For all its convoluted social commentary, Uglies at its core is a celebration of the warts of the world. Definitely show more warts, but also, go FUCKING WILD on showing the consequences of a world without warts. It really is meant to evoke Handsome Squidward energy, but the movie should have doubled, tripled, quadrupled down on that until they had an amazing and visually distinct aesthetic going on.
I feel like having the villain who's whole plan is giving people plastic surgery to destroy people's brains and make them suggestible be played by a trans woman is...like...not a good look.
since i saw withcindy talk about this movie i’ve been obsessed with it, not because i like it, more like if it was a baby born deformed in an ancient village and it was worshiped as a divine profit
Most of the talk I've seen about this movie online has been people expressing discomfort over the fact that they cast a trans woman to play a villain whose chosen method of villainy is pushing dangerous plastic surgeries on kids. I don't think it was intentional, though; I don't think anyone working on this film gave anything in it more than 2 seconds of thought
@@thedualitysystemPlus like We know the Netflix stance. They would never be any sort of phobe because that would remove their ability to use minorities in the most shallow way possible for profit
man i was completely OBSESSED with the uglies series in high school, and tbh i still think the books are infinitely more worth a read than giving the adaptation a watch. i'm not surprised at all it didn't turn out very good lmfao
I read the book and watched the movie. I just rolled my eyes at both at the overly attractive people playing ugly people, being ugly myself(or how I view myself)
So i was a huge fan of these books in middle and high school so allow me to shed some light on some of the decisions here that are not elaborated like they are in the book: 1. They are encouraged to pick out things about themselves they dislike. If I recal correctly, Tally really didnt like her nose and uneven complexion. 2. Zane (Nose) is a HUGE character in Pretties, not so much in Uglies. He just sort of generally exists and is Pretty in this first movie/book 3. The Pretties arent supposed to be inhuman. In the book they are described as having smiles that "understand you" and they make you feel loved just looking at you. 4. The Smoke (the commune) is lead by two people who used to be Pretty, the doctors trying to find the cure. Becoming Pretty gives you a lesion in your brain that dulls you into a bimbo/himbo. They want a way to get rid of it and David is one of the oldest Non-Pretty people in the area. Theres so much more to this series than this movie would have you think
THANK YOU!!! It makes me absolutely insane that so many people want the pretties to be uncanny and disturbing. The criticism of beauty is completely toothless if it doesn’t invite the audience to question what WE think of as beautiful
I'm 90% sure this is one of many YA novels I was forced to read back in middle school english classes. I've always wondered how these books got into the lesson plan...
When I was a kid, I read the first two books and liked them, but was bored by the third and never finished it. Almost 20 years later, it's both amusing and bizarre to see this seemingly-forgotten relic of the teen dystopian fiction craze rise to relevance(?) again, if only for a moment.
The uglies BOOKS were good and I’ll stand by that. I will not watch the movies and I don’t care Those books were flawed af. But good The books think regardless of how any human being looks, they need to be homogenized into one face and one body. You have multiple forced surgeries to dictate who and what you are. Netflix *_fundamentally failed_* by casting the pre-surgery people as post surgery. I’m also fairly sure in the books Nose was another girl. The pretties are supposed to look airbrushed, and their brain chemistry is _fundamentally altered_ in a way they refer to as “bubbly.” They’re for lack of a better term dumbed down and have the dimensions of their personalities removed, including attempted removal of empathy/concern for others. Pretties are engineered to have the attitude of the consumption-obsessed nouveau-riche, they’re supposed to be CONSTANTLY getting surgical, cosmetic body modifications that serve no purpose other than trend adherence to a cultish degree; the way their bodies become props demonstrating loyalty to their government and the ways deviation from following arbitrary social fads (which remember come with constant invasive surgeries they don’t find anything abnormal about- and pretties’ bodies are still human, and finite, but they have fully forgotten that. The first surgery basically degloves them, and their bones are ground down into a uniform shape, their bodies are restrung and patched back up, they get new skin. Then they build constant conflicting modifications on top of each other until they reach a predetermined “old age,” receive another mandatory surgery to become “old,” and are forcibly relocated to the place for older people (maybe called crusties but I don’t remember.)) In the Pretties book, one of the things the MC describes that I still remember was, she got an analog clock put into one of her eyes- it’s a ring of 12 little diamonds in her iris that light up the hour and minute. This is a recent trendy modification, and in her bubbly mindset, she doesn’t consider invasive surgery to put twelve diamonds into her eyeball anything serious or even remarkable, giving off the impression that if someone were to stop her she would throw a fit and be angry at being protected from something that to her and the other Pretties is considered as like, buying a new trending fashion or accessory or phone. They are engineered to completely disregard their bodies as living things, the existence of the body as a living thing is considered a part of ugliness (something something Saint Augustine’s concept of sin.) There’s a term for their like, CIA/FBI functioning people that I don’t remember rn, but the mindset they have is bioengineered again, it’s called “Icy.” They’re changed from the soft, pixar/AI cartoon bubbly smoothness of Pretties into more of the Chad faced sharp cheekbones and brutalist features- that’s another thing they got wrong with Nose’s Pretty design, while they have a VERY LIMITED range of features to choose from, they’re supposed to look like, doe eyed and facetuned and like, babified in a way. Big eyes and soft, smoothed over features; Eurocentric beauty standards run through a standardizer. They have soft rounded faces, little noses, little mouths. They’re not allowed to be over a certain height, Pretties are small and fragile, it’s stressed that they’re supposed to look like, “protectable.” The agents mostly catch anyone who tries to escape their surgery, and anyone who tries to escape their designated area, be they uglies, pretties, or crusties. The rest of the time they cruise around the Pretties urban area (it’s kind of like, a 2000s flavored vaporwave concept of “a big city”) on hoverboards, exchanging grimdark, edgelord dialogue they’ve been programmed to think is the best shit ever. They’re covered in these intricate geometric tattoos that constantly move and swirl and pulsate patterns to communicate with each other a la Humboldt squids. TW// a core part of the attitude of being Icy and staying Icy is to c*t yourself whenever you feel it “slipping.” They’re wired to feel invigorated by and derive pleasure from the pain, and it bonds them together. (Listen,, when I was a SH’ing teenager reading this, it helped me. It also made clear the glamorization of this and the ritual nature of it was superimposed on these people as part of their surgery) It was another act of state control that normalized the willful and continuous destruction and mutilation of their living bodies that they considered not only normal, not only mandatory, but desirable and something that if they were prevented from doing would ostensibly enrage them. They have sharp filed teeth. They’re given a stark, “shark-like,” almost undead appearance. I really remember /spoilers but like. All of the comment is,, sorry lmao When the MC first sees a de-surgeried person and their child who’s grown up outside of the system, and is shocked that human beings look similar to each other when they’re related. Uglies have their parents’ dna but they don’t look ANYTHING like their parents, who have gone through two mandatory surgeries by that point, first to look like beautiful AI twenty somethings, then to look like Kindly Parents. That really stuck with me, that quiet drowning horror that someone would see something so intrinsic and natural about any human beings, that we look like our families, and find it completely alien. That a child would continue to spend time with their family and not be taken away to be raised in the Uglies compound as well. The first book’s MC after going through two surgeries with two coded mental states- Bubbly then Icy- is noted by their friends to the next MC as having chosen to remain Icy despite the option to have that artificial mindset removed, and when many of the previous agents chose to discard it. In a way I didn’t know how to verbalize when I was reading it, it’s very coded as internalizing trauma and not being able to go back to how you were pre-alteration. The way the series tackles explaining comphet especially under fascism and American aesthetics is imo incredible and 100% reflected in the surgeries- crusties ARE going to be parents. Your era of being a Pretty is for partying and dating, but to be clear, there are no queer people. There are no disabled people. There are no trans people. Blackness is eerily absent from the conversation. You get your body splayed open and ground down into a “perfect” shape strictly to serve the purposes of what the state seems it best for you to be doing- frivolous hype culture, then making babies; children you’re immediately detached from as they go live in the compound; you’re not allowed to even see your parents again until you’re Pretty after a point. And they don’t want to see you until you’re Pretty either. These books probably didn’t age amazing but they meant something at the time. Seeing Netflix give them the jubilee treatment genuinely hurts. *Shay being willing to immediately sell out any resistance for her surgery is not a stretch at all. It just feels uncomfortable because many of us living in analogous ways don’t want to accept how easily we’re manipulated and how much many of us if offered this choice would do anything to make it. To lean in, all the way in, if it means we’re allowed access to that whiteness that being a Pretty calls to in the story’s universe. It’s not remotely weird for Shay, who has been conditioned since birth to think being denied being Pretty is worse than a death sentence, to immediately dismiss any resistance to the systems of the society around her, and be willing to do anything to anyone for her chance to be allowed in. That’s what fascism does to you. You’ll do anything to anyone not to be outgrouped, and to be allowed deeper in like you were promised and like was prophesied your whole life. We are not better than Shay. It’s easy to look at a story and say, “I would do the right thing.” But looking outside it and sitting with the ways that we are staying quiet, or helping the empire destroy resistance, is harder to see for what it is, and we want to rationalize what we do so we can keep feeling good. So we can keep feeling bubbly- even if it’s fake, and there’s rot right beneath it… it’s the illusion of safety and we are able to rationalize a lot of harm and evil under the need to feel safe. Would you as a heavily indoctrinated into Americana 16 year old be able to confidently stand up and resist to the face of a government agent, knowing it would destroy your entire life to protect something you at the time didn’t understand or believe in? just because a better world was possible doesn’t mean it’s one you know how to care about. Shay isn’t out of character and it isn’t a suspension of disbelief. It’s too close, and it makes us uncomfortable.
Left 7:30 I’m gonna go back to bed lol It’s not that I’m having a bad time thinking, but I’m getting fired up and I want to like, get a few hours in and cuddle my cat. I’ll be back when I’ve covered my lungs in burnt flowers ❤
Honestly this reads as a much more interesting story than whatever the hell Netflix was trying to do, and even if the likelihood of the books being shit due to the times a-changing is more likely than not, I would be interested in someone doing a more faithful adaption But also for the love of all things holy and unholy, change the names, Pretties and Uglies and Crusties make me want to die inside and wither into dust
That was a great read and does sound like it could be a genuinely fascinating base for a world (even if it comes off as a little outdated) - it's such a shame (and to be expected sadly) that Netflix didn't do it justice
As another fan of the books who cannot stomach the movie or videos about it: thank you for writing the comment I felt I needed to! All of this is very spot-on to how I felt about things. The books are fascinating and deep. The movie is just another YA "reimagining" like what they did to The Giver.
I know, I feel for her. I remember when she was a kid in The Conjuring and got a lot of praise for that role. Hopefully as she ages she'll be able to get out of the typecasting she's been stuck in since then. (Reminds me of Grace-Moretz's career, actually.)
I am always shocked when I see Joey King (main girl) in any new Netflix Slop. Like, she's a legit pretty decent actress who could definetly land better roles. Especially right now since she can convincingly play teenagers in bigger productions that can't hire actual teenagers. Like, she was amazing in Bullet Train.
I watched this on Netflix because I read the book in the eighth grade and thought it was mediocre and wanted to see how they butchered it. Glad to see some of my favourite UA-camrs caught onto it because oh boy was it Not Good.
I’m so glad I’m not the only person who had this exact reaction to this movie lmao. I sat down to watch it with my husband so we could make fun of it, which we did, but by the end both of us were like “alright so Netflix, sequel when??? Now please????”
I can't believe Kappa finally confided in us about the five grisly murders between 1976 and 1981 that he and his close relatives were responsible for. Great video, Kappa! EDIT: OK I also have to talk about the movie because I saw it when it was released and it was, in fact, hilarious. Aside from the fact that Netflix is ten years too late on the YA Dystopia train, I'm glad someone saw that one image set of the bimbo picking up a book and decided to turn that into an entire trilogy of teen romance novels.
There is something to say that the plot is paralleling how social media and the modern beauty industry makes us feel like we're ugly, irrelevant to if that's even true without even divorcing that from subjectivity and modern standards... Though I think that's giving the movie more credit than it's worth.
my understanding is that that was the intention of the original books, but it was in a time before social media - for as long as the beauty industry has existed, companies have been finding ways to make consumers feel like they can only be beautiful with their products. the issues it was criticizing have just been continuing to get worse in the 20 years since it was published, as the internet and social media have blurred the line between people whose literal job is to maintain their appearance and everyone else, as well as crowdsourcing beauty product advertising by incentivizing regular people to promote products through sponsorships (which means more people are motivated to make you feel like you need beauty products to be accepted)
This is exactly how I feel about Cats. It's an objectively terrible, aggressively horny, disturbing fever dream but goddamn, I love it so much. I've seen it at least 5 times and until earlier this year, it was the last movie I saw in theaters since before the pandemic.
4:09 the interesting this was the series actually came out before the hunger games… in-fact it pretty much predates most of the early 00s youth dystopian genre, and was “inspiration “ for allot of them.
17:43 Yes you have, you just don't remember your dreams, which is pretty common. There've been experiments where people were given drugs to suppress REM sleep, and thus dreaming, and they observed noticeable cognitive decline within about a month.
I found that remembering my dreams became more frequent the warmer I was while sleeping. I believe it has a lot to do with where you are in your sleep cycle when you wake up and, for me at least, being mildly too warm probably got me up just a bit sooner than I would have naturally. Also: melatonin contributed to ending a long-standing dream (remembering) drought for me, but apparently it gives some people horrendous nightmares.
Some believe that if Michael Jackson hadn't died from the drugs when he did, he would have only lived another month or so anyway because the drugs were messing with his sleep.
Uglies is my favorite dystopian novel, I read it as a kid and most other dystopian novels I read after that didnt live up to it in my opinion. I'm reticent to watch the movie bc I dont want to have a book I enjoyed ruined, bc I simply dont trust filmmakers with dystopias anymore. But if I'm hearing I should watch it in a "its sucks you have to try this" way, maybe I will
You say the book isn’t that bad but in the sequel Shay gets high off of adrenaline from s/h so she basically makes a cult about it (called the Cutters, very classy). Also there’s like a hunter gatherer tribe they find in the woods and one of them may or may not be a love interest for Tally but idk because i hated his character so much that 14 year old me never read the series again
listening to all these videos describing the adaptation feels like im being gaslit about the books. surely i didnt invent from whole cloth dozens of sensible plot points? did i...?
as someone with actually squinty, small asian eyes, i feel seen, heard, and validated once again. call me squinty, people. am i squinting or my eyes are just small? we will never know (lma0).
i recently read another book by the same author, peeps. really cool and interesting take on vampires. similarly dated in parts but the guy has talent. it's a shame to see netflix hungers-gamesify it :')
Ngl they did a good job with the pretties But that's just an opinion from someone who read the book Although her name is supposed to be squint cause she is supposed to wear glasses
I remember reading this book series when I was young and really loving it, so it's good to hear I don't have to watch the movie and face the plot that I thought was top-tier at age 12
I always wanted a TV show of the unwind series. This video has made me rethink that, considering how bad of a job Hollywood would do with a story like that.
When i watched this movie, my brother and I spent like 4 hours just talking about the differences between the movie and book. Genuinely wild some of the random shit they decided to change.
a weird byproduct of “the uglies” is that its actually one of fewer examples of just what people look like. and not that they are meh more like they are all different and normal and there is so much beauty in that. im aslo stonned idk
This was my favorite ya dystopia as a middle school girl. Not because I related to the main character at all, but because I really wanted to have the perfect surgery and get fingernails as strong as steel. I would spend hours thinking about all the cool body mods I’d get and how smooth driving on the magnetic roads would be. Someone got gemstones in their eyes that worked as a clock. I kinda fell off at the end because I didn’t want the good guys to win and I didn’t care about the romance lol
Can't believe Kappa revealed he was in a polyamorous triad with Onision and YandereDev at the end of the video. That was definitely a twist I didn't see coming.
THE TRIAD!!
Was it worth the wait?
@@Khandrake everything I needed and more.
Hahahah.
Seriously? Well now i simply must wach the video till the very end
It’s a shame cause in the books the “pretties” are supposed to be basically horrific in their “perfection”. Like if they got addicted to plastic surgery, with overly sharp cheek bones and shit. The point kinda being that the “uglies” are actually just normal, often attractive, people.
The pretties should get buccal fat removal is not the take I expected to see today but you're right
Idk they look pretty scary in this movie
You’re remembering slightly wrong- the horrific faces with ultra-sharp cheekbones are called Specials. The Pretties are deliberately soft, innocent, and nonthreatening looking
There was also a whole thing about drinking your own purified pee
@ thanks for the correction! Haven’t read those books in like a decade lol
baby wake up, depressed librarian posted another movie
I remember reading the books back in 09 and thinking, "They BETTER not make a movie. They'd make the 'Uglies' Hollywood gorgeous and it would undercut everything." 15 years later, when I thought it was safely forgotten...
ooooooh so you did this! okay okay
The Pretties and Specials in the movie do look silly, but I think they should have leaned into the unnatural look even more. The book actually has Tally compare our beauty standards with the Pretties, and she finds our models and celebrities ugly. The Pretties are all wide-eyed homogenized caricatures, and the Specials are a sharp, dangerous, wolflike kind of beauty.
It's also silly how central they made Nose (Peris) in the movie when he's a minor character in the books and not even part of the complicated love triangle.
Also, does anyone else question the decision to cast a trans woman as the evil scientist trying to control society with forced cosmetic surgery?
OH MY GOD THANK YOU!!!! i watched this movie with a friend and Cable’s character and casting bothered me SO MUCH but i haven’t seen anyone else say anything about it!!! like it is certainly a Choice to cast the trans woman as the evil doctor forcing surgeries on the youth to control them. like. why did no one in the casting crew maybe think that one through😭
It's a specific casting and character writing problem I've seen in media recently where the writer/casting director gives a character a certain minority status (sometimes if it's an adaptation it's a minority status that the character did not have in the source material) while not thinking through the implications that said minority status paired with that character creates. Another example that springs to my mind is in the fantastic beasts movies where the Jewish character Queenie ends up joining the wizard Nazis.
@@pengunny_ Yeah, and I don't know if they meant for Cable to be read as a trans woman (I didn't watch the movie), but I think that casting combined with how Shay looks before and after the surgery gives the impression of "We can excuse trans people, but we draw the line at tomboys," which is very weird.
Yesss thank you for talking about this
I mean the character isn't trans in the book. So I don't think they specifically got a trans woman to play this role, I think they just got a popular actress from a different Netflix show to be in their movie. I mean tbh I wouldn't even know she was trans if I didn't watch Orange is the New Black.
as someone who was once a teenage girl, you have our energy. you have the enthusiasm. the obsession. one of us. one of us.
ONE OF US
ONE OF US
I'm not sure if "having teenage girl energy" would be a compliment, insult, or a threat.
It's a threat
@@Teriiiyakiii yeah. it's pretty harrowing
> "grandpa it's me"
> "your son"
truly the pinnacle of video descriptions
"I enter my kitchen more ready to overthrow a fascist overlord."
Relatable
Shay and Tally should’ve been “roommates”
(vine voice) oh my god they were roommates
💯
Literally YES
i read this book series in late elementary/early middle school and i really do hope they make the sequels because at some point the "pretties" start intentionally looking like shojo anime characters and i really, really need to see that uncanny valley on screen with my own eyes. this isn't just a funny description i'm giving, the book genuinely says "anime" in reference to their appearance. this and a handful of other small tidbits are the only things i remember from these books at all. as a bonus i don't think they would ever put in the movie, in the sequel tally is with shay getting ready for a "pretties party" and tally asks the near magical high tech wall that dispenses whatever she could want or need for fake cigarettes for her and shay to have to match the party's theme. i do not remember the party's theme.
I want to chime in solely because I do remember: the Pretties Party was "semi-formal," and Tally was losing her Pretty little mind over not knowing what that meant. Then she got word that the theme had been changed to "Smokies," to drive home how Prettytown had successfully propagandized that the Smoke was totally over as a rebellion, and now just an entertainment phase, like "hippie" or "disco." The theme-change was a RUSE to help actual Smoke members blend in at the party on their way to Tally. :D
I would also love to see the IRL anime people and the magic instant fabrication wall, too :D but thanks for unlocking that memory for me!
Oh my god yes
holy shit it shouldn't have been snapchat filters. They should've used kigurumi masks for the pretties
cigarette party...
I thought there was going to be a point after Nose got attacked by fire where he ends up with a pretty narly scar and thus Isnt Pretty Anymore :0, and that'd be a hint of some of the commentary on how society percieves people with physical disabilities as undesireables that you mentioned in the beggining but no that would've been too interesting
Your skin is exceptionally smooth today father, please entertain us with your unique Australian witticism, such that we may enjoy entertainment to go with our food, like a king having his jester perform for the royal family's dinner
you're so real for this LMAO
how dare you slander the world renowned, award winning piece of cinema The Cat in the Hat (2003)
So, as a teen, I LOVED these books. The handsome actors makes sense. In the book, they are in an old library, they mention how there are magazine filled with Uglies. So, uglies are what we consider beautiful now. The pretties did not look correct. They are supposed to be otherworldly beautiful. I didn’t hate this adaptation, but I think it’s really hard to do as live action.
I do kinda get the point with the flower thing.
its Prioritizing Beauty over Ecological Stability... which general fits the vibe they are going for.
Ecological conservation is Not about looking good. its about Being good and sometimes Good is ugly or just not very appealing for some. But its necessary for the survival of the area.
Some may think X animal is ugly/annoying and should be gone so their either exterminate them or introduce a predator into the environment. Which then goes out of control and causes a new issue to spring up in its place
National Parks. Untouched wilderness myth. Yes, I agree.
I unironically would be interested in seeing your collection(?) Of bound books with custom covers.
It sounds sick as hell!
Interesting thing. The book actually predates Hunger Games and came out the same year as Twilight.
the ugly alarm made me snort, that is unreasonably funny to me
15:56 can’t believe they didn’t CG her eyes to be twice their size
Did not realize acting like an elder who needs to be in a home would be a respectable creative choice but here we are.
I was passionately into the books as a kid as the series continued on: Uglies, Pretties, Specials, and Extras. If they had more books after that, I had aged out, but I feel like what I would have wanted from a film adaptation most was for the Pretties to be like... more STYLISTICALLY unsettling in their prettiness? Like the same uncanniness of VTubers or cutscenes in AAA video games. They are literally too pretty to be real. So, don't use real people to portray the Pretties and Specials. And yes, I would have liked there to be more visual diversity among the Uglies and the Smoke, but even as a kid I got that the dystopian message was about how enforcement of unrealistic standards would create a pathology of the ordinary. What a crime, to be regular! How dare you be a normal kid!
For all its convoluted social commentary, Uglies at its core is a celebration of the warts of the world. Definitely show more warts, but also, go FUCKING WILD on showing the consequences of a world without warts. It really is meant to evoke Handsome Squidward energy, but the movie should have doubled, tripled, quadrupled down on that until they had an amazing and visually distinct aesthetic going on.
I feel like having the villain who's whole plan is giving people plastic surgery to destroy people's brains and make them suggestible be played by a trans woman is...like...not a good look.
This really is the least viewed video on his channel
This really is the least liked top comment on his videos
@@SilharaTheChosenpoetry.
@taylorc565 This really is the least reply on this comment
my mom made us watch this movie and it was the first time i ever saw her go to dislike something on netflix after watching it
Lol 😂 that is such a statement
Haha 😅 those are definitely words you typed
since i saw withcindy talk about this movie i’ve been obsessed with it, not because i like it, more like if it was a baby born deformed in an ancient village and it was worshiped as a divine profit
Most of the talk I've seen about this movie online has been people expressing discomfort over the fact that they cast a trans woman to play a villain whose chosen method of villainy is pushing dangerous plastic surgeries on kids. I don't think it was intentional, though; I don't think anyone working on this film gave anything in it more than 2 seconds of thought
She WAS already a popular actress for Netflix. So it was probably just easier to cast her.
@@thedualitysystemPlus like
We know the Netflix stance.
They would never be any sort of phobe because that would remove their ability to use minorities in the most shallow way possible for profit
I mean, art reflects life, whether consciously or not.
I too have PTSD with clowns, mainly the one from the IT.
The clowns from the IT 🖥department 🤣
So does everyone else. Literally everyone.
Cant believe Kappa admitted to committing mass murder and celebrating getting into the quadruple digits.
I know you said 'heroes' at 12:38 but it sounded like you said 'heteros' and it felt really on point
man i was completely OBSESSED with the uglies series in high school, and tbh i still think the books are infinitely more worth a read than giving the adaptation a watch. i'm not surprised at all it didn't turn out very good lmfao
I read the book and watched the movie. I just rolled my eyes at both at the overly attractive people playing ugly people, being ugly myself(or how I view myself)
Westerfield's Leviathan trilogy is great so he did improved after Uglies. Go read it!
Ngl Laverne Cox, being the head honcho, is a slay. I love her.
The Cat in the Hat is a masterpiece of surreal horror, the only problem is that that wasn't remotely what they were going for.
So i was a huge fan of these books in middle and high school so allow me to shed some light on some of the decisions here that are not elaborated like they are in the book:
1. They are encouraged to pick out things about themselves they dislike. If I recal correctly, Tally really didnt like her nose and uneven complexion.
2. Zane (Nose) is a HUGE character in Pretties, not so much in Uglies. He just sort of generally exists and is Pretty in this first movie/book
3. The Pretties arent supposed to be inhuman. In the book they are described as having smiles that "understand you" and they make you feel loved just looking at you.
4. The Smoke (the commune) is lead by two people who used to be Pretty, the doctors trying to find the cure. Becoming Pretty gives you a lesion in your brain that dulls you into a bimbo/himbo. They want a way to get rid of it and David is one of the oldest Non-Pretty people in the area.
Theres so much more to this series than this movie would have you think
THANK YOU!!! It makes me absolutely insane that so many people want the pretties to be uncanny and disturbing. The criticism of beauty is completely toothless if it doesn’t invite the audience to question what WE think of as beautiful
@@gaphicThe thing is, they went halfway on uncanny here. So it doesn't satisfy uncanny OR actually pretty
I'm 90% sure this is one of many YA novels I was forced to read back in middle school english classes.
I've always wondered how these books got into the lesson plan...
When I was a kid, I read the first two books and liked them, but was bored by the third and never finished it. Almost 20 years later, it's both amusing and bizarre to see this seemingly-forgotten relic of the teen dystopian fiction craze rise to relevance(?) again, if only for a moment.
"Everyone has brain damage" is one way to excuse bad writing.
4:49 what in the Bogdanoff
😂
i love obscure references i actually understand
Le Twins
Ohhh it's unusual to get an actual recommendation from these. Very exciting!
-Take the medicine, grandpa.-
You have to love a setting in which the Bogdanoffs would be actual supermen
The uglies BOOKS were good and I’ll stand by that. I will not watch the movies and I don’t care
Those books were flawed af. But good
The books think regardless of how any human being looks, they need to be homogenized into one face and one body. You have multiple forced surgeries to dictate who and what you are.
Netflix *_fundamentally failed_* by casting the pre-surgery people as post surgery.
I’m also fairly sure in the books Nose was another girl.
The pretties are supposed to look airbrushed, and their brain chemistry is _fundamentally altered_ in a way they refer to as “bubbly.” They’re for lack of a better term dumbed down and have the dimensions of their personalities removed, including attempted removal of empathy/concern for others. Pretties are engineered to have the attitude of the consumption-obsessed nouveau-riche, they’re supposed to be CONSTANTLY getting surgical, cosmetic body modifications that serve no purpose other than trend adherence to a cultish degree; the way their bodies become props demonstrating loyalty to their government and the ways deviation from following arbitrary social fads (which remember come with constant invasive surgeries they don’t find anything abnormal about- and pretties’ bodies are still human, and finite, but they have fully forgotten that. The first surgery basically degloves them, and their bones are ground down into a uniform shape, their bodies are restrung and patched back up, they get new skin. Then they build constant conflicting modifications on top of each other until they reach a predetermined “old age,” receive another mandatory surgery to become “old,” and are forcibly relocated to the place for older people (maybe called crusties but I don’t remember.)) In the Pretties book, one of the things the MC describes that I still remember was, she got an analog clock put into one of her eyes- it’s a ring of 12 little diamonds in her iris that light up the hour and minute. This is a recent trendy modification, and in her bubbly mindset, she doesn’t consider invasive surgery to put twelve diamonds into her eyeball anything serious or even remarkable, giving off the impression that if someone were to stop her she would throw a fit and be angry at being protected from something that to her and the other Pretties is considered as like, buying a new trending fashion or accessory or phone. They are engineered to completely disregard their bodies as living things, the existence of the body as a living thing is considered a part of ugliness (something something Saint Augustine’s concept of sin.)
There’s a term for their like, CIA/FBI functioning people that I don’t remember rn, but the mindset they have is bioengineered again, it’s called “Icy.” They’re changed from the soft, pixar/AI cartoon bubbly smoothness of Pretties into more of the Chad faced sharp cheekbones and brutalist features- that’s another thing they got wrong with Nose’s Pretty design, while they have a VERY LIMITED range of features to choose from, they’re supposed to look like, doe eyed and facetuned and like, babified in a way. Big eyes and soft, smoothed over features; Eurocentric beauty standards run through a standardizer. They have soft rounded faces, little noses, little mouths. They’re not allowed to be over a certain height, Pretties are small and fragile, it’s stressed that they’re supposed to look like, “protectable.”
The agents mostly catch anyone who tries to escape their surgery, and anyone who tries to escape their designated area, be they uglies, pretties, or crusties. The rest of the time they cruise around the Pretties urban area (it’s kind of like, a 2000s flavored vaporwave concept of “a big city”) on hoverboards, exchanging grimdark, edgelord dialogue they’ve been programmed to think is the best shit ever. They’re covered in these intricate geometric tattoos that constantly move and swirl and pulsate patterns to communicate with each other a la Humboldt squids. TW// a core part of the attitude of being Icy and staying Icy is to c*t yourself whenever you feel it “slipping.” They’re wired to feel invigorated by and derive pleasure from the pain, and it bonds them together. (Listen,, when I was a SH’ing teenager reading this, it helped me. It also made clear the glamorization of this and the ritual nature of it was superimposed on these people as part of their surgery) It was another act of state control that normalized the willful and continuous destruction and mutilation of their living bodies that they considered not only normal, not only mandatory, but desirable and something that if they were prevented from doing would ostensibly enrage them.
They have sharp filed teeth. They’re given a stark, “shark-like,” almost undead appearance.
I really remember /spoilers but like. All of the comment is,, sorry lmao
When the MC first sees a de-surgeried person and their child who’s grown up outside of the system, and is shocked that human beings look similar to each other when they’re related. Uglies have their parents’ dna but they don’t look ANYTHING like their parents, who have gone through two mandatory surgeries by that point, first to look like beautiful AI twenty somethings, then to look like Kindly Parents.
That really stuck with me, that quiet drowning horror that someone would see something so intrinsic and natural about any human beings, that we look like our families, and find it completely alien. That a child would continue to spend time with their family and not be taken away to be raised in the Uglies compound as well.
The first book’s MC after going through two surgeries with two coded mental states- Bubbly then Icy- is noted by their friends to the next MC as having chosen to remain Icy despite the option to have that artificial mindset removed, and when many of the previous agents chose to discard it. In a way I didn’t know how to verbalize when I was reading it, it’s very coded as internalizing trauma and not being able to go back to how you were pre-alteration.
The way the series tackles explaining comphet especially under fascism and American aesthetics is imo incredible and 100% reflected in the surgeries- crusties ARE going to be parents. Your era of being a Pretty is for partying and dating, but to be clear, there are no queer people. There are no disabled people. There are no trans people. Blackness is eerily absent from the conversation. You get your body splayed open and ground down into a “perfect” shape strictly to serve the purposes of what the state seems it best for you to be doing- frivolous hype culture, then making babies; children you’re immediately detached from as they go live in the compound; you’re not allowed to even see your parents again until you’re Pretty after a point. And they don’t want to see you until you’re Pretty either.
These books probably didn’t age amazing but they meant something at the time. Seeing Netflix give them the jubilee treatment genuinely hurts.
*Shay being willing to immediately sell out any resistance for her surgery is not a stretch at all. It just feels uncomfortable because many of us living in analogous ways don’t want to accept how easily we’re manipulated and how much many of us if offered this choice would do anything to make it. To lean in, all the way in, if it means we’re allowed access to that whiteness that being a Pretty calls to in the story’s universe.
It’s not remotely weird for Shay, who has been conditioned since birth to think being denied being Pretty is worse than a death sentence, to immediately dismiss any resistance to the systems of the society around her, and be willing to do anything to anyone for her chance to be allowed in. That’s what fascism does to you. You’ll do anything to anyone not to be outgrouped, and to be allowed deeper in like you were promised and like was prophesied your whole life. We are not better than Shay. It’s easy to look at a story and say, “I would do the right thing.” But looking outside it and sitting with the ways that we are staying quiet, or helping the empire destroy resistance, is harder to see for what it is, and we want to rationalize what we do so we can keep feeling good. So we can keep feeling bubbly- even if it’s fake, and there’s rot right beneath it… it’s the illusion of safety and we are able to rationalize a lot of harm and evil under the need to feel safe. Would you as a heavily indoctrinated into Americana 16 year old be able to confidently stand up and resist to the face of a government agent, knowing it would destroy your entire life to protect something you at the time didn’t understand or believe in? just because a better world was possible doesn’t mean it’s one you know how to care about. Shay isn’t out of character and it isn’t a suspension of disbelief. It’s too close, and it makes us uncomfortable.
Left 7:30 I’m gonna go back to bed lol
It’s not that I’m having a bad time thinking, but I’m getting fired up and I want to like, get a few hours in and cuddle my cat. I’ll be back when I’ve covered my lungs in burnt flowers ❤
Honestly this reads as a much more interesting story than whatever the hell Netflix was trying to do, and even if the likelihood of the books being shit due to the times a-changing is more likely than not, I would be interested in someone doing a more faithful adaption
But also for the love of all things holy and unholy, change the names, Pretties and Uglies and Crusties make me want to die inside and wither into dust
Just wanted to say thank you for writing this, it was a great read and I agree completely.
That was a great read and does sound like it could be a genuinely fascinating base for a world (even if it comes off as a little outdated) - it's such a shame (and to be expected sadly) that Netflix didn't do it justice
As another fan of the books who cannot stomach the movie or videos about it: thank you for writing the comment I felt I needed to!
All of this is very spot-on to how I felt about things. The books are fascinating and deep. The movie is just another YA "reimagining" like what they did to The Giver.
joey king is the queen of contemporary b-movie shlock for real i swear shes in every single one of these
I know, I feel for her. I remember when she was a kid in The Conjuring and got a lot of praise for that role. Hopefully as she ages she'll be able to get out of the typecasting she's been stuck in since then. (Reminds me of Grace-Moretz's career, actually.)
I am always shocked when I see Joey King (main girl) in any new Netflix Slop. Like, she's a legit pretty decent actress who could definetly land better roles.
Especially right now since she can convincingly play teenagers in bigger productions that can't hire actual teenagers. Like, she was amazing in Bullet Train.
I watched this on Netflix because I read the book in the eighth grade and thought it was mediocre and wanted to see how they butchered it. Glad to see some of my favourite UA-camrs caught onto it because oh boy was it Not Good.
I’m so glad I’m not the only person who had this exact reaction to this movie lmao. I sat down to watch it with my husband so we could make fun of it, which we did, but by the end both of us were like “alright so Netflix, sequel when??? Now please????”
I can't believe Kappa finally confided in us about the five grisly murders between 1976 and 1981 that he and his close relatives were responsible for. Great video, Kappa!
EDIT: OK I also have to talk about the movie because I saw it when it was released and it was, in fact, hilarious. Aside from the fact that Netflix is ten years too late on the YA Dystopia train, I'm glad someone saw that one image set of the bimbo picking up a book and decided to turn that into an entire trilogy of teen romance novels.
According to other comments here, it might be a quadrilogy?
There is something to say that the plot is paralleling how social media and the modern beauty industry makes us feel like we're ugly, irrelevant to if that's even true without even divorcing that from subjectivity and modern standards... Though I think that's giving the movie more credit than it's worth.
my understanding is that that was the intention of the original books, but it was in a time before social media - for as long as the beauty industry has existed, companies have been finding ways to make consumers feel like they can only be beautiful with their products. the issues it was criticizing have just been continuing to get worse in the 20 years since it was published, as the internet and social media have blurred the line between people whose literal job is to maintain their appearance and everyone else, as well as crowdsourcing beauty product advertising by incentivizing regular people to promote products through sponsorships (which means more people are motivated to make you feel like you need beauty products to be accepted)
This is exactly how I feel about Cats. It's an objectively terrible, aggressively horny, disturbing fever dream but goddamn, I love it so much. I've seen it at least 5 times and until earlier this year, it was the last movie I saw in theaters since before the pandemic.
What even is time anymore? I swear Cats came out 2 holidays ago.
You shloud really look up "Human Ken" from Brazil, you will love it
bro, we need a 5h story of yandere simulator part 2.
4:09 the interesting this was the series actually came out before the hunger games… in-fact it pretty much predates most of the early 00s youth dystopian genre, and was “inspiration “ for allot of them.
17:43 Yes you have, you just don't remember your dreams, which is pretty common. There've been experiments where people were given drugs to suppress REM sleep, and thus dreaming, and they observed noticeable cognitive decline within about a month.
I found that remembering my dreams became more frequent the warmer I was while sleeping. I believe it has a lot to do with where you are in your sleep cycle when you wake up and, for me at least, being mildly too warm probably got me up just a bit sooner than I would have naturally. Also: melatonin contributed to ending a long-standing dream (remembering) drought for me, but apparently it gives some people horrendous nightmares.
@@lhei_tayuun melatonin is just a hormone the body naturally produces to make us sleepy though, i kinda doubt it gives people nightmares
Some believe that if Michael Jackson hadn't died from the drugs when he did, he would have only lived another month or so anyway because the drugs were messing with his sleep.
11:25 Austria mentioned! Heck yeah 😤
This movie was written by a Wattpad girlie and I won't hear anything else
Please, I'd love to see your customized books!
Uglies is my favorite dystopian novel, I read it as a kid and most other dystopian novels I read after that didnt live up to it in my opinion. I'm reticent to watch the movie bc I dont want to have a book I enjoyed ruined, bc I simply dont trust filmmakers with dystopias anymore. But if I'm hearing I should watch it in a "its sucks you have to try this" way, maybe I will
You say the book isn’t that bad but in the sequel Shay gets high off of adrenaline from s/h so she basically makes a cult about it (called the Cutters, very classy). Also there’s like a hunter gatherer tribe they find in the woods and one of them may or may not be a love interest for Tally but idk because i hated his character so much that 14 year old me never read the series again
You should have been in the movie
11:24 As an Australian who lives in Austria, this was a deeply relatable moment
I would have never heard about this trainwreck of a movie if not for this video. Thanks!
Can't believe this is his most veiwed video
I've actually heard the book isn't too bad
4:56 Woah, is that a clip of Kavinsky -- Nightcall? Great music taste!
This depressed librarian has no right to be as condescending as he is, but he’s just so good at it, you can’t even be mad 😂
Loved the video Kappa! Do you think you'll ever bust out the three-piece suit again?
^ this
The way I should be asleep or doing homework rn and yet. Here I am.
Babe wake up kappa kaiju posted a new video
I enjoyed the novels when i was a young adult. I would hate the movie.
Seems odd to make this film now and not in the young adult movie craze
Oh My God. I've missed you!
listening to all these videos describing the adaptation feels like im being gaslit about the books. surely i didnt invent from whole cloth dozens of sensible plot points? did i...?
as someone with actually squinty, small asian eyes, i feel seen, heard, and validated once again. call me squinty, people. am i squinting or my eyes are just small? we will never know (lma0).
Oh hey, I haven't seen your channel pop up in the recommended since Slazo was around. Pretty cool to see you're still going strong.
I think we can all agree that Joey King needs a better agent
this is very well timed because i can sleep rn 😭
why am I actually intrigued by the title lol
i just wanna say i like the writing of this video
Literally arrived at zero likes and it started with the least viewed video joke
my mother is addicted to these movies except she watches them unironically and i find them hilarious
Welcome back father figure
I thought this would be about "The Substance", although it's probably "the BEST film you probably SHOULDNT watch"
Gotta love the 3am posting
he's aussie, and its about 9pm here. which i will admit is also strange just for different reasons 😭
I'm so glad that two UA-camrs I love made videos about my new favorite movie
"I haven't dreamt in maybe 12 years now" Kappa confirmed member of the Adeptus Custodes.
i recently read another book by the same author, peeps. really cool and interesting take on vampires. similarly dated in parts but the guy has talent. it's a shame to see netflix hungers-gamesify it :')
Zoolander dystopia....zoo...lander....dys...topia
Holy fuck its zootopia
Plans this afternoon? I'm watching this while I meal prep brother I got no time. Brighter Shores is out!
ENGAGEMENT COMMENT FOR THE ALGORITHM
Hi from Pakenham!
the only thing i know about Pakenham is car megamart just letting you know
Ngl they did a good job with the pretties
But that's just an opinion from someone who read the book
Although her name is supposed to be squint cause she is supposed to wear glasses
I remember reading this book series when I was young and really loving it, so it's good to hear I don't have to watch the movie and face the plot that I thought was top-tier at age 12
Oh thank god another video I THIRST for MY KING
I always wanted a TV show of the unwind series. This video has made me rethink that, considering how bad of a job Hollywood would do with a story like that.
When i watched this movie, my brother and I spent like 4 hours just talking about the differences between the movie and book. Genuinely wild some of the random shit they decided to change.
a weird byproduct of “the uglies” is that its actually one of fewer examples of just what people look like. and not that they are meh more like they are all different and normal and there is so much beauty in that.
im aslo stonned idk
UA-camrs love/hating YA fiction adaptations is a genre I miss dearly. Thank you for this blessing.
This was my favorite ya dystopia as a middle school girl. Not because I related to the main character at all, but because I really wanted to have the perfect surgery and get fingernails as strong as steel. I would spend hours thinking about all the cool body mods I’d get and how smooth driving on the magnetic roads would be. Someone got gemstones in their eyes that worked as a clock. I kinda fell off at the end because I didn’t want the good guys to win and I didn’t care about the romance lol
welcome back to my recommended feed, librarian jesus. nice to see you again.
I thought "The Uglies" was just another Gossip Girl ripoff, I didn't know it was "Dystopian teen melodrama number 4500"