At long last, fans of Uglies, Scott Westerfeld’s iconic 2005 YA dystopian novel, have received the long-awaited screen adaptation. Somehow, Westerfeld’s series—a teen-targeted social commentary on beauty standards and our collective obsession with them—was skipped over in the late-aughts-to-early-2010s era of making movies out of bestselling postapocalyptic YA novels that gave us franchises like The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Maze Runner. Now, Netflix is trying to right that decades-long wrong with the film version of Uglies, which debuted in the second most-watched spot on the streaming platform just last week.
However, it might not be as “right” as Netflix and fans would have hoped, considering the film sports a mere 14 percent critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes. Where did Netflix go wrong? Was it the classic struggle to stay faithful to its source material—or something else entirely? While there’s no definitive answer to the latter question, we can certainly help with the former. Below is a breakdown of the most significant differences and similarities between Netflix’s adaptation and Westerfeld’s beloved book.
Peris
One of the film’s most fundamental changes involves Peris (Chase Stokes). He is one of the most integral characters in Uglies, not because he’s in most of it—in fact, in the books, the character is nowhere to be found after chapter 15 of 50—but because he is one of the driving factors behind every decision that protagonist Tally (Joey King) makes. In the book, Peris may be mostly absent, but even as a “Pretty”—the term for adolescents who have received cosmetic surgery to become “pretty” when they turn 16, as opposed to “Uglies,” who still haven’t undergone this society’s coming-of-age procedure—he is still kind whenever he does appear. During the opening party scene, Book Peris isn’t entirely dismissive of his and Tally’s friendship; instead he begs Tally to not jeopardize their future friendship as Pretties by doing anything ill-advised. When asked if they’re best friends, he says “Sure, forever,” before adding, “In three months,” when Tally is scheduled to have the operation that will make her a Pretty. Additionally, Peris’ matching best-friend scar he has with Tally was removed, but not by his own choice.
Movie Peris is colder, looking down on Tally when she ambushes him at the party. When she brings up their promise to remain “best friends forever,” he responds: “Maybe we will be … in, what, two months?” His snide remarks continue with another small, yet meaningful, change: His matching best-friend scar with Tally is removed involuntarily in the book, but in the film, he chooses to remove the scar. Screen Peris explains that, after waking up post-surgery, he realized he “just didn’t really want it anymore.”
The film adaptation’s decision to make Peris more callous lays the groundwork for what may be the biggest change between the two versions: While Book Peris is absent for most of the book, Movie Peris not only returns, but he becomes a “Special”—a modified superhuman version of a Pretty that essentially acts as an indestructible weapon—and is mentally programmed to attack Tally and the “Smokies,” the community of city defectors who refused the surgery and left to live off the lush land far beyond the city borders (called the Smoke). In the end, Peris plummets off a very precarious ledge, but Specials are known to be somewhat indestructible, so it’s likely he survives and might come back for a potential sequel.
The Love Triangle
One of the better changes the movie makes involves the character Shay (Brianne Tju), Tally’s mischief-loving best friend who convinces her to join the Smoke. Their humble beginnings are mostly the same in both versions—they have fun breaking the rules, but there’s a subtext of deep angst while Shay struggles to explain to Pretty-pilled Tally that she doesn’t want the operation. The change comes when the story moves to the Smoke.
In the book, as is normal for a YA dystopian novel, Tally forms a romance with David (Keith Powers), the leader and recruiter of the Smoke. Naturally, Shay also harbors feelings for David and resents Tally for capturing his attention and his heart. This is a starting factor in Shay’s eventual distrust of Tally, culminating in the former bestie convincing herself that Tally had betrayed them. (She turns out to be right, of course.) But it also leaves Book Shay uttering some fairly ridiculous lines during moments of peril, such as, “Stealing my boyfriend wasn’t enough? You had to betray the whole Smoke!” (Let the record show that David hadn’t returned Shay’s feelings in any real, meaningful way. There was no “boyfriend” to “steal”!) Having Shay, a certified badass, become so uncharacteristically petty over a boy? Well, it’s certainly a choice.
Thankfully, in 2024’s Uglies, Shay gets a much-needed tuneup. She could have feelings for David, but if so, she doesn’t voice them. What matters more to this Shay than what Tally chooses to do with David is rather for Tally to simply make a definitive choice: stay with the Smoke, or return to her old life. In the movie, Shay trusts Tally until the protagonist’s dirty little secret is revealed. Ultimately, getting rid of the book’s needless, childish love triangle enhances the greater story. There’s more apocalypse-level drama to worry about.
SpagBol
Ah, yes, SpagBol—the phrase known far and wide by Westerfeld fans. SpagBol, short for Spaghetti Bolognese, is the dehydrated food that Dr. Cable (Laverne Cox) gives Tally as rations for her journey to spy on the Smoke. In the book, Tally is disappointed to find that every food pouch she was sent away with (two weeks’ worth) is all the same: SpagBol for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
But the packets become an important element in the story, because in the Smoke, trading and bartering is an important foundation of their economy, and dehydrated food—which is hard to come by out in the wilderness—is highly valuable. In the book, Tally realizes that the timeline of her trek to find the hidden society in the wilds doesn’t make sense—that, if she had left of her own accord, instead of being manipulated by Dr. Cable into starting her traitorous journey, she would have left days earlier. But Croy, a Smokie who remains skeptical of Tally’s intentions and the timing of her arrival, notices she has a lot of pasta left for someone who was out in the elements for as long as she claims to have been. So there you have it: SpagBol isn’t just a fun word to say—and one that appears in the book 34 times, if I’m counting my e-book search results correctly—it actually plays a role in the plot.
By contrast, in the movie, SpagBol is never even mentioned by name. Instead, it shows up with a quick cameo during a montage of Tally’s hellish journey braving the elements to find the Smoke.
The Boss
Look, world-building on screen is never going to match up to world-building on the page. Still, short on time, the adaptation of Uglies cuts a lot of interesting bits out. One omission is the book character called “The Boss,” who is in charge of the library. The Boss is surly, but a great link to showing readers how our actual society compares to this fictional dystopian one. He provides the characters with access to resources like magazines, through which Shay and Tally realize that being pretty used to be a job, one that came along with eating disorders and more.
The Reveal
Outside of Peris’ fate, the film’s other big change from the source material is the climax in which Tally’s secret is revealed. In the book, when the Smokies are captured, they’re detained together for a little while, but Tally escapes and runs into David. It isn’t until David and Tally set out to rescue the others that they find out that David’s father died due to some unsafe tests that were forcibly run on him. And it isn’t until the final moments, even after being stranded together during a hurricane on their way to free the Smokies, that Tally tells David the truth about her initial traitorous intentions for joining the Smoke. It’s how she gets him to agree to let her be the test subject for the cure by letting herself get captured to undergo the Pretty operation. The book ends shortly thereafter.
In Netflix’s more dramatic version, when Dr. Cable invades the Smoke, she rounds everyone up to watch—like spectators at a 1600s Salem witch trial—as she orders Special Peris to murder David’s father. The entire community then learns of Tally’s deception. Then Tally and David’s rescue mission happens—and Tally’s willingness to help the Smokies gets her back in their good graces.
The Pretties
When it comes to the entire crux of the film—revealing that the Pretty operation also alters people’s brains, resulting in a constituency of happy, unskeptical, silly little fools—the movie is fairly faithful. Like in the books, the movie details that there are lesions in the brain that dull your thoughts and emotions and sedate you “into a false sense of happiness.”
The difference comes in the movie’s inability to significantly distinguish between the “pretty” and the “ugly” versions of the actors. While I think some viewers misunderstand the concept of Uglies—they’re not actually hideous; they are normal people like you and me, who are told that they’re ugly to justify the subjugation of their citizens via the Pretty operation—there’s absolutely some credence to complaints about the way the Pretties look in this adaptation. In this real-world era of people rendering themselves nearly unrecognizable via cosmetic surgery, it shouldn’t be hard to recreate the book’s notion of changing people’s faces to the point where they don’t look like themselves, and they all look like each other. But in the film, when we get Tally’s Pretty reveal, Joey King just looks like a blonde version of herself with a face filter on, and Chase Stokes just looks like a yassified version of himself. Meanwhile, though Uglies are supposed to be average people, I wouldn’t say that Keith Powers is of average looks. The uncanny-valley nature of a world in which everyone receives cosmetic surgery to look the same isn’t brought to the screen. It doesn’t feel eerie enough—maybe more CGI was needed?
The Ending, Kinda
Both versions portray Tally’s final decision to undergo the Pretty operation so she can be the first to try the cure. The book ends with the line “I’m Tally Youngblood. Make me pretty.” We don’t get to see the reveal or what comes after.
The movie goes further in signaling that even though Tally underwent the operation, she’s still herself somewhere deep down. We see Tally as a Pretty, but we’re also privy to the knowledge that she chose to keep her scar. It’s an understandable change for a movie that needs to relay this information from a fairly introspective book, even if the whole “choosing to keep an imperfection in a society that forces everyone to rid themselves of imperfections” thing doesn’t make the most sense. But hey, this isn’t Brainies.
