Changes in the Netflix book adaptation

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for the film Ugly.

Scott Westerfeld’s Ugly has finally made it to the big screen.

After its publication in 2005, the first of the author’s four novels gained a wide readership as a precursor to YA dystopian stories such as The Hunger Games, Divergent, Maze Runner – The Chosen Ones and more. The story follows Tally Youngblood, who lives in a society where facial symmetry is valued above all else. All citizens of this society undergo a mandatory surgery that makes them “pretty” and evens out their facial flaws and body shapes.

As the books progress, Tally gets an outside perspective on the operation she once wanted more than anything, first from a community of rebels who have fled various cities to live a simpler life in a community they call “The Smoke.” The Netflix film, directed by McG and adapted by Jacob Forman, Vanessa Taylor and Whit Anderson, captures the plot of the first book, as Tally (Joey King) originally leaves her town to rescue her friend Shay (Brianne Tju), but discovers more than she bargained for.

Several major plot changes were made in the film.

Thoreau book

Walden Ponda book by Henry David Thoreau, who is quoted in Westerfeld’s follow-up novel Prettybecame a popular tool passed between the Smokies recruited by Shay and her friends. Viewers later learn that the book originated with David and his parents and encourages civil disobedience and radical thinking through isolation in nature.

Rangers vs. Smokies Burning Orchids

In the book, Pretty are Rangers who are Pretties who use flamethrowers to keep the white tiger orchid in check around the cities. In the movie, the Rangers are combined with the Smokies, who take on the task of burning the flower fields and trying to stop the invasive flower from destroying the ecosystem.

Hoverboards in The Smoke

In both the book and the movie, Tally uses a hoverboard that stays afloat as long as there is metal underneath it to get to The Smoke. However, when she arrives in the movie, hoverboards are not used in the reclusive community. Westerfeld’s book does, however, include examples of hoverboards, and David even knows how to do one despite growing up outside of the city.

Expansion of the Peris practice

In the books, Peris doesn’t become special. Shay does, after she’s made pretty. In the books, Peris disappears from the plot while Tally fights against society’s efforts to force people to conform to certain aesthetic standards.

In the film, Peris tells Dr. Cable that he is fine returning to Uglyville, and she interprets this as a sign that despite the surgery, he still harbored his old feelings for the place and Tally, meaning that the brain lesions were not affecting him.

Peris kills David’s father Az in front of the Smokies

The way Az (Jay DeVon Johnson) is killed in front of his wife and David is different in the book, except that Peris does it since he became a Special. In the books, Az dies because he has to undergo surgery. Dr. Cable was experimenting with a method of altering his memories because she thought he would still talk about the brain damage that comes with the feeling of beauty after focusing on it for so long.

The healing takes place in the form of pills

The cure in the film is two mixed liquids, rather than pills, which Maddy (Charmin Lee), David’s mother, creates after stealing nanosynth from Dr. Cable’s lab. In the book, the cure takes the form of physical pills, and Maddy works hard to make it.

Peris falls to his death (?)

Of course, Peris may well not be dead, but the fall he takes at the end of the film looks pretty fatal. In the books, his fate is quite different, as he doesn’t face Tally after becoming special. He remains pretty.