MovieChat Forums > Uglies (2024) Discussion > Dumb Opening Premise.

Dumb Opening Premise.

posted 2 months ago by TheCatman (277)
4 replies | jump to latest

In the beginning, it says that society decided to cure inequality by making everyone perfect.

However, you must wait until you are old enough to get the surgery to make you physically perfect looking.

Nothing wrong with that idea for a science fiction film BUT all of the people waiting for surgery are treated like garbage until they get the surgery. That means, at the beginning of their lives, literally the entire population of the world is discriminated against, lol.

It's not just SOME people but ALL people and there's no psychological damage done by treating children horribly because most are so happy to be perfect by the time they are adults and at that point your personality is set.

If they had tweaked the idea a bit, it would have been better.

Also, it's amusing that the lead actress and supporting "uglies" were cast because they were considered ugly.

[–] AmeriGirl26 (14379) 2 months ago

It's one reason I've been reluctant to read the books. The premise sounds kinda iffy, and almost doesn't make sense as a dystopia. Plus, becoming "beautiful" isn't as great as the govt. makes it out to be. The procedure puts lesions on the brain and makes the people who have become "beautiful" stupid and compliant. Some of them get their brains repaired, only to be turned into elite soldiers called "Specials." I read the synopses on the various books in the trilogy, and it sounded kinda disappointing. It wasn't nearly as bad as the Divergent trilogy, but almost.

[–] TheCatman (277) 2 months ago

In the movie, the brain issue was done on purpose to make people stupid and interested in challenging the government.

If they are able to make people intelligent, then why make them beautiful?

I used to work with intellectually disabled people and they don't care what you look like.

Anyway, it was one of those "Young Adult" stories that are not really science fiction but more like a fairy tale with a simple social comment about diversity.

When I was a kid, I read adult books, and they helped me a lot more than this dumbed down stuff.

[–] AmeriGirl26 (14379) 2 months ago

I know what you mean. Many of these dystopian fiction stories don't actually qualify as "science fiction," despite having all the trappings of a futuristic society that's fallen on hard times, because most of the focus is on the social stuff, rather than the tech, and then it basically just becomes a social commentary on the dark side of humanity and where it could go. It's why I don't consider the "Hunger Games" books to be sci-fi.

And yeah, I also get tired of the "riding coattails" books that come out after some set of teen books become popular. I saw it with both "Twilight" and the "Hunger Games," and often the resulting stories just plain suck, whereas the popular books that inspired them weren't actually that great to start with, but they were somewhat better-written than the "riding the wave" stories that came after.

Meanwhile, as a kid and a teenager, I was reading stuff like the original "Fantastic Voyage" in novel form, the novelized version of "Stargate," Harry Turtledove, Robert Heinlein, Larry Niven, Anne McCaffrey, all the sci-fi greats, and they never had to dumb down their writings to satisfy me.

[–] TheCatman (277) 2 months ago

Hunger Games was similar to a very good Japanese novel called Battle Royale. It was heavily focused on very good personality development and explanations of the characters.

The Young Adult stuff in the West never has anything like that and much too simplistic to learn much from.

I read the same kinds of books as you did when I was a kid and a lot more. You can't become an adult just read material that's fairy tale like and written for kids. That kind of defeats the point of reading, lol.

Regarding science fiction, Hollywood consistently makes fake science fiction that's about relationships, thinly covered religious material, and fairy tales with moral themes. Science fiction is supposed to be about how humans may adapt to changes in technology, not the stuff I mentioned.

It's exhausting after a while.

I find myself watching shows/movies just to see how bad they are going to be.