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,

When adapting a book to screen, there are almost inevitably going to be changes; sometimes they’re major, and sometimes they’re minor. “Uglies” had a bit of both, but according to director McG, he “felt very safe” in all his decisions because author Scott Westerfeld understood why they were being made.

Joey King stars as Tally in the new Netflix film 'Uglies,' based on the popular young adult book of the same name by Scott Westerfeld

Uglies' ending focused on a feature that was entirely absent from Scott Westerfeld's books, but Netflix's change was actually quite clever.