SPOILER ALERT: Movie spoilers littered throughout. If you plan to see the movie, proceed with caution.
It’s no secret that the internet has loudly hated Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights since the casting was announced in September 2024. Never one to mind modernized versions of classic tales, I went into the theatre decidedly neutral, even cautiously optimistic. Unfortunately, the haters were right this time. This film is Wuthering Heights, just as Fifty Shades of Grey is Twilight. In other words: not at all. If anything, I left the theatre thinking the production team procured the film rights just so they could lift a couple of lines of dialogue from the book without repercussions.
Like most film adaptations of Emily Brontë’s classic, Wuthering Heights (2026) ends when Catherine dies and doesn’t display Heathcliff’s true depravity through his treatment of the younger Earnshaws, Heathcliffs, and Lintons. Keeping with tradition, this version also casts a white actor to play Heathcliff, reducing his exclusion from society from a race and class issue to solely a class issue. The juxtaposition between the darkskinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed Heathcliff and blonde-haired, blue-eyed Edgar Linton is completely lost because, in this version, Linton is played by Shazad Latif – an actor of mixed Pakistani, English, and Scottish descent. The casting director really said, “Uno, reverse! Draw four!”
Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights takes things a step further and kills off Hindley before the film is set (they also rename him Heathcliff, which is odd), merging his character with the senior Mr. Earnshaw and removing any possibilities of Hareton’s existence. Margot Robbie’s Catherine also dies from sepsis related to miscarriage, meaning that Catherine Jr is never born.
I was honestly unbothered by the story's changes in the first half of the film, and I loved that they kept Nelly’s wit and humor. But, when Elordi’s Heathcliff returned from his five-year absence two shades darker and looking like Count Olaf, the film immediately turned into Wuthering Heights fanfiction for people who only read smutty Harlequin novels (no shade!). Heathcliff and Catherine traipse all over Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange getting freaky anytime and anywhere they can (including at Mr. Earnshaw’s funeral) until a pregnant Catherine finally discovers remorse and ends things. Heathcliff marries Isabella to exact revenge on Catherine, but instead of trying to escape like in the book, Isabella turns out to be a fiend for some weirdo pet play kink shit that I feel like I didn’t consent to when I bought the ticket. They had Isabella on all fours barking, y’all. Emily Brontë wept.
Although I like to think of myself as an #intellectual, when it comes to Margot Robbie, I’m no better than a man. She is absolutely stunning, and Jacob Elordi is okay-looking, too, I suppose. And, look – as someone who came of age during Wattpad’s golden age, I’m no prude. But even I got the ick as Elordi licked everything he could get his tongue on. In the words of my best friend Rubi, “She [Emerald Fennell] is perpetuating these stereotypes about horny, repressed white women.” Every time Catherine and Heathcliff got busy onscreen, I just wanted the scene to be over as quickly as possible. Not every day sex! Some days, subtlety.
Baz Luhrmann is totally bizarre and might be insane, but he knows how to adapt a literary classic to the modern era better than anyone else. When Fennell enlisted Charli XCX to do the Wuthering Heights soundtrack, I figured she was trying to emulate Luhrmann’s 2013 adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which featured Jay-Z as the executive producer of the film’s soundtrack. Unlike Fennell’s abomination of a film, Baz managed to modernize the tale while staying true to its essence, as he did with Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet in 1996. Maybe Emerald should have called Leonardo DiCaprio.
My least favorite change was the change to Nelly’s character. Book!Nelly is a hot mess: she’s sanctimonious, judgmental, and thinks she knows better than everyone else. But she is not vindictive. The film portrayed her as someone who acts out of jealousy and spite; I can only assume this is to justify making her everyone’s scapegoat. The film also added a deliberate element of cruelty to Catherine’s character through her interactions with Nelly and Isabella. In contrast, in the book, I felt like Catherine was only rude for attention. Honestly, I’m not quite sure that anyone on the writing team has ever actually read Wuthering Heights1.
By fixating on the physical aspects of Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship, Fennell’s adaptation misses the driving force at the center of the original work: their mutual obsession and how each uses their relationship as a tool for self-destruction. Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is less a tale of love and heartbreak than one of enmeshment, revenge, and untreated mental illness. Heathcliff and Cathy don’t want to be together so they can fuck all the time; they want to be together because both of their personalities and moral compasses exist outside of the social norm, and they feel that no one could ever understand them beyond a surface level. Hence, Catherine’s famous declaration, “He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
If I had to say something nice about the film (because it wasn’t all bad), I’d say this: there were some really stunning shots scattered throughout, the wardrobe team clearly worked hard at crafting intricate (if not always period-appropriate) pieces, and Margot Robbie and Hong Chau are both absolutely gorgeous and did some great acting. Chau’s Nelly is the most multidimensional character in the film, and I wish we’d gotten more of her perspective.
Wuthering Heights (2026) is an underwhelming, if not downright insulting, adaptation of a riveting and witty literary classic. I’m glad I spent less than $5 USD on my ticket.
Yours in disappointment,
Mina
P.S. You can read my essay on the original novel below:
P.P.S. Shout out to Margot Robbie’s orthodontist. She has perfect teeth!