Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights has been controversial ever since it was announced. People simply didn’t trust Fennell to adapt the classic novel, and they certainly weren’t happy with the casting choices for Cathy and Heathcliff: Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. When paparazzi snapped photos from the production, there were more waves of disappointment – Fennell didn’t seem to care about accurate period details, and Margot simply looks way too old to play Catherine (who is supposed to be a teenager). There were also significant complaints about the “whitewashing” of Heathcliff.
Well, about a month ago, Fennell and studio organized some of the first screenings for the film, and most of the audience f–king despised this adaptation. World of Reel reported that “The film, described by one attendee as aggressively provocative and tonally abrasive, leans hard into Fennell’s now-familiar brand of stylized depravity. It’s a deliberately unromantic take on Brontë’s novel, stripped of emotional nuance and full of salacious detours that serve shock value.” I have no idea if those screenings convinced Fennell to re-edit or change anything, but it doesn’t look like it. The teaser for Wuthering Heights came out this week and it looks TERRIBLE.
Yeah, this just looks awful. In case you’re wondering, that’s new music by CharliXCX in the trailer. LMAO. Two of the nicer arguments being made: one, if Fennell wanted to do a big, sexy, BDSM-tinged period romance, she probably should have just written an original script and not claimed that it was an adaptation of one of the biggest classic novels in the English language; two, Elordi probably could have pulled this off, but Margot absolutely CANNOT. I love Margot and I think she’s an underrated actress (truly) but she can’t play EVERY character, you know?
Screencaps courtesy of the trailer, poster courtesy of Warner Bros.
Did I catch a glimpse of the little boy from Adolescence?
Owen Cooper – he plays young Heathcliff apparently.
Yep, that’s him.
This Valentine’s Day? That’s a pretty weak marketing strategy. Not really my cup of tea but I’ll see it for the production values
Somehow the trailer gave Stranger Things vibes. Was waiting for aliens to land.
It’s like an SNL parody: If Danielle Steel wrote Wuthering Heights.
I was thinking it looked like a spicy fanfiction version of Wuthering Heights.
A finger in a fish’s mouth? Really? That’s an image they went with?
Also the fingers in the eggs….in the bread….its like they saw some of those viral “sexy baking” videos on tik tok and youtube and decided to put it in the movie. LOL.
lots of fingers everywhere….
They could have done something a “tish” more subtle. lol
Yep, fingers and fingers and mouths seems to be the theme of this.
The film itself could look fantastic (which it doesn’t), and I would STILL be put off by the synthesizer-heavy music that sounds like it came from a schlocky ’80s sci-fi show. Nope.
It’s the weird imagery they went with at points that put me off. The fish, the bread dough (was there sweat or heathcliff’s sweaty back or grease or something?), the corset being tightened. I’m not into BDSM stuff even remotely and that fish was just wtf.
I agree with both of those arguments. I don’t think this role is a good fit for Margot Robbie. Jacob Elordi can pull it off, I think, even with the whitewashing, but I don’t see Margot as Cathy. Maybe she’ll surprise us but based on this trailer, I doubt it. Being a good actress (which Margot is) doesn’t make you a good fit for every role.
And the other argument is the big one for me – if Emerald Fennel wanted to make a big historical romance with twisted undertones and angst and heartbreak and all that – she should have made an original movie, not an adaptation of Wuthering Heights. I’m not a WH purist (although all this discussion does make me want to reread the book) but this does not look like WH….at all. It looks like she wanted to make an “edgy” period piece and slapped the name Wuthering Heights on it.
Wuthiering Heights is not a dark romance but marketing it this way is just fundamentally misunderstanding the text. It’s more of a tragedy but instead we get the fifty shades of grey with Cathy and Heathcliff.
Robbie also looks too old for Elordi, especially considering her character is a teenager.
I was trying not to go all English major on this thread, but you nailed it with the “fundamentally misunderstanding the text.” It’s not even a little bit a romance. Two children grow up together in an isolated environment and develop an unhealthy obsession with each other. That obsession follows them into adulthood, destroying the lives of all around them. The best part of the novel is honestly the atmospheric setting. The novel is melodramatic and overwrought, IMHO, but absolutely not an erotic thriller involving fish.
I’ve liked Margot Robbie’s work, and would happily call her stunning and ageless. She can’t play a sheltered teenager, though.
To paraphrase what the Fug Girls say about certain actors taking on period roles, Robbie does not have Period Face. She looks entirely too modern, like the gorgeous blond Australian beach girl she is. It’s the problem Dakota Johnson had in the recent dud remake of Persuasion – there’s no way she could credibly play a shy woman from the beginning of the 19th century – her face screams “I’m a healthy sly Califonria girl!”
Now, Emma Corrin and, oddly, Daisy Edgar-Jones look perfectly cast as Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennet and Sense and Sensibility’s Elinor Dashwood (respectively) in the upcoming remakes. I chalk this up partly to the fact that both are British, but also to the fact that both have faces that can look credibly like women from 200 years ago.
Robbie did better playing 20th century women in films like Amsterdam and Goodbye Christopher Robin, but by that century women often looked like the sort of glamour girls we still recognize today.
As for Elordi, the long hair and smearing him with dirt make him look like a decent Heathcliff, even though I still don’t think he’s a very good actor.
The “” around Wuthering Heights is interesting – like….. is that an implication that it’s not real Wuthering Heights? Given how much EF thinks about every detail, feels deliberate.
I think its meant to be a throwback to old school movie posters from the 30s, 40s and 50s. Often the titles were in quotes like that. Its very reminiscent of Gone with the Wind and the image of Rhett and Scarlett.
Trying to position Elordi as Clark gable is just kind of insane. Clark Gable had a charisma in his characters that Elordi can’t do. Rhett Butler was a mercenary character with a weakness for Scarlett and her feisty nature, and kind of the opposite of the aggrieved persona of Heathcliff.
It is almost offensive how ignorant they seem to be about not only classic literature but classic Hollywood films.
I think using quotation marks around the titles of movies – on the title cards within the movies themselves – was kind of a convention in, like, the 1930s.
Speaking of which, judging from this teaser, the only thing that could interest me in this movie is if Asta was in it, but he’s not.
The landscape looks alright. Other than that WTF.
I seem to be in the minority here but this looks absolutely amazing and the chemistry between Robbie and Elordi is fire. 100% will go see this.
Agree with you – I had no interest before seeing the trailer and now I want to see it. I have never read Wuthering Heights so maybe that helps.
If you read the book you’ll know why people think this remake looks weird and tacky. Robbie is miscast; Elordi looks like a dirty hippie (he’s supposed to be a Roma orphan). Not promising.
Bronte’s book is overwrought, but this looks over the top, and not in a good way. Hard pass from me, especially as I sort of despised Saltburn.
Emily Brontë would have hated this. It almost feels like Emerald Fennell has gone out of her way to be disrespectful towards the original novel and to annoy people. This whole thing feels like rage bait.
That’s exactly what I think she’s doing, or at least she’s trying to be disrespectful toward lovers of the book. Making fun of so called “Bookwalkers” was a big thing when Game of Thrones was running and I sort of understood it then, because their attachment to the source material could get in the way of others enjoying the show for what it was. But all due respect to George Martin and the SoIaF series, they not were/are NOT the enduring classics that Wuthering Heights is. Time will tell, I guess, but it just isn’t the same. Bronte deserves better than EF’s stylized snideness.
I kind of disagree? Emily Bronte wrote Hesthcliff to be shockingly abusive. I mean, he runs away with Isabella Linton and the first thing he does is make her watch while he hangs her puppy to death.
I’m with you. I haven’t read the book and have no attachments to the characters. This looks hot. I’m here for it.
LMAO! And probably not a good sign that laughter was my first response. No, just…no.
Is this a safe space to admit I never really liked the book? Jane Eyre >>>>.
Yeah I said it; I didn’t like Wuthering Heights. Come at me….classic literature bros! 😁
I’m with you. Loooooved Jane Eyre and have tried to read WH multiple times and just loathed it every time. Maybe this is the adaptation that will make it interesting.
Yes to loving Jane Eyre. I haaaaaaated WH when I read it in high school. I wrote a paper so scathing my English teacher called it, “harsh.”
Having said all that I’m appalled by this adaptation. The only thing I liked about it is it shows a glimpse of understanding that both of these characters are terrible people.
I am such a fan of Wuthering Heights and Gothic literature in general. I don’t think an adaptation of Wuthering Heights in the vein of a BBC style period peice is capable of capturing the weirdness and horror of the novel. (I think all of the previous ones are really dissapointing, particularly the Tom Hardy one.) I’m super into this. Leaning into the violence and cruelty of both Cathy and Heathcliff is essential, IMO. I was curious about this adaptation, and now I’m excited.
I also am into it! I think people who think Wuthering Heights is a romance have not read the book in a long time. That shit is dark and thier relationship is wildly abusive and also, guys, stop whinning about Cathy. She’s not going to last past the midpoint.
LOL actually most people who are criticizing it are criticizing it for that exact point – that its not a romance. I don’t see anyone saying “this movie doesn’t look good because it should be a romantic love story.”
The book is all about the ache, pain, and torment of their passion and love. This trailer seemed to give that and more! I’ll see it in theatres — looks fun!
Cathy and Heathcliff had a toxic love, and I’m glad this movie seems to show the nastiness of it!
I don’t see why films need to be period accurate, plays certainly aren’t these days, and the theater is better for them. Honestly, I find the whole “but we don’t have an extant garment that matches the neckline of that dress until five years after the book came out!” commentary deeply tedious. Film fashion has to look good to today’s audiences and reflect the period. Some go all out on accuracy, some don’t. That’s fine.
Whether the film succeeds on its own terms or not has yet to be seen. I’m willing to give it a chance.
Movie costumes always seem to have a flavor of the fashion of the time they were made. Especially noticeable to me in period movies of the 50s and 60s – ladies in the Old West did not have torpedo bras!
The thing is, Wuthering Heights isn’t romantic. It’s a dark, tragic tale full of terrible people. Heathcliff is an abusive kidnapper and Cathy is the most selfish, heartless Bronte character written.
This looks like it’s made for people who never read the book and who just want to watch some sexy times on Valentines Day with their S.O’s.
Thank you. This novel was never a romance and it only got placed near that description because Emily Bronte is a woman and her sister wrote more conventional type romantic heroes.
I really hate when WH is treated as a romance. Like you said, it’s not, and it’s filled with terrible people who do terrible things. I’ve never understood its popularity.
I loved it as a teen because it read like a horror. Also, I really liked the Young Cathy, Hinton relationship at the end. I just tried to pretend they weren’t cousins.
I was more of a fan of Charlotte’s Jane Eyre and Anne’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall – and still am. Wuthering Heights is extremely dark, and Heathcliff AND Cathy are horrible, entirely selfish people. Heathcliff was a neglected, virtual slave in the Earnshaw house as a kid, and physically abused by Cathy’s older brother. In his late teens, he runs off, makes a fortune, and returns as sadistic abuser himself, bitterly obsessed with the now married Cathy, the only person he’s ever loved. Trying to survive as a girl with not a lot of options in the early 19th Century countryside, Cathy had married the adoring, wealthy wuss next door after Heathcliff runs off. When he returns, bigtime chaos ensues. What comes across in the novel is Emily Bronte’s sheer power, ruthless intelligence & intensity as a writer, and her opaque swashbuckling strangeness. Her poetry is even moreso. Her sisters Charlotte and Anne Bronte also had those qualities in varying degrees. All three sisters broke new ground as novelists in different ways but with shared themes, and wildly intense emotions. Like Emily, Charlotte and Anne both wrote about women dealing with abusive men in fraught relationships in their most popular novels–Rochester with his first wife and playing head games with his very young governess in Jane Eyre. Anne’s heroine Helen Huntington goes into hiding after fleeing her abusive, alcoholic husband with her young son. (All three understood unsaveable drunkards living with their tragic, failure to launch brother Branwell who had been their star as a kid.) All three authors shocked and excited the public. Charlotte was a rebel in a tamer, more conventional way, but she let it rip. She was in awe of Emily, but clearly never totally got her. Anne & Emily were a duo and seem to have understood each other. Charlotte was a bit embarrassed by their writing. Nor does she appear to fully recognized the frail Anne’s steely spine beneath her surface gentleness and innate spirituality. All three died young from TB. with the added complication of a failing pregnancy for Charlotte. One of the miracle mysteries of English literature is how three poor, homeschooled, largely self-educated girls living in a crammed rectory, and after failed ventures in the world (teaching, governessing, learning French in Belgium), returned home and became talented, powerful writers still selling in the 21st Century with multiple movies and TV series made of their novels. It’s astonishing. The new film doesn’t look promising, but maybe it captures something of Emily’s savage power.
I starting to think Emerald Fennel is a good example of what happens when someone has never been told “no” in their entire life. Ugh.
I tend to give a lot of grace towards movies that get previewed and receive bomb reviews, but… yeah, this looks pretty terrible : /
Personally I don’t care that the costumes are not completely period accurate. If they are sticking with the 19th century setting (which they clearly are), then all I expect is an effort to be true to it but not an exacting, tight embrace of it. I also don’t care if she wants to tackle the project from an eroticized and somewhat subversive angle. That’s fine too.
But I still think this looks awful. It’s not erotic, it’s just gross. The fish? WTF is that? The music is jarring. It looks beautiful (as did Saltburn) but it doesn’t give me a sense of who the characters are (again, Saltburn comes to mind). Is this going to be a movie or an extended music video?
And yes, Margot is too old to play this role. She wouldn’t have been right even when she was younger.
I want to be fair to EF but this just feels disrespectful to the author. And Emily Bronte was not afraid of shocking people. Her sister Charlotte apparently wrote a foreword to the original edition basically apologizing for how vulgar and subversive it was. But it was still HER story and it feels like any adaptation should be mindful of that. Fennell seems to like to break things and throw them against the wall for fun because she can. Except this isn’t like gleefully breaking the fusty heirloom crystal, it’s more like defacing an ancestral portrait.
I read there was a lot of drama off the set in the 1939 Wuthering Heights. Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier did not get along. And later, Sam Goldwyn tacked on a “ghost sequence” against the director’s wishes. Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes Wuthering Heights had the complete story with the next generation featured. Kathy’s daughter and Heathcliff’s son.
Davis Niven wrote about his experience. He was supposed to cry over Merle Oberon and just couldn’t do it so they sprayed him with something to make him tear up. He didn’t tear up but started streaming mucus from his nose. Oberon leaped off the bed and refused to come out until he cleaned up. Loved David Niven. He was such a funny writer.
Niven and oberon had a serious relation ship for a few years but did not marry.
Heh. Olivier wasn’t happy because he wanted Vivien Leigh as Cathy.
merle oberon was no innocent teenager, same with vivian leigh. I’ve seen different versions and no one has come close to the Cathy of my imagination. The book has never translated well onto screen. They should just stop.
Leigh was offered as a consolation the part eventually. The unhappy wife of heathcliff. played by Geraldine Fitzgerald and turned it down. She ended up getting the role of scarlett ohara
Sigh. No.
For WH adaptations, I recommend Kate Bush’s recording and taking a pass on this adaptation. BBC
Surprised they didn’t use it.
Hmmm. I might actually be interested in this. I’m a lover of WH too, and I’m not sure it’s really a tragedy to my mind but more a social portrait of cruelty and depravity, isolation, and the dangerous extremity of obsession. I mean, Cathy and Heathcliff are terrible. Pretty much everyone around them is terrible. EF (at least in the trailer) seems to be nodding toward some of the black comedy grotesqueries of Fellini. I might actually like the steroids version of WH (as opposed to something like Saltburn where what she’s lampooning is so fundamentally banal that it’s hard for me to care. So the “shock” just feels cheap). We shall see. I’m willing to give it a try and hope it’s smarter than 50 Shades On The Moor.
This doesn’t look good at all
That said, if it’s unromantic, that’s a good thing. Wuthering Heights isn’t the love story so many people think it is – it’s a story of abuse, obsession, emotional manipulation and control.
It perpetuates the idea that a man who is willing to lose control and abuse you is utterly in the woman’s sway. Bad enough for buttoned up, repressed Regency woman who were trapped by laws and social custom, but this is 2025 and women are still falling for the ploy that a man that hurts you really, really loves you.
exactly, and not only that but that his abuse of you (and y our offspring) is how he shows his undying love for you
I’ll just stick with Kate Bush’s beautiful song.
Wuthering Heights for Valentine’s? Nothing says romance than a couple that is out for power, revenge and take their pain out on everyone else. Heathcliff is not a moody, romantic lover; he is a vicious abuser who used women to hurt the equally shallow Catherine.
That poster looks like a High School project.
All the films have basically dramatised half the book. The first half. OK if they want to do that but it isn’t the book. I like Margot but she’s not right for this role.
I think Olivier being so swoony and tormented in the 1939 WH left a long impression of this being a romance.
It does look awful, but I’ll still watch. I can’t resist a period dramz and this apparently takes place over the course of a few centuries! LOL
Wuthering Heights is one of my all-time favourite books, but I am interested in seeing this. It’s very 90s, very interview with a vampire, the Cook the thief his wife and her lover 90 ‘s aesthetic , which is all through other art forms & Fashion
The main reason that I’ve always loved Wuthering Heights is I grew up on a remote farm, and to me the powerful part of the book is the interaction between yourself and a very savage and beautiful Landscape and how your Landscape can bleed into your own mental state , anyway I didn’t see much Landscape stuff in the trailer but it actually looks interesting. I hope it doesn’t sacrifice story for just the look of the film, but interested to see what she does with it
If it brings more young people to read the book, that’s a great thing
Definitely my favourite Bronte! I just hope they don’t go too bodice ripper on it
Merle Oberon was 28 in the 1939 film version. Margot Robbie is 35. It’s not that much of a age difference. She may be able to get away with it.