Reviews for the film are mixed at best<\/a>. While some critics have praised the visuals<\/a>, detractors return<\/a> to the same argument: it is not a good adaptation.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Good adaptations take advantage of the affordances the cinematic medium provides, so some changes are permissible. Fennell goes well beyond this<\/a>, altering essential characters, relationships and themes to the point that the film feels like erotic fan-fiction with a Hollywood budget.<\/p>\n To synopsise, Bront\u00eb\u2019s story is a tragedy of intergenerational trauma. It follows Heathcliff, an abused serial abuser, and Catherine, an intergenerational manipulator. The pair\u2019s toxic relationship \u2013 and mutual revenge on everyone they knew (beyond the grave in Catherine\u2019s case) \u2013 wreaks havoc. <\/p>\n Visually loud, emotionally mute<\/p>\n Given its tagline \u201cthe greatest love story ever told\u201d, Fennell\u2019s film was destined to make some changes.<\/p>\n The frame narrative<\/a> of the novel is missing. The novel is told through housekeeper Nelly Dean, who is recounting it to Heathcliff\u2019s tenant, Lockwood. The film, meanwhile, starts in Catherine\u2019s childhood and ends at her death.<\/p>\n This also means Fennell stops short of the final act of the novel. In doing so, she omits an entire generation of important characters on whom the original Catherine and Heathcliff \u2013 two traumatised, irredeemable wrecking balls \u2013 foist their damage. <\/p>\n The interpersonal dynamics that underpin Bront\u00eb\u2019s story are warped into a vacuous caricature, missing the point with virtuosic flair. And make no mistake: there is flair. The visual design is bombastic, pointedly anachronistic, and utterly at odds with the novel\u2019s gloomy Gothic countenance. <\/p>\n The opulent, richly saturated sets veer sharply from Bront\u00eb\u2019s bleak, wind-swept moors. Bront\u00eb\u2019s perpetually grey and haunted moors are swapped for technicolour highlights, elaborate outfits and, at times, saturated tangerine sunsets. It watches like Sofia Coppola attempting Edgar Allan Poe \u2013 or a Charli XCX clip (guess who wrote the original soundtrack). This is an odd liberty for a film named after the story\u2019s original setting \u2013 the stormy Wuthering Heights estate. <\/p>\n As pioneering Gothic theorists Sanda Gilbert and Susan Gubar write<\/a>, the Heights in the novel are blanketed by \u201ca general air of sour hatred\u201d that manifests as \u201ccontinual, aimless violence\u201d.<\/p>\n In the Gothic, setting functions as a haunted presence that reflects the characters\u2019 aberrant psychological states. The past haunts, even when there are no ghosts.<\/p>\n Fennell\u2019s version retains the melodrama, but not the foreboding, hate and malice. And despite the explicit sexuality (none of which appears in the novel beyond euphemism), her take on the story feels oddly toothless. Neutered, even. It trades Gothic for vaudeville. <\/p>\n The erasure of Hindley and Heathcliff<\/p>\n To say the film lacks the novel\u2019s social commentary is an understatement. <\/p>\n From the opening scene, the changes to the source material are clear. We see a young Catherine witnessing a hanged man with an erection \u2013 and this tone remains for the entire runtime.<\/p>\n Hindley \u2013 Catherine\u2019s brother who forces Heathcliff into servitude, and is arguably the lynchpin of Heathcliff\u2019s revenge \u2013 is also entirely absent from the film.<\/p>\n Literary critic Terry Eagleton notes<\/a> how it is Hindley\u2019s inherited status that enables his abuse of Heathcliff. It is Heathcliff\u2019s lack of wealth, status and property that sees Catherine wed the wealthy Edgar Linton; and, as theorist Arnold Kettle argues<\/a>, it is Heathcliff\u2019s weaponisation of wealth and inheritance that finally serves as his vehicle for revenge. <\/p>\n To remove these factors is to remove the novel\u2019s entire moral framework.<\/p>\n In the film, Heathcliff\u2019s grievances shrink to Catherine choosing to marry Edgar Linton. This is as close as the film comes to the novel\u2019s treatment of classism, racism and intergenerational trauma.<\/p>\n Likewise, ending on Catherine\u2019s death erases the consequences of the deuteragonists\u2019 manipulations \u2013 namely the suffering of their respective children and servants. <\/p>\n The casting of Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff has its own controversy. In the novel, Heathcliff\u2019s ambiguous racial identity, within the context of Georgian England, shapes almost every interaction he has. <\/p>\n Even though it\u2019s not clear<\/a> what his racial identity is (some scholars<\/a> point to hints that suggest he may have escaped from slavery), his character is defined by \u201cothering\u201d. This is something Elordi\u2019s Heathcliff is at no risk of believably experiencing.<\/p>\n The film flattens the novel\u2019s broader account of how trauma replicates across generations, and how systemic marginalisation can both attract and beget abuse.<\/p>\n Jacob Elordi\u2019s casting sidesteps the racialised marginalisation central to Heathcliff\u2019s character. On abuse \u2013 perhaps Fennell\u2019s strangest departure from the source material is reframing Heathcliff\u2019s treatment of Isabella (Edgar Linton\u2019s sister and later Heathcliff\u2019s wife) as a consensual BDSM dynamic. <\/p>\n Bront\u00eb\u2019s Heathcliff terrorises Isabella physically and emotionally, and implicitly sexually, until she flees with their son. <\/p>\n The switch from repressed, complex desire in the novel to explicit sex scenes (absent from the book), and the rewriting of abuse as kink, seems to cater to audiences raised on post-50 Shades Of Grey erotica rather than Victorian Gothic.<\/p>\n Literary classics for a Tiktok generation<\/p>\n Like 2020\u2019s colourful Austen adaptation, Emma (well received as a film<\/a>, but criticised as an adaptation<\/a>), Fennell\u2019s Wuthering Heights signals a trend towards the \u201ctiktokification\u201d of literary adaptations. <\/p>\n Hollywood has long taken liberties with books, but this recent wave feels engineered for clips, reels and virality, rather than the necessary sacrifices of adaptation. <\/p>\n We know it\u2019s possible to have adaptations with both flair and substance. Consider Baz Luhrmann. The Oscar-nominated Romeo + Juliet (1996) is just as visually bombastic, yet the extent of verbatim Shakespeare retains a dedication to the source that Fennell\u2019s film lacks.<\/p>\n So what does it have to offer? Virality. Even this article contributes to the internet firestorm that will ensure Wuthering Heights\u2019 commercial success. It will ragebait critics far longer than such a limp effort deserves \u2013 and we are all its victims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emily Bront\u00eb died of tuberculosis 177 years ago, yet this adaptation is still the worst thing that has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-435695","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Film](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/file-20260220-56-hh2ann.jpeg\")
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\n Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures<\/p>\n![\"Film](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/file-20260220-56-nufmua.jpeg\")
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\n Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures<\/p>\n