A Rant about Wuthering Heights (2026)

Wuthering Heights is one of my all-time favourite novels.

I can still remember sticking on the audiobook version when I was about thirteen, thinking it was some Pride & Prejudice-esque regency romance, only to sit there petrified at the opening nightmare of Cathy’s apparition clawing at the windows, begging to be let back in. It truly is one of the greatest books ever written, a strange, eerie, disturbing story that makes sense of its frequently-horrid characters and leaves you haunted as much as the Yorkshire moors where the tale takes place, and if you haven’t read it, I’m coming to your house to yell it aloud through your letterbox whether you like it or not. Emily Brontë, the harm you did to me as a teenage girl will never be salved, and for that, I can only thank you.

Which is why this trailer for Emerald Fennell’s upcoming adaptation left me rolling my eyes into the next dimension.

Right from the announcement of the casting, I’ve had my issues with Fennell’s take on the story – casting Margot Robbie, the better part of two decades older than a character who hinges on her teenage madness, as Cathy was bad enough, but Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff is the worst offender. Elordi is a fine enough actor, but he’s very much the It-boy of the moment – and if there’s one thing Heathcliff shouldn’t be, it’s in. He’s a quintessential outsider in so many ways – I just don’t believe that one of the internet’s most beloved boyfriends can pull him off, you know?

And that’s not even getting into the blatantly obvious ignorance of the fact that Heathcliff is repeatedly described as being “dark-skinned” in the novel, an egregious bit of whitewashing that I’m surprised to see go ignored in what’s meant to be a more modern adaptation of the story. With Hong Chau as Nelly and Shazad Latif as Edward Linton, it seems like Fennell has taken a race-blind approach to casting, but it serves to undercut an important aspect of Heathcliff’s identity and the way he was treated as a result of his race in the process.

Look, I don’t dislike Fennell’s work – in fact, I appreciated the boldness of Promising Young Woman, and I found a lot of Saltburn technically impressive if not a bit overhyped. But my issue with her work lies in how often it is held up as this transgressive, boundary-pushing storytelling on the very edges of what cinema has to offer, when it just, simply, isn’t – not her fault, of course, but a seductive thing to have ascribed to your work. Everything that’s come out about this Wuthering Heights adaptation so far (necrophilia included) has just left me more and more grimly certain that she’s buying into that hype about her own transgression, and, worse, she’s going to inflict it on one of my favourite books.

This trailer, frankly, is almost parodic in how ridiculously, self-consciously provocative it’s trying to be: the use of a Charli XCX song as the backdrop, the unsubtle sexual metaphor (the fingering of the fish mouth made me laugh out loud), Jacob Elordi sloping through a doorway like a surly teenage wandering into the kitchen for some late-night snacks – sure, there’s some gorgeous-looking shots in here, but this doesn’t look so much like an adaptation of Wuthering Heights as it does a Emerald Fennell’s excuse to make a horny erotic period romance that’s packed with more edge and less point than a pizza cutter.

Which I wouldn’t have any problem with – hell, one of my favourite films is a horny erotic period romance, for God’s sake. But Wuthering Heights is a subversive, dark, and raw enough text as it is without throwing in all these clumsy metaphors. A good adaptation of this story (and I’m not even convinced we’ve ever really had one, at least that has done the entire story justice as opposed to just the Cathy/Heathcliff relationship) is already rich with psychological depth and simmering sexuality. I’m not sure I need to see a nun fiddling with a dead man’s penis to sell it, you know?

Ugh. I know, a lot of feelings for a teaser trailer, but I’ve been simmering on this for a while now. I’d love to hear your feelings towards the movie (and this trailer) in the comments below – and let me know what your favourite adaptation of this book is so I can add another one to my list, please and thank you.

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By Lou MacGregor

(header image via Wikipedia)