Wuthering Heights

[GCAcademic]

Anyone planning to see this? From the trailer I was expecting it to be marmite and not in any way a straight adaptation of the novel, but the reviews I've seen so far are universally uncomplimentary. I'd already booked to see it, so will go in with an open mind!

All in all it looks like a flop for many reasons and personally have no desire to see it

I have booked to see it with some friends next weekend but the reviews are putting me off!

I thought it was extraordinary, wonderful and terrible. I was completely unprepared for the sheer volume of hatred and violence. I suppose I was expecting a grimmer version of Jane Eyre but Emily said hold my beer to Charlotte in that regard.
I love an unreliable narrator and Nelly Dean was a superb character. I’d read it again with just an eye on how Nelly twists the story.
I can’t stop thinking about the mind of the person who created these terrible, vibrant, shocking characters and that she only lived to write one book 😢

Eeek! Did you see Saltburn?

I was hooked by the visuals (and Jacobb Elordi) and despite having read Wuthering Heights multiple times and loving it, I didn't mind the prospect of Fennels personal interpretation.

Then I noticed that the cast list showed no Hindley, or the next gen of characters in the novel (young Cathy and Hareton etc) and I'm not sure how you can properly tell story of thwarted love due to social class constraints without showing how Heathcliff was cast back down to servant level by jealous Hindley once his father died, making it a degradation for Cqthy to marry him (as she puts it while simultaneously professing how deeply she loves him). So not sure how that narrative will play out without that successfully.

Seems they've made Cathy all posh too when she was more of a rustic gentry and the Lintons were the true aristos of the story.

I'll still see it but its a shame for a new generation to only know Wuthering Heights this way, hopefully some read the source material. she's a marmite director so reviews are all over the place, but from being really intrigued by the first trailers, the more scenes that have been shared the more cringe some of the dialogue is.

I love an unreliable narrator and Nelly Dean was a superb character. I’d read it again with just an eye on how Nelly twists the story

Agree she's a great character. On my latest read of the book it really struck me that she was key to the way things unfolded. She kept quiet about Heathcliff overhearing Catherine say it would degrade her to marry him, until it was too late and he was long gone. She downplayed Catherine's illness until it was too late. She kept quiet about Isabella running off with Heathcliff until it was too late. Would have been a very different story without those actions. Or inactions rather.

I don't want to see it.

I actually like the Binoche/Fiennes version, despite her wandering accent. It had that uncanny, dark edge, and Ralph Fiennes captured Heathcliff's sociopathic nature well.

I can’t wait to see it

+1

It's not a film I was that interested in regardless, but the trailer makes it look downright atrocious. I liked Promising Young Woman, but Saltburn was tedious and like a PP I'm starting to think PYW was a one off.

I do like Margot Robbie, but there are plenty of other things to watch her in

Just seen a couple of good reviews, so looks like it is marmite after all,

DM loved the original 1939 version starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon. I still have her scrapbook with lots of stills from the film. And I actually know someone called Merle who was named after the actress. Quite an unusual name.

Where are the good ones??

I read WH when I was in my 20's for the first time. I was expecting a romance so it really shocked me, and I haven't really wanted to read it again. I might watch the film even though its meant to be terrible and then read the book again.

Yes absolutely! I’m looking forward to how Nelly is portrayed in the film; as neutral, loyal housekeeper or as (yet another) another jealous, manipulator who plays a key role in the whole cess pit of events.

Oh that’s wonderful, this is my favourite too.
I won’t be going to see the new one.

We’ve all been gaslit. Greatest love story ever told my arse. Revenge of the sociopath more like. I loved it all the more for that.
My god Emily though 😫, I want to reach in through the pages of the book and ask is she’s OK. (I’m pretty sure that she probably wasn’t OK given her own tragic and weird childhood).

I've been put off by the trailers describing it as a great love story... Is that just a marketing trick or have they actually tried to turn it into a romance? 🫣

This is the only review of the book that hs made me feel compelled to read it!

I love the other Bronte works, especially The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, but could never get past chapter 3 of WH for some reason.

I will be seeing the film as loved Saltburn and I know I'll enjoy seeing JE! Also like MR in everything she's been in to date.

I’ve liked previous Emerald Fennell films, but the trailer, unless it completely misrepresents the film, suggests it was made by someone who completely misread the novel, which is a multigenerational revenge saga, not a romance of any kind.

The notion that it is a romance is a completely baseless nonsense based largely on previous adaptations that cut the second generation and invented a largely non-existent sexual relationship between Heathcliff and the older Cathy.

Got a good review in the London Metro paper - will prob not go to see it in the cinema tho

It really is extraordinary when you consider that someone who led such a sheltered life could write with such a dark perspective. I was shocked when I read the bit about him digging Cathy up! I do absolutely love it though. My favourite film version of it is with Lawrence Olivier. I think the new one will be awful, but I'll probably have to watch it to see!

But all of the Bronte siblings spent their entire childhood and a good chunk of their adult lives too essentially living RPGs (well, the same one, feuds and warring clans and enmities etc in their two imaginary countries of Gondal and Angria), and writing stories and poems about the characters. Emily seems to have been the most in thrall to it of any of them in adulthood. There's a reference in a birthday note to her and her sister Anne pretending to be fleeing soldiers from Gondal while walking to Keighley aged 28 and 29.

None of the Gondal fiction has survived, only the poems, but insofar as it's possible to judge, WH is a more fully worked-out version of some of the key intrigues of Gondal, but situated in a recognisable real world setting, and without the exotic names etc -- wild passions, windswept remote locations, broken alliances, revenges, imprisonment, death etc etc.

Here's a positive review (behind paywall sorry)

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2026/02/09/margot-robbie-jacob-elordi-wuthering-heights/

The Telegraph and The Atlantic

I'm really interested to read these interpretations. I've always read it as the story of a broken young boy, who finds himself raised up and loved in a caring family (other than Hareton obvs), only to have it snatched away by his circumstances of birth when his new father dies.
The deep love he felt for Cathy, and assumed she had for him, was the only teather he clung to, and when she spurned him, he muat have felt his whole life was a lie, he was only ever an entertaining plaything for them. The "tame commoner" to their "superior breeding". He not only went mad with grief, but resolved to dismantle their nobility and break them as he had been broken. Yes, he turned into a monster, but his love was real, and losing it destroyed him.