Attention all classic literature lovers and Kate Bush fans: the Wuthering Heights trailer has finally been released, and people already have thoughts about the direction Emerald Fennell is taking.
Fennell, the director of films such as Promising Young Woman (2020) and Saltburn (2023), first announced that she would be adapting Emily Brontë’s classic novel Wuthering Heights into a film on July 12, 2024. On Sept. 3, the trailer and poster for the film were revealed, garnering mixed reviews and discourse in online spaces.
The Movie’s Cast
Criticism of the film began early on in its production, with many people sharing concerns over a 36-year-old Margot Robbie portraying the teenage protagonist Catherine, and Jacob Elordi, a white Australian, playing the racially ambiguous (yet described as “dark-skinned”) Heathcliff. Now with the trailer, debates about Fennell’s approach to the themes of the source material have become a hot topic yet again.
Originally published in 1847, Brontë’s novel follows the tumultuous relationship of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff. Focused on race, social class, morality, and the darker aspects of Victorian romance, the novel shocked readers of the time. The trailer is also shocking, but for entirely different reasons.
Themes in the trailer
The unexpected erotic undertones, marketing as a dark romance movie, and Charli xcx soundtrack don’t seem to align with much of the novel’s themes. Some viewers who are fans of the changes say it’s clearly not meant to be an accurate and faithful adaptation of the source material, calling it subversive and comparing it to other creative adaptations such as Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet (1996) and Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006).
However, these comparisons disregard the fact that the script to Luhrmann’s film is Shakespeare’s original work. He only changed the names of some minor characters and set the movie in the fictional city of Verona Beach in the 1990s. The play’s themes are not lost in this adaptation, and Luhrmann is still able to connect to modern audiences while keeping the original text.
Coppola’s film is based on the history and biographies of Marie Antoinette, but it’s far from accurate to the monarch’s life. Like Wuthering Heights, the soundtrack includes modern musicians popular with teenagers, but this is done to emphasize Marie’s ascension to the throne at such a young age. Her goal was to explore the humanity of historical figures and entertain, not to provide food for thought on the period.
The difference with Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is that the source work has socially relevant themes that should not be ignored in an adaptation. If her goal was to create a film exploring Victorian love and sexuality, as it appears to be, she could have done so without the Wuthering Heights name attached and been successful.
The film’s title in quotation marks has also been the basis for the theory that Fennell has consciously chosen to go in a completely different direction than Brontë’s novel. The theory states that historical and character inaccuracies occur because Margot Robbie’s character reads the novel, imagines herself as Catherine, and goes mad because of it.
That said, it’s far more likely that Fennell wanted to call back to the romance movies of Old Hollywood, which used quotes around the titles. The poster is based on Gone with the Wind (1939), an iconic book-to-film adaptation that romanticizes the Antebellum South. It’s concerning to pay homage to a film like Gone with the Wind while ignoring the social commentary about race and ethnicity present in Brontë’s work.
The film’s sensual cinematography is not a problem for most critics so far. Instead, it’s the fact that the main themes are being pushed to the side, or removed entirely, in favor of erotica.
The Brontë novel already has themes of Gothic and dark romance, which can be easily translated to an exploration of social prejudices (Sinners and Nosferatu, anyone?).
Some fans of the trailer argue that criticism of the film’s sensuality represents the recent resurgence of purity culture and conservatism. However, romanticizing the elite without addressing the issues that come with strict social classes is likely more conservative than disagreeing with oddly placed sexual scenes. However, we can only learn so much from a two-minute trailer.
What direction will Fennell end up taking? How will Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi perform? One thing’s for sure: when the film releases on Valentine’s Day in 2026, you can bet both fans and critics will be filing into theaters to make their judgments on the adaptation.
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