Jakob Barnes
It’s already the most talked-about movie of the year, and I am pretty sure "Wuthering Heights" will remain a hot topic of conversation for weeks to come. With the pairing of hugely popular actors Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi in the lead roles (despite backlash to the latter), and a release date lined up perfectly for Valentine’s Day, it’s easy to see why so many people are interested in this film.
But that attention comes in two very distinct forms. Before the release, there has been a very vocal subsection of fans outraged by the idea of this distorted interpretation of Emily Brontë’s classic novel from director Emerald Fennell. On the other side, folks who just want to enjoy a steamy romance drama have been hyped up by the trailers and marketing.
As things stand, “Wuthering Heights” sits at 65% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 178 critic reviews at the time of writing. That’s not a bad score by any means, but it will likely continue to drop – it was at 72% just 24 hours earlier. Regardless, I have a feeling the audience score will be a lot higher. So, what’s making this such a divisive project, and why is it likely to split critics and audiences down the middle?
What Critics Are Saying About “Wuthering Heights”
Even among the critics, there is a staggering breadth of positive and negative noise around “Wuthering Heights”.
Sarah Manvel describes the film as: “Astonishing, gorgeous and stupefyingly hot” and adds, “Wuthering Heights is a sensation.”
There’s more praise from James Mottram, who waxes lyrical in his review, saying: “Beautifully costumed, designed, shot and performed, the film is an impeccably made tale of doomed lovers, one that will bring a tear to the eye.”
Those sentiments are not shared by Kate Sánchez, who claims this adaptation is “abysmally dull, despite its constant attempts at shock.” In her review, Deborah Ross lambasts this attempt, stating, “Fennell’s treatment is eye-catching but superficial.”
Likewise, Eric Marchen offers a scathing critique in his review. “Emerald Fennell appears relatively uninterested in the source material, stitching together loose bits and bobs while cutting from whole cloth to fit her pastiche-laced gown of gloom,” he says.
Meanwhile, Troy Ribeiro writes: “This film is bold, confident, and wilfully divisive… As a film, it dazzles; as an adaptation, it strays freely.” And therein, I think, lies the big problem.
Why Emerald Fennell’s 2026 Adaptation Is So Divisive
If you’re going into this modern spin on the Brontë classic hoping for a faithful adaptation, you’re going to be disappointed. And Fennell has already, very candidly, told us exactly what to expect from her take on the 1847 novel.
Explaining why her movie title has quotation marks around it, Fennell told Fandango: “[The book] means a lot to me. It’s very important that everyone who loves it as much as I do, feels almost a part of it.
“You can’t adapt a book as dense and complicated and difficult as this… It’s not possible. What I can say is, I’m making a version of it. There’s a version that I remembered reading that isn’t quite real. There’s a version that I wanted stuff to happen that never did happen.”
In a further affront to the source material to many, the casting of Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, a character described as “dark-skinned” in the novel, really caused a stir. Again, though, Fennell cited her own experience with Brontë’s work in her explanation behind the casting choice, saying Elordi “looked exactly like the illustration of Heathcliff in the first book that I read”.
This is obviously a very personal and subjective interpretation from Fennell. It’s impossible to please everyone, and sometimes – in fact, the majority of the time – creatives simply have to tell the story they want to tell, and just hope it resonates with the audience.
Let’s not forget, Fennell has always been a divisive filmmaker. Her previous work on Promising Young Woman and Saltburn can hardly be described as universally loved. With provocative themes, a darkly sexual tone, and a tendency to go style over substance, Fennell is polarising, to say the least.
As with any spectrum, there will be extremes, and to that end, I do believe there will be a mass of more casual filmgoers who fall in love with this new iteration of the timeless tale.
Why Audiences May Enjoy “Wuthering Heights” More Than Critics
To put it simply, if you haven’t read the book, you’ll probably have little to no issue with Fennell’s playful take on Wuthering Heights.
Based on the marketing tactics, this film is clearly being billed as this generation’s next big romantic epic, following in the footsteps of the likes of Gone With The Wind, Titanic, and Moulin Rouge. This is no mean feat, but that ‘crazy in love’ theme will definitely help its chances of striking a chord with a modern audience. In the recent past, gritty films with twisted love stories, like True Romance and Natural Born Killers, excelled in that dangerous realm and have since achieved cult status. That idea of intense, obsessive infatuation was key to the cultural impact of Fennell’s previous movie, Saltburn, and was infamously the foundation for the hugely successful Fifty Shades of Grey series.
What was once taboo is now sought-after, particularly in the book market, with dark ‘romantasy’, ‘enemies to lovers’ and ‘red flag’ relationships like the one Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele shared in E. L. James’ S&M novels, proving to be a huge lure for readers, and in turn, viewers. It says a lot about the habits of modern audiences that Fifty Shades, despite getting poor reviews and causing so much of a stir, still made an absolute killing at the box office. It would seem most people don’t really care about critical consensus in certain cases, and they’re certainly not afraid of controversy; we flock to it because we’re just too curious, aren’t we?
On the other end of the scale, in 2011, Andrea Arnold tried her hand at adapting Brontë’s tale, and was just about as faithful as you could be. It was regarded as a critical darling at the time, but that version of Wuthering Heights failed at the box office. 15 years later, it seems nobody is eager to make the same mistake; Fennell’s version is the polar opposite of Arnold’s in substance, style, and tone.
Even on the small screen, spicy, sexualised romantic period dramas like Bridgerton and Outlander have thrived in recent years. There’s obviously a huge appetite for the direction Fennell has taken the story here, and that will likely translate into more commercial success than critical, at the very least.
In the immortal words of Chazz Michael Michaels, when we look back on Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights”, we may well say, “No one knows what it means, but it’s provocative… it gets the people going.” That’s not a terrible legacy to leave, is it?
