This isn’t quite the Wuthering Heights you read in high school.
The new movie adaptation of the classic Emily Brontë novel starring Margot Robbie (Catherine) and Jacob Elordi (Heathcliff) hits theaters Friday, February 13 — and it’s already generating plenty of controversy, from the casting choices to major plot point changes.
The film currently has a 66 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, marking it fresh, with reviews all over the map.
In Us Weekly’s review of the movie, we noted, “The larger takeaway here is simply what a pleasure it is to watch a bombastic period drama with such lush, beautiful production values and a truly stellar cast. With an assist from some Celtic-y pop tunes by Charli XCX, the movie is moody, depraved and, yes, romantic as it jumps between the literal world and a more stylized fantasy.”
Director Emerald Fennell has said she took the aspects of the story that most appealed to her (a WTF-worthy love story between Catherine and Heathcliff) and excised the rest.
Below are some of the biggest changes in the new “Wuthering Heights” movie adaptation.
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No Hindley
In the book, there is a character named Hindley, Catherine’s brother, who abuses Heathcliff and basically makes him a servant. Heathcliff’s poor treatment at Hindley’s hand is a driving force in making Heathcliff so monstrous as an adult. In the new movie adaptation, it’s Catherine’s father (alcoholic and cruel) who absorbs most of these plot points and beats Heathcliff, but it’s a smaller aspect of the story.
Sex
A gothic tale of yearning and madness, the book includes just a single kiss between Heathcliff and Catherine. Naturally, Fennell took some liberties here to steam up this deranged love story, including having the character have sex, as well as a full-blown affair.
Isabella Linton
In the book, Isabella (Alison Oliver) is Edgar’s (Shazad Latif) young sister; in the film, she’s his ward but the relationship between the two is basically the same. Isabella falls in love with Heathcliff and marries him in the novel, but ends up being abused by him as his act of revenge on her family.
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In the film, she’s explicitly a weirdo, giving Catherine odd presents and showing zany interests (like paper dolls with real hair). She still marries Heathcliff and he abuses her, but it’s more of a BDSM relationship in the movie, with Isabella notably enjoying things like wearing a dog collar and crawling along the floor of Wuthering Heights.
Heathcliff is also more open about how he’ll never love her and is just marrying her for revenge in the film. In the book, Isabella ultimately has a son, Linton, with Heathcliff.
Scope of the Story
Emerald Fennell’s movie focuses on the relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine, ending (spoiler alert!) when Catherine dies, having already lost the baby she was pregnant with. In the book, Catherine dies much earlier in the story, and the tale continues by having Heathcliff continue to torture both Catherine’s daughter with Edgar (Cathy) as well as Hindley’s son (Hareton).
Servant Nelly is a narrator in the book, while a supporting character in the film (played by Hong Chau).
Ending
Ending the movie with Heathcliff holding Catherine’s dead body and promising to love her forever — “Be with me always. Take any form. Drive me mad. Only don’t leave me in an abyss where I cannot find you” — puts a more romantic spin on their doomed love by not showing all the trauma that unfolds after that choice. There’s no next generation.
In the book, young Cathy and Hareton Earnshaw ultimately get together to try and heal their respective generational trauma amongst their families and have peace.
Casting Controversy
In the book, Heathcliff is described as “dark skinned,” which Elordi is not. There’s been some controversy about whether that means Heathcliff was a person of color in the novel, however. Vulture has a good rundown explaining that this is a topic scholars have been arguing about for decades!
Sexual Provocation
In addition to Heathcliff and Catherine having a sexual relationship (see above), one of the biggest differences is how sexually charged the entire film is, from a public hanging that excites the local townspeople to random cutaways of fingers in mouths and voyeurism.
Fennell’s commitment to the gross side of desire is an ongoing theme and infiltrates everything from bread baking to dinner.
