Listen along with Harker Aquila editors Lily Shi and Janam Chahal and TALON editor Shaina Cohen as they review the recent Wuthering Heights adaptation by Emerald Fennel and discuss whether its bold changes enhance or undermine the original story.

View the full transcript here:

Lily: Hi, everyone. I’m Lily. 

Shaina: I’m Shaina.

Janam: And I’m Janam. Today we will be talking about Emerald Fennell’s recent adaptation of Wuthering Heights.

Lily: Our first question is: what were your expectations going into the movie?

Shaina: Going into it, I watched the trailer, and having read the book, everything seemed very different. I went in expecting to not like it.

Lily: Me too. When I watched the trailer, it seemed very different than the book, and it was also marketed as the greatest love story of all time, which was different from how I understood the book. I wasn’t really expecting it to be a faithful adaptation, but I still had some hope that it would be a good movie, even if it wasn’t a good adaptation.

Janam: I expected it to be worse than it actually was. After watching the trailer in class and hearing that Charli XCX is producing the soundtrack, I wasn’t expecting it to be a super good adaptation. And even though it wasn’t that good, it was better than I thought it would be.

Shaina: The next question is: what was your overall impression of the movie?

Lily: I did not like the movie. It wasn’t a good adaptation of the book, as I expected. It wasn’t accurate, and it didn’t capture the essence of the book either. But even if I hadn’t read the book and was just watching the movie by itself, I would have hated it. The beginning was actually okay. The visual atmosphere was pretty beautiful and it captured the setting of the book well. But what irked me the most was that the story just wasn’t that interesting. The book had a lot of really interesting themes exploring class, race, society, and revenge, but the movie removed a lot of that depth and only focused on the romance between Catherine and Heathcliff. And even that romance wasn’t very deep. The characters weren’t that interesting, and it kind of just repeated the same scenes over and over. So overall, I had a pretty negative impression of the movie.

Shaina: I would definitely agree with that. It stretched out the romance part of the book, but in doing that, it flattened out much of the themes that made the book really interesting. I also felt that Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi felt too old to be playing the characters, since they were supposed to be teenagers. A lot of the movie felt like it was trying to force a book that wasn’t a romance to be a romance, just for marketing. It just wasn’t very fitting, and it made it much less interesting.

Janam: My overall impression was that it was not as bad as a lot of people made it out to be. It was better than I expected, but even then it wasn’t that good. Emerald Fennell really knows how to produce a beautiful movie. All of the shots were framed nicely, and the set was designed really nicely, but I don’t think she knows how to write a screenplay, and I don’t think she knew how to adapt the book correctly. They were trying to make it more modern, which is understandable when you’re marketing to a contemporary audience, but in doing so she nearly entirely changed the plot of Wuthering Heights. So for those reasons, it wasn’t that good. My overall impression was that it was not as bad as people made it out to be, but it wasn’t an accurate adaptation of Wuthering Heights.

Janam: Our next question is: what was one scene that really stood out to you?

Lily: There were a lot of scenes that stood out to me, but one that really shocked me was when Nelly goes to visit Heathcliff after he has married Isabella, and she enters the house to find that Isabella has become a dog. You kind of have to watch it to understand what’s going on. In the book, Heathcliff and Isabella have a really twisted and abusive relationship, and Isabella eventually escapes. But in the movie, it changes such that Isabella is complicit in her own treatment. The scene made Heathcliff’s actions look less monstrous, and it explored less of the generational trauma caused by his actions toward Isabella. It’s a good example of how a lot of the depth originally in the book was removed for attention-grabbing factors.

Janam: A couple of scenes that really stood out to me were the ones showing more physical intimacy between Cathy and Heathcliff. Those felt kind of unnecessary, since it’s not a huge part of the book. It was more just there because audiences would be interested in seeing Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi being physically intimate with each other. There were a lot of scenes that felt tailored toward showing off these two famous actors, rather than showing the really twisted and complicated relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff.

Lily: Our next question is: what do you think of the public response to the movie and the controversy surrounding the racial casting?

Shaina: A lot of what I saw on my Instagram feed when the movie first came out was people praising it, which was really surprising because before I’d even seen it, I had such a negative impression of the movie. No one talked much about the controversy with the racial casting, but that was definitely something I was focused on, before seeing the movie and all the marketing surrounding it. 

Lily: In terms of the racial casting, for some background, the director received criticism for casting Heathcliff as white using a white actor, when there is a lot of textual evidence in the book that he is not white. She also cast Nelly with an Asian actress and Edgar Linton with a South Asian actor. A lot of people said she shouldn’t have cast Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff and should have cast a brown actor instead, and that the other racial casting was shallow and just a way to compensate for casting Jacob Elordi. It just reveals how she wasn’t really looking into the themes of race at all, and was doing it for shallow reasons.

Janam: Beyond the problems with the racial casting, the casting overall was pretty poorly done, and a lot of it felt like it was done out of connections. I saw somewhere that Margot Robbie was originally only supposed to help produce the film, but after reading the screenplay she asked if she could play Cathy, and she was essentially handed that role, instead of trying to find someone more age-accurate and appearance-accurate to the Cathy described in the book. It feels like Emerald Fennell and anyone else working on the film didn’t put much effort into casting accurately, and were much more focused on bringing in a big audience and making money.

Lily: Especially because in the book, to me Edgar Linton represented the elite white aristocracy and Heathcliff represented those who were unwanted by society. So the casting revealed how she just wasn’t exploring those things at all.

Shaina: The next question is: what do you think about the aesthetic and stylistic choices?

Janam: Some scenes had really beautiful set design that matched what I had imagined from the book. But other parts felt too modern or completely inaccurate. There was a scene where Margot Robbie was wearing a latex dress, which just wouldn’t have been a fashion choice in the time period the book was set in. Some parts were done well, but they just didn’t put enough thought into making things accurate to the book.

Shaina: I also really didn’t like the costuming choices. It felt like it was trying to be a period piece without any historical accuracy. Especially the choices of fabrics and patterns — number one, they were just ugly. And I also felt like it felt very modern, like it was trying to be both a period piece and a modern piece, and it just didn’t mesh well at all. A lot of the choices were overly stylized to the point of feeling ridiculous, and it just didn’t feel anything like how I imagined the book.

Janam: Our final question is: what would you rate this film?

Shaina: I would give it a four out of ten.

Lily: I would give it a two out of ten.

Janam: I would probably give it a five out of ten. That might be a little generous, but despite a lot of the shortcomings, it was not the worst thing I’ve ever watched.

Lily: For me, there were some positives. The child actors were quite good, I liked the atmosphere in the beginning, and I liked the soundtrack. But overall I would not recommend this movie, especially if you’ve read the book and are expecting a good adaptation.

Shaina: Similar to what Janam said, it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever watched. There were definitely some scenes where it was okay, but overall I really didn’t enjoy my experience watching it.

Lily: That’s it for our review of Wuthering Heights. If you agree or disagree with anything we said today, feel free to leave a comment. See you next time.