Individuals are, because the disgraced Drake as soon as stated, of their emotions about Emerald Fennell’s upcoming adaptation of “Wuthering Heights.” To be truthful, I perceive why. Fennell, who may most politely be described as a “divisive” director, is an fascinating option to helm a tackle Emily Brontë’s solely novel. As Tina Fey famously and accurately acknowledged on the “Las Culturistas” podcast concerning the Oscar winner’s physique of labor and total vibe, “What are you going to do when Emerald Fennell calls you about her subsequent challenge, the place you play Carey Mulligan’s co-worker within the bridal part of Harrods after which Act 3 takes a sexually violent flip and you must faux to be shocked by that flip?” Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi are set to play windswept and doomed lovers Catherine and Heathcliff, regardless of Robbie being almost a full decade older than Elordi (and Heathcliff not being white), and usually, followers of Brontë are talking out.
Within the YouTube feedback beneath the film’s trailer, @Raul-j6t took umbrage with the movie’s tagline, writing, “‘The best love story of all time’ I do not suppose we have learn the identical e-book.” Another person, person @me-sunnyg, quipped, “Should you pay attention actually carefully, on the finish you possibly can hear Emily [Brontë] screaming from past the grave.” These are, frankly, humorous takes on Fennell’s upcoming film, and I perceive; anybody who’s actually hooked up to the novel goes to have points with a clearly anachronistic and offbeat adaptation. (The unique Charli XCX soundtrack undoubtedly is not serving to both.) Personally, I feel individuals are proper to be involved about this film, however I additionally suppose there’s one thing else at play right here … which is that individuals are moving into the behavior of passing judgment on motion pictures manner earlier than they even launch.
Wuthering Heights will certainly be controversial
Should you’re not an enormous Emily Brontë-head and have not revisited “Wuthering Heights” because you learn it in Eleventh-grade AP English, let me refresh your reminiscence. The novel, which Brontë printed beneath a male pen title (Ellis Bell, to be particular), is extensively thought of to be among the finest literary works within the English canon, and it is also unrelentingly darkish. (Examine set off warnings earlier than you learn it, is all I will say to that impact.) By way of the eyes of a housekeeper named Ellen “Nelly” Dean, who will probably be performed by Oscar nominee Hong Chau in Emerald Fennell’s film, we find out about Margot Robbie’s rich and highborn Catherine Earnshaw and her torrid and troubled love affair with Jacob Elordi’s famously brooding Heathcliff, an orphan taken in by Catherine’s father. Although Catherine’s father loves Heathcliff and treats him like household, after his demise, Catherine’s merciless brother basically discards the younger man and is even violent with him, main Catherine to maintain Heathcliff by displaying him affection.
“Wuthering Heights” takes place throughout a few years and is a tough, fraught, and even disturbing e-book about home abuse, generational trauma, the not possible Victorian class system, and a complete host of different points that have been distinctly of their time however are nonetheless related at this time. My level right here is that Fennell is a really loopy option to direct “Wuthering Heights” based mostly on her first two motion pictures, “Promising Younger Girl” and “Saltburn,” the previous of which I would argue works significantly better than the latter — however she’s nonetheless a super-heightened, stylistically unusual, and sometimes unfocused director for such a harrowing story. Nonetheless, I additionally suppose we have to reserve judgment, as a result of the film is not out but, and that problem is changing into its personal downside.
We must always all wait to say if a film is nice or not till we really see it
Anecdotally, I noticed social media chatter about stills launched from Christopher Nolan’s upcoming adaptation of “The Odyssey,” and amidst that chatter, I noticed individuals saying the stills — which, it ought to go with out saying, have been fairly possible staged and brought for press functions and are not stills from the precise completed movie so far as anyone is aware of — seemed like “low cost” takes on status tv and thus, the entire film seems to be unhealthy. This, frankly, is so ludicrous.
“Wuthering Heights” may completely be a catastrophe and have that “sexually violent flip” that makes the complete film form of absurd, particularly as a result of the again half of this story has a bunch of ghosts in it. (Fennell may at all times do what the “MacGruber” film did if she actually needs to make headlines, however I digress.) Nonetheless, I’m begging moviegoers to cease making assumptions about movies that no one has seen but after which proclaiming these assumptions like self-appointed city criers. We actually have to let the movies converse for themselves, and on February 13, 2026, in the US — simply in time for Valentine’s Day — Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” will get the possibility to face by itself two toes and earn scorn, acclaim, or some perverse combination of the 2. For now, let’s give the film an opportunity to show itself … and if it is a dud, I will meet you proper again right here to dunk on it subsequent 12 months.
Once more, “Wuthering Heights” hits U.S. theaters on February 13, 2026.
