When Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” trailer dropped on September 3, 2025, my friends and I watched in horror together as we played the video without sound in the crowded Caf. To add to the misfortune of the situation, that meant we didn’t even get to hear Charli XCX, although the song chosen for the trailer, “Everything is romantic,” perfectly embodies the biggest problem with the adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel.
Similar to past adaptations, Fennell appears to be taking “Wuthering Heights” to be solely the love story of characters Catherine and Heathcliff. Any fan of the novel, however, will definitively tell you it is not. Without getting into too much textual analysis, the bluntest indicator that “Wuthering Heights” is not a romance is that (and this isn’t a spoiler) Catherine dies in the middle of the book.
Additionally, the couple’s love is presented as deeply damaging and warped throughout the entire novel, especially in its consequences that reverberate through the characters’ families in the latter half of the novel. It’s this nuanced depiction of relationships and revenge across generations that makes the novel so interesting, and this is what many fans fear will be entirely tossed aside in this movie adaptation.
There are, of course, many other issues. In no particular order, here are some of the crimes thus far committed by Fennell: Heathcliffe is played by a white actor, Jacob Elordi, when his character is regularly described as not white. Margot Robbie, who plays Catherine, is 35 when the character is supposed to be in her teens and is written as notably immature. Several characters, all from the younger generation appearing in the latter half of the novel, are missing from the trailer and cast list. Robbie is also shown wearing a corset with nothing under it, irritating every single fan of historical costuming.
There are even more problems with historically accurate costumes, including styles inconsistent with any single time period. Also, every piece of promotional material has had some kind of erotic element to it. I don’t know why Fennell thought to include Robbie sensually kneading bread and touching raw eggs in the trailer, but that’s in there. Those also aren’t the most suggestive things in the trailer by any means, just the strangest.
So I’m not excited for this movie to come out. It comes out on Valentine’s Day, too, adding insult to injury. However, as negative as I have been so far, I think Fennell is at least attempting to do something interesting, albeit blatantly inaccurate, with the story of Wuthering Heights. The pairing of Charli XCX’s music with a historical piece is already audacious (I’m sorry, I don’t hate it), and the sets are beautiful and seem to border on the surreal. The settings shown in the trailer alternate between the moors that Wuthering Heights is traditionally set in, shown in a dark, grimily realistic manner, and a more luridly opulent world.
Combined with the inconsistent costuming, the set design makes me hope that the movie will be using some sort of framing narrative, similar to how the original novel is framed as a story told by one of the characters in the book. The changes in costuming might indicate that this will be done through a change in time periods. On the movie poster, the title “Wuthering Heights” is stylized in quotation marks, further suggesting some kind of frame. There’s also something in the movie poster that seems reminiscent of older romantic period pieces, namely bodice rippers, but that may be merely an aesthetic choice or a nod to some of the content added to the story.
Everything from the movie so far is visually stunning, but whether that and Fennell’s other choices can redeem her version of “Wuthering Heights” remains to be seen. I won’t be in theaters on February 14th, but I’ll still be interested to hear what Fennell ends up doing with the story, if only to complain about it.
