\n<\/p>\n
Water is wet, the weather in the English moors is dreadful and a psychosexual romantic drama about two outrageously cruel soulmates has the internet in an uproar.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it was fated, just like Heathcliff and Catherine, that the 2026 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights <\/em>would be controversial \u2014 moral scrutiny about the exasperating love story is as old as the original 1847 Emily Bront\u00eb novel itself.<\/p>\n In fact, people have been mad about writer-director Emerald Fennell\u2019s adaptation of the book since it was announced that A-listers Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi<\/a> would play the leads. People said Robbie\u2019s too old, Elordi\u2019s too white and Fennell can\u2019t be trusted with stories of class and violence \u2014 all fair critiques, leveled long before they\u2019d suited up in period-inaccurate costumes to scream at each other in the rain.<\/p>\n So is the movie good? To some<\/a>. Will it be a financial success? It\u2019s already well on its way, grossing $34.8 million in ticket sales in three days. But what outshines the usual metrics is a movie’s ability to generate conversation, and Wuthering Heights<\/em> has clearly broken the viewing public\u2019s brains for a confluence of reasons, including our rage-bait media environment, our culture\u2019s current tendency toward puritanism, and the fact that Catherine and Heathcliff are and have always been avowed sociopaths.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been delicious to watch all the discourse unfold \u2014 cinema is back, baby \u2014 so let\u2019s dig into all the rancor.<\/p>\n Wuthering Heights <\/em>is not a nice book. As a child, Catherine\u2019s family takes in Heathcliff, a mistreated boy, and he\u2019s forced to work for them. Catherine and Heathcliff are best friends, though they are divided by class and status. As she grows up, Catherine realizes, with an air of mean-spiritedness, that she\u2019ll need to marry rich to get out of here. She does so, betraying Heathcliff, who runs off \u2014 and unexpectedly also becomes rich.<\/p>\n When he returns, they continue their toxic situationship, torturing each other by flirting with their wealthy neighbors, the Linton siblings. They both suck \u2014 they\u2019re cruel and sadistic to everyone around them \u2014 but they have an otherworldly draw to one another, fueled by a series of some of the greatest lines in literary history: \u201cYou say I killed you? Haunt me then!\u201d Come on. \u201cHe’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.\u201d The gorgeousness of the writing distracts from the evil they inflict upon each other and others. It\u2019s uncomfortable to behold, but it inspires complex discussions about love, abuse and class dynamics, which is why it\u2019s a staple in English classrooms.<\/p>\n They both suck \u2014 they\u2019re cruel and sadistic to everyone around them \u2014 but they have an otherworldly draw to one another, fueled by a series of some of the greatest lines in literary history.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n People not familiar with this saga might have been thrown off by the way Fennell\u2019s adaptation was billed \u2014 as the greatest love story ever told.<\/p>\n How could the greatest love story ever told, wrapped up in fantastical aesthetics and fabulous gowns, be so dark and unsettling? Because it\u2019s great, as in epic; not good, as in moral.\u00a0<\/em>Catherine and Heathcliff are bad people doomed to haunt each other into oblivion. They\u2019re also soulmates. You\u2019re not supposed to be like them, and they\u2019re not supposed to end up together, but that nuance is hard to digest in an era in which people equate the moral purity of media with its artistic prowess.<\/p>\n In 2026, people struggle to enjoy movies with even light emotional cheating, as with the Netflix romantic comedy People We Meet on Vacation.<\/em> They dislike character studies of selfish characters on the grounds of their behavior, as with Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet\u2019s movie about a ping-pong-playing menace, Marty Supreme. <\/em>Of course they\u2019re having a hard time with aggressive displays of narcissism and vengeance.<\/p>\n We can\u2019t wholly fault modern audiences though \u2014 this happened when the book came out too. The original Wuthering Heights<\/em> inspired outrage for its \u201cvulgar depravity and unnatural horrors,\u201d and Bront\u00eb originally published the work under a man\u2019s name. \u201cHow a human being could have attempted such a book as the present without committing suicide before he had finished a dozen chapters, is a mystery,\u201d wrote one reviewer in 1848.<\/a> How dare someone question society by putting the savagery of love and human selfishness on display!<\/p>\n The film\u2019s writer-director has a bad reputation among film enthusiasts online: Her movies, like Promising Young Woman<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>and Saltburn<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>are ridiculously stylish, but some say they fumble their moral and thematic messaging, swerving commentary about gender and class in favor of shock value and vibes.<\/p>\n Here, Fennell was given a massive budget to adapt the beloved book she, and so many other emotional, verbose women across many generations, have a deep personal connection to. The scare quotes in the official title Wuthering Heights, <\/em>as seen in the movie poster, are intended to remind you that this is just one woman\u2019s take on the story \u2014 as if she\u2019s saying, very forthrightly, \u201cPlease don\u2019t be mad at me, this is just my take.\u201d<\/p>\n Critics nevertheless lambasted the movie for being too dumb. Vulture\u2019s Alison Willmore complimented<\/a> its \u201csmooth-brained sensuality,\u201d adding that \u201cFennell surveys Bront\u00eb\u2019s saga of doomed passion, obsession, and multigenerational resentment and sums it up as the story of two incredibly messy bitches who can\u2019t stay away from one another.\u201d Slate\u2019s Dana Stevens calls it <\/a>\u201cgorgeous, throbbing, and proudly idiotic.\u201d Both note that Fennell\u2019s adaptation rejects the underlying story of class and race relations to focus on the tension between the two very hot leads. To which I say, yes, of course it does!<\/p>\n Most of the book \u2014 including its depiction of incest, attempted child murder, animal abuse and necrophilia \u2014 is not in the movie<\/a>. It zeroes in on one relationship, eliminating many characters and dropping the second generation of torture that Heathcliff and Catherine inflict on one another, in life and beyond. Without that layer of nuance, what\u2019s left is basically fan fiction.<\/p>\n There\u2019s an argument that Fennell gleaned from the book what she could handle as a storyteller who is white and wealthy, and this is merely that story. Her take has walls made of flesh and comically large strawberries. By Vulture\u2019s count, we have 31 other adaptations to choose from<\/a>. Why get so exercised by this one?<\/p>\n Discussing the differences between the movie and the book, nonetheless, is a great pastime that encourages reading<\/a> and media literacy, and has even gotten new people to pick up the novel and fall in love<\/a> with it. I count that as an overall win.<\/p>\n Wuthering Heights <\/em>is sexy. There\u2019s a lot of intercourse injected into the movie that was never in the book, complimented by constant innuendo \u2014 a hanging that sounds awfully sexual, foods that look like body parts and goo everywhere<\/a>. There\u2019s been a lot of disdain for the people who find that hot. At the same time, some critics argue it doesn\u2019t go far enough. Despite all the juxtapositions of animal slaughter with kinky sex that probably hadn\u2019t entered Victorian consciousness yet, the Ringer\u2019s Adam Nayman <\/a>writes that Fennell doesn\u2019t quite reach the edgelord status she so wants, instead becoming a \u201cnaughty, frictionless spectacle.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps the most baffling criticism I\u2019ve seen online of the film is that Wuthering Heights<\/em>, originally a book written by a young unmarried woman and read by high schoolers everywhere, is \u201can erotic film made for virgins.\u201d<\/a> Well, yes!<\/p>\n We know culture has become increasingly sex negative in recent years. To people online, Wuthering Heights <\/em>is somehow too much of a sexual fantasy and not sexy enough.<\/p>\n Look, I think it\u2019s perfectly valid to call a movie stupid or dislike its execution, but the hate has escalated to such a point that the people who were moved by it are worried that they\u2019re dumb. I think it\u2019s beautiful that some people can ignore Charli xcx\u2019s auto-tuned score howling over the moors in a particularly emotional scene. It\u2019s valid that some people can\u2019t. It\u2019s not a moral failing to fall on the less pretentious side.<\/p>\n The mental calisthenics and good-natured amusement of arguing about media become a lot less productive when it results in shaming people for having a bit of fun at the theater. Let\u2019s hash out our differences on the internet in a civilized way and leave the savagery to Heathcliff and Catherine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Water is wet, the weather in the English moors is dreadful and a psychosexual romantic drama about two outrageously cruel soulmates has the internet in an uproar. Perhaps it was fated, just like Heathcliff and Catherine, that the 2026 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights would be controversial \u2014 moral scrutiny about the exasperating love story … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Is-Wuthering-Heights-really-smooth-brained-and-idiotic-Why-we-cant.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21174,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21172\/revisions\/21174"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Wuthering Heights<\/em><\/strong> has been enraging critics for 179 years<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Fennell\u2019s version is a watered-down retelling<\/strong><\/h2>\n
It’s too horny (or horny in the wrong way)<\/h2>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"