Emerald Lily Fennell’s latest film, a bold adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, has arrived in theaters just in time for Valentine’s Day 2026, but it’s not the gothic love story fans of the classic novel might expect. Starring Margot Robbie as Catherine and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, the film has sparked a lively debate among critics, scholars, and audiences alike, with many questioning whether the movie’s radical departures from the source material have gutted the very soul of Brontë’s masterpiece.
Promoted as “inspired by the greatest love story of all time,” the movie’s trailer is awash with longing glances between Catherine and Heathcliff, lush shots of the English moors, and passionate lines like “be with me always” and “drive me mad.” Yet, as Northeastern Global News points out, this focus on romance is only one small slice of a novel that, since its 1847 publication, has shocked, unsettled, and fascinated readers with its exploration of race, class, revenge, and intergenerational trauma.
For those unfamiliar, Brontë’s original novel follows Cathy, the privileged daughter of the Earnshaw family, and Heathcliff, the mysterious outsider her father brings home. Their obsessive connection is tested by social barriers, cruelty, and choices that reverberate across generations. But Fennell’s adaptation, as critics have noted, pares the story down to just Catherine and Heathcliff, discarding significant characters and much of the novel’s intricate structure. The result, according to The Guardian, is “an emotionally hollow, bodice-ripping misfire.”
Sarah Lang, writing for The Spinoff, observes, “The film’s Heathcliff is too calm, even gentle, for someone who will basically become a devil. The film’s Catherine is strong-willed but loving, not the spoiled brat of the book.” This softening of the two leads is a far cry from Brontë’s original, where both are “awful people who inflict pain on others and bring about their own misfortune.” Lang also points out that the film omits pivotal characters—most notably Catherine’s brother Hindley, whose antagonism towards Heathcliff is central to the book’s cycle of revenge—and that other characters, like Edgar and Isabella, are reduced to mere props or are oddly reimagined.
Perhaps the most controversial change, though, is the film’s embrace of explicit sexuality. In Brontë’s novel, not even a kiss passes between Catherine and Heathcliff; their passion is psychological, spiritual, and, above all, destructive. Fennell’s adaptation, however, features multiple sex scenes, including a montage that, as Lang quips, “adds some more sex scenes in, then some more.” This choice, paired with the casting of a 35-year-old Margot Robbie as the teenage Catherine and Jacob Elordi as a white, dark-haired Heathcliff (when the book describes him as racially ambiguous and an outsider), has drawn sharp criticism. Tarushi Sonthalia, a visiting teaching professor at Northeastern, told Northeastern Global News, “That’s a core part of the outsider status… you’re losing out on that with Jacob Elordi.”
Fennell herself, in an interview with the L.A. Times, admitted she “wanted to make her own version” of the story. Like many directors before her, she chose to omit the second half of the novel, which follows the next generation and ultimately breaks the cycle of trauma and abuse. Lori Lefkovitz, a professor of English at Northeastern, laments this decision: “The fact that it’s intergenerational and you have a third generation (that breaks the cycle), that gives you hope.” Without this conclusion, the film, critics argue, loses the novel’s hard-won sense of redemption and the depth of its commentary on child abuse and trauma.
Production-wise, the film is a visual spectacle. As The Berkshire Edge describes, Fennell’s direction lands “somewhere between the cover of a paperback romance novel and a giallo horror film,” keeping the audience teetering between swooning romance and gothic tragedy. The character of Nelly, originally the servant and narrator in Brontë’s text, is reimagined as an architect-like figure, nudging Catherine and Heathcliff toward their tragic fates—compressing their wildness into what the review calls “gothic monstrosities.” At times, the film even toys with the possibility of a happy ending, only to reaffirm that “as long as we live in a world that forces people to choose between authenticity and survival, there is no happy ending waiting on the moors.”
The critical response has been almost uniformly negative. ScreenRant dismissed the movie as “flavorless” and “skin-deep,” arguing that “the problem with Fennell’s film isn’t a disregard for literary faithfulness but what that disregard reveals about her and what it translates into on the screen.” The Independent accused it of using “the guise of interpretation to gut one of the most impassioned, emotionally violent novels ever written, and then toss its flayed skin over whatever romance tropes seem most marketable. Adaptation or not, it’s an astonishingly hollow work.” Collider was even more scathing, calling it “a jarring, vapid, and ultimately insulting experience” and suggesting that “Emily Brontë is absolutely rolling in her grave.”
This isn’t the first time Wuthering Heights has been adapted for the screen—far from it. Since its first adaptation in 1939, the novel’s intense, ambiguous relationships and bleak vision have inspired countless filmmakers and even musicians (Kate Bush’s iconic single, for example). But as Lawrence Evalyn, a text mining specialist at Northeastern, reminds us, Brontë’s original “had really, almost shockingly, thrown off a lot of the conventions of the Victorian novel to create something that people recognized as having reality to it. But it felt uncomfortable to see that.” That discomfort, he argues, is part of the novel’s enduring power.
So why does this adaptation feel so different? Critics and scholars seem to agree that by stripping away the novel’s darkness, its social commentary, and its psychological complexity, Fennell’s film offers up a version of Wuthering Heights that is more marketable but less meaningful. As Sonthalia puts it, “It definitely doesn’t feel romantic in the sense that we understand romance. There are a lot of the worst impulses of people concentrated in that novel. But then there is also that element of that obsession, showing a deeply human aspect. We all feel obsessions. We all feel impulses that we’re ashamed of. It’s just concentrated there and not hidden by a veneer. I don’t think they’re redeemed at the end of the novel and I think that’s what’s brilliant about it.”
For those seeking a classic love story, Fennell’s Wuthering Heights might be a swooning, visually lush treat. But for readers and viewers who cherish the novel’s darkness and its refusal to offer easy answers, this adaptation may feel like a missed opportunity—a Valentine’s Day gift that’s all wrapping and no heart.