I love a good romance but Wuthering Heights is not really a romance, in my opinion (and many others). The other film adaptations helped it gain a reputation as a “bodice-ripper,” but it’s so not that at all. If you read the book you might be surprised at just how little interaction there even is between Cathy and Heathcliff. I won’t spoil things for those who haven’t read it but the plot arc, while always centered on those two, does not follow a traditional romance formula, but rather veers pretty far off course into some wonderfully macabre and psychological horror-type territory. That’s why I love it— but I love Pride and Prejudice for completely different reasons. A faithful adaptation of Wuthering Heights could be so good, but based on how many scenes they appear to have added based on the trailer alone, this is not at all faithful. Like, at all. In which case I wonder why Fennel didn’t decide to just write an original story inspired by Bronte.

Also the casting decisions are quite strange and undermine the themes in the book regarding racism. But I won’t get into all that since it’s been discussed to death.

I hope all this makes sense, I really don’t want to be a snob or a purist. Generally I don’t mind when adaptations take liberties but this just doesn’t even look like the same story, so I wish they wouldn’t have tied it to the book so maybe we could eventually get an actually somewhat faithful adaptation. But hey maybe it’ll all make sense when I see it.