“Where is the obstacle?” In a trailer for the new film adaptation of “Wuthering Heights,” Emily Brontë’s 1847 Gothic novel about obsessive love and calamitous revenge in the moors of Northern England, a servant poses this question to her distressed mistress, Catherine Earnshaw, portrayed by Margot Robbie. Cathy, as she’s known, has agreed to marry her wealthy neighbor despite — or perhaps because of — her deep affection for Heathcliff, the enigmatic orphan her family adopted years ago who became her childhood friend and has now grown into a strikingly handsome young man. Overwhelmed by the compromise she has made, Cathy places a hand to her chest and responds with a single, poignant word: “Here.”
Pose the same question to the numerous early critics of this adaptation, helmed by Emerald Fennell, and they might gesture not to their hearts, but to everything onscreen. They perceive the sweeping, romantic tone and explicit sexual content of the promotional materials as a blatant offense to the original novel. The trailer offers fleeting glimpses of an elaborate dollhouse, lavish feasts, and engulfing fog, alongside a suggestively sculpted mound of dough, characters caressing what appears to be a wall of flesh, and Cathy’s ecstatic gasps at Heathcliff’s touch. All these visuals surge by to the pulse of an electro ballad by pop star Charli XCX, portraying the film as an epic, overt romance styled like a modern, high-concept fashion editorial. Online commenters have slammed it as “50 Shades of Brontë,” “wine-mom pornslop,” and a “middle finger to the source material.” In a discussion forum about a teaser, one user lamented that “Emily is rolling in her grave,” while another stated it “feels like some historically inaccurate, poorly written, cringey, questionable and tasteless dark romance.” This is decidedly not the “Wuthering Heights” of generations past, and for many viewers, that’s a significant issue.
A similar uproar erupted with the trailer for Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming adaptation of Homer’s “Odyssey,” starring Matt Damon as Odysseus. (He narrates, “After years of war, no one could stand between my men and home.”) Many viewers swiftly voiced their displeasure. The core grievances weren’t directed at the familiar narrative moments flashing by, such as the Cyclops entering his lair or fallen warriors rising from the dead. Instead, the contention revolved around historical accuracy. Numerous videos, posts, and articles, collectively garnering millions of views, criticize the anachronistic elements: the austere cuirasses – dismissed as “drab leather nonsense” by one user – and red-plumed helmets sported by Odysseus and his crew, which, they argue, bear no resemblance to authentic Bronze Age Greek armor from around 1200 B.C. Agamemnon’s gray, Kevlar-like helmet, for instance, was likened to a discarded prop from Nolan’s Batman franchise or a “toy helmet” that, according to viewers, threatens to “break the immersion.” Critics also noted Nolan’s choice of a Viking-esque vessel for Odysseus, rather than an ancient Greek penteconter, and the occasional substitution of Scottish islands and their native vegetation for the Mediterranean landscapes.
It’s no secret that people love to voice their complaints about movies online, especially those they haven’t yet seen. Yet, it remains somewhat astonishing that after over a century of book-to-screen adaptations—including numerous films and series based on “Wuthering Heights”—and given the sheer volume of adapted content, remakes, and reboots churned out by studios and streaming platforms, some still demand that new renditions of classic works be faithful reproductions of their source material or cinematic history lessons. The “Wuthering Heights” trailer explicitly states the film is “inspired” by the book—even using telling quotation marks around the title. Director Fennell herself has stated her adaptation stemmed from the raw emotions she experienced upon first reading the novel at 14. However, these points hold little sway with purists. To them, the book is sacrosanct, and any divergence from it constitutes a transgression. They argue Cathy should be a brunette teenager, not a blonde in her mid-30s; Heathcliff ought to be racially ambiguous, not played by an actor, Jacob Elordi, who is only partly Basque. A haunting, feverish narrative of stifled longing and destructive rage, they insist, should neither be marketed as “The Greatest Love Story of All Time,” as the trailer proclaims, nor appear as “a smuttified version of ‘Wuthering Heights,’” as one YouTuber asserted in a video disparaging Margot Robbie’s casting.
For decades, films that strayed from their source material have infuriated both audiences and authors. Stephen King, for example, famously disliked Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of “The Shining,” much like many of his readers. Similarly, fans have meticulously documented, criticized, and sometimes even applauded the discrepancies between J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary works and their numerous adaptations. More recently, Guillermo del Toro’s attempt at “Frankenstein” faced backlash for its perceived unfaithfulness to Mary Shelley’s classic novel. However, the rise of social media and streaming video has fostered – and even encouraged – an unprecedented level of online pedantry and meticulous scrutiny. Platforms like Netflix frequently repurpose existing narratives for content, and even when they present something ostensibly new, it often shares the same visual style and production qualities as the rest of their vast catalog. This results in a monotonous cycle of familiar stories presented with repetitive aesthetics, leaving audiences feeling bewildered by the sameness. Concurrently, on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, “trailer breakdowns” dissect every frame of films and their advertisements, searching for hidden meanings and “Easter eggs.” This dynamic has cultivated a specific form of viewership among some individuals, one akin to meticulously comparing data in a spreadsheet: an anxious, almost professional oversight where every visual element must be cross-referenced and validated against the original text and preconceived notions.
While every new interpretation of an older work is often said to mirror contemporary anxieties—revealing insights into “where we stand today”—this particular style of viewership may offer clues into how we perceive, and at times fail to perceive, our own incredibly complex world. This yearning for canonical texts to provide something immutable (alongside a depiction of a more tangible, seemingly simpler past, whether purely imaginative or historically grounded) could hint at a pervasive unease or instability in our engagement with the present moment.
In times when the future feels uncertain, the perceived fixed truths of the past can offer solace. (Odysseus’s journey was arduous, but his ultimate fate is known.) If we feel powerless to alter the trajectory of current events, we can, at the very least, look to our screens to articulate that persistent feeling that something is amiss in the world—something that needs to be exposed, and if not corrected, then at least scrutinized. It’s worth remembering that the original literary works will remain untouched by these newest cinematic interpretations, and more adaptations will undoubtedly follow. Furthermore, a fundamental aim of narrative art is to reshape life into fresh forms that provide a revitalizing outlook on our existence. While Hollywood is certainly adept at producing dull, uninspired content, an excessive, almost mournful, respect for source material can also lead to equally uninspiring outcomes.
The literary texts themselves, however, are far from the unchanging entities we often imagine them to be. When engaging with a new translation of the “Odyssey,” or revisiting “Wuthering Heights” or “Frankenstein,” I often find myself surprised by how little I recall of the specific details of the stories, and how dramatically my reactions to individual sections can shift over time. Therefore, we should embrace the natural evolution of our relationship with the literary canon. Let’s direct our frustration towards the truly uninspired, condescending adaptations of today, while extending grace to those that genuinely strive for originality and artistic merit. We might as well savor the chance for new insights and discoveries. It’s better to return to the original texts with an open mind and give courageous adaptations a fair chance, rather than to cling to the past like Heathcliff—bitter and tempestuous, forever trying to summon the phantom of a half-forgotten past back into our hearts.
Paul McAdory is a writer hailing from Mississippi, currently residing in Brooklyn.
Source photographs for the illustration above: Warner Bros. Pictures; screenshot from the Odyssey movie website; Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Culture Club/Getty Images; ZU_09/Getty Images; Merovingian/Getty Images.