Wuthering Yikes

The “greatest love story of all time” is basically two hot psychos with boundary issues.

Maybe you’ve heard there’s a new Wuthering Heights movie. It debuted at #1 at the box office last weekend, proving once again that people will always pay to watch hot people ruin their own lives on the big screen.

I was one of them. Naturally, I saw it opening night in IMAX. Because if I’m going to see a toxic meltdown, I want to watch it in surround sound on the biggest screen possible.

Apparently, this is a tale as old as time, because there’s been over 25 major adaptations, including:

• 1920 (silent)

• 1939 (the Laurence Olivier one)

• Multiple Indian adaptations (1950, 1951, 1966, etc.)

• 1992 (Ralph Fiennes / Juliette Binoche)

• 2009 (TV version with Tom Hardy)

• 2011 (Andrea Arnold)

• 2026 (And now Emerald Fennell’s film starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi)

It’s based on the 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, which many people call “the greatest love story of all time.” That is a lie. It’s like calling Jaws a beach comedy.

In this version, Margot Robbie plays Catherine Earnshaw, who in the book is 17. Robbie is 35, which in Hollywood years apparently still qualifies as an emotionally immature teen.

If you’re cool with me spoiling most of the plot, please continue. (I’ll spare you just the ending).

Basically, it’s about this dusty, wind-slapped house on a hill in 1800s England called Wuthering Heights. It’s a gothic estate on the Yorkshire moors where everyone looks like they bathe in mud.

One day, Mr. Earnshaw, who is an abrasive alcoholic, brings home a random orphan boy from Liverpool and announces he’s Cathy’s “pet.”

This is not even the first WTF moment. The movie starts with a town hanging.

Cathy immediately becomes possessive and names him Heathcliff.

Heathcliff does not speak. He barely emotes.

Over time, he opens up, though. Catherine teaches him to read and talk and they grow up running around the moors like wild Victorian children.

I suppose this is the part people call romantic. Which is already sus since they’re more like siblings at this point. But it’s technically kosher.

Catherine loves Heathcliff. Heathcliff loves Catherine. But also they kind of hate each other for no reason whatsoever. There is lingering resentment Heathcliff has for Cathy’s family because the dad, despite taking him off the streets, treats him like literal dog shit.

As they grow up, Cathy realizes she should probably level up and get married.
Running barefoot across the moors with your emotionally stunted step-brother is thrilling at 16, but it does not scream stable long-term plan.

Enter Edgar Linton, who is basically a Disney prince with generational wealth. He lives in a lush palace called Thrushcross Grange, which you can kind of see from the gigantic hillside Cathy goes to masturbate (yes, really).

Edgar has a great wardrobe.

Edgar is handsome, polite, and everything Heathcliff is not in British society. He offers Catherine things she’s never had before, like silk gowns, stability, and indoor plumbing.

The bar is on the literal barn floor and he clears it easily.

So naturally, she marries him for status and comfort, and tea that doesn’t taste like barn dust.

BUT before she does, she confesses to the housekeeper, Nelly, played by the always excellent Hong Chau, that marrying Heathcliff would “degrade” her because he is broke AF. Then, in the same breath, she’s like, but also our souls are literally the same being.

Girl. Pick a lane.

Instead of just going to therapy, which didn’t exist, or writing in a journal, she says, like a literal sociopath, “I am Heathcliff.”

Ma’am. You are not Heathcliff. You are barely functioning as Catherine.

Meanwhile, Heathcliff has been lurking outside and overhears only the first half. He does not stay for nuance. He immediately leaves on horseback in a fit of wounded masculinity. Men selectively listening since the 18th century, smh.

And yet. Despite Edgar being handsome, polite, rich, emotionally available, and not actively plotting revenge in a barn somewhere… it’s still not enough for her. Nothing ever is for Cathy.

When she moves into the palace, she brings Nelly with her (have we mentioned that the new husband is a SAINT). And Nelly is like, “This is good.” Yeah, no shit, Nelly. Compared to Wuthering Heights, which looked like it was one gust away from collapse, this place is Versailles. Edgar’s place has doors that actually close. A treehouse would be better than that haunted shit-box you called a home for 2 decades.

Hong Chau as Nelly, constantly dealing with Catherine’s bullshit.

Any way.

Remember how I mentioned that Heathcliff stole the family horse and galloped away?

Well, five years later he returns and comes back mysteriously rich. And instead of the feral Jesus look he was going for earlier, he’s now clean-shaven. He kept the mutton-chops, tho.

Heathcliff after getting rich.

He immediately buys Wuthering Heights and, more importantly, buys revenge.

He then spends the rest of the story psychologically terrorizing everyone within a ten-mile radius.

Reminder: this is the “greatest love story of all time.”

We do get some intimacy, though.

The new movie leans into the sex in a way the book only hinted at. There’s a lot more grabbing, gasping, and intense eye contact. Jacob Elordi constantly has his finger down Margot Robbie’s throat and in other places, too.

Also, because I was curious, I decided to check out the original source material. Can we discuss how in the book, people are constantly described as “ejaculating” when they mean “exclaiming”? Like: “Heathcliff ejaculated at the dinner table.” Olde English was brutal.

Anyway, I won’t ruin the final scene in case you actually want to see this movie. This version only covers the first half of the book, by the way.

I still think trying to reframe emotional instability, infidelity, and grotesque abuse as epic romance is an odd choice, but somehow this IP has been a banger for centuries, so who am I to judge?