Emerald Fennell’s upcoming movie adaptation of Wuthering Heights has been highly controversial ever since it was announced last year, with the casting for the classic 1847 novel by Emily Brontë sparking fierce online backlash.
In case you missed it, many felt that 35-year-old Margot Robbie was too old to play 18-year-old Catherine Earnshaw, and that Jacob Elordi is probably too white to play Heathcliff, who is described in the book as “dark-skinned.”
While Heathcliff’s race and ethnicity is kept ambiguous in the novel, at one point, another character refers to him as “a little Lascar,” which means a sailor from Southeast Asia, and in a later part of the text, he is described as a “ragged, black-haired child… as dark almost as if it came from the devil.” Despite this, it’s worth noting that Heathcliff has historically been portrayed by white actors, with the exception of the 2011 film, in which he was played by James Howson.
Back in April, the movie’s casting director, Kharmel Cochrane, added fuel to the fire when she defended the two actors taking on the roles during a Q&A session at the Sands Film Festival in Scotland. Here, she argued that the actors don’t need to match how Brontë describes the characters because Wuthering Heights is “just a book.”
“There’s definitely going to be some English Lit fans that are not going to be happy,” Kharmel went on to tease. “Wait until you see the set design because that is even more shocking.”
And when the first trailer for the movie was released in September, fans only became even more sceptical — with some even theorizing that there is going to be a huge plot twist where Margot and Jacob aren’t actually playing Catherine and Heathcliff in the traditional sense.
In fact, a TikToker went viral after she noted that the title frame of the trailer showed the movie’s name in quotation marks, which led her to the belief that Emerald’s adaptation will be a take on Wuthering Heights, but Margot’s character will be a horny Victorian-era yearner who is reading the book for the first time and imagining herself as Catherine.
“It’s possible she’s just a fellow yearner, like us, dissociating and daydreaming of her Heathcliff as a way to escape her normal life,” the TikToker explained, as she also pointed out the discrepancy in the costumes seen in the trailer. While some are reminiscent of the late 1700s, which is when the actual book’s storyline takes place, other costumes lean more toward Victorian fashion, which became popularized in the mid-to-late 1800s.
Needless to say, for better or for worse, there is a whole lot of hype surrounding the release of Wuthering Heights, which will be hitting our screens on Feb. 13, with pretty much everybody dubious of how well Emerald and co. will pull the whole thing off. And that is why Margot sharing Emerald’s hugely aspirational hopes for the movie in a new interview with British Vogue has sparked a pretty strong reaction online.
“In one of our first conversations about this film, I asked Emerald what her dream outcome was,” Margot told the publication. “She said, ‘I want this to be this generation’s Titanic. I went to the cinema to watch Romeo & Juliet eight times, and I was on the ground crying when I wasn’t allowed to go back for a ninth. I want it to be that.’”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, social media users had thoughts on Emerald’s bold dreams, with Margot’s Titanic quote instantly going viral on X. Responding to it, one person wrote: “shes off the rails delusional i kind of admire her.”
Do you believe that Wuthering Heights will be the new Titanic? Watch the trailer below, and let me know your thoughts in the comments!
View this video on YouTube
Warner Bros / Via youtube.com
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