February 19, 2026
Wuthering Heights was the remote estate owned by Mr. Earnshaw (Martin Clunes), where he lived with his only daughter Catherine (Charlotte Mellington as child, Margot Robbie as adult). One night, a drunk Mr. Earnshaw brought home a boy of shady origins whom he intended to be Cathy's pet. She called him Heathcliff (Owen Cooper as child, Jacob Elordi as adult) after her late brother and became very close friends.
Years later, Wuthering Heights had fallen into bad times because of Mr. Earnshaw's drinking and gambling habits. Catherine went to spy on the wealthy textile merchant named Edward Linton (Shazad Latif) and his ward Isabella (Alison Oliver) who had moved in to nearby Thrushcross Grange. After an accident where she hurt her ankle, Cathy wound up spending the next six weeks being cared for by her fancy neighbors.
There had been about 35 film and television adaptations of Emily Bronte's 1947 classic novel over the years, from a 1920 silent version by AV Bramble to this present version. The most famous version was the 1939 black-and-white classic film by William Wyler, starring Lawrence Olivier and Merle Oberon, which earned eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor. There were also international adaptations, most notably into Japanese ("Arashi ga oka") in 1988, and Filipino ("Hihintayin Kita sa Langit") in 1991.
Like the 1939 version, this current 2026 version written and directed by Emerald Fennell confined itself to the tumultuous love story of Catherine and Heathcliff, which was only up to Chapter 16 of Bronte's book. The novel still had 18 more chapters that delved into the lives of their children, which were included in the 1988 Japanese version and the 1992 Peter Kominsky version. However, the entire second generation part of the original story were rendered impossible by how the 1939 and 2026 film versions ended.
Even between the 1939 and 2026 films, there were several significant differences in the diverse casting of main characters. Margot Robbie's Cathy was said to be past spinsterhood, likely to explain why she, now age 34, was playing a character who was in her teens in the book. Jacob Elordi's Heathcliff was clearly white, not the dark gypsy or Indian as described in the book. It was interesting that the actor playing Edward Linton -- Shazad Latif, who was of Pakistani descent -- would seem to fit that swarthy description more.
The 2026 Nelly Dean was played by actresses of Asian descent -- Vy Nguyen as a child, and Hong Chau as adult. This new Nelly was Cathy's hired companion, not a typical servant of the house as 1939's narrator Ellen Dean. Here, Cathy did not have a brother Hindley anymore, and instead it was her Father who drank and gambled Wuthering Heights to its ruin. Alison Oliver's Isabella was now only Edward's ward, not his sister. This new Isabella was unkindly portrayed with truly bizarre behavior, blindly accepting abuse as a price for her infatuation.
A remarkable departure from past film versions was the exaggerated production design by Suzie Davies, done to contrast Cathy's lavish playground in Thrushcross Grove to her miserable home turf in Wuthering Heights. The Linton house was replete with over-the-top interiors and props, from the bedroom walls rendered in the color of Cathy's face, the enormous replica of the mansion with dolls inside made by hand with actual human hair, to those glazed shrimps and giant fruits garnishing the food on the ostentatious dining table.
A markedly aggressive feature of the 2026 film was the overtly sexual Cathy-Heathcliff relationship. Previously, they were portrayed to be just limited to longing looks and repressed desire. Now, in the first hour, Heathcliff would chance upon Cathy's moments of intimate awakening, peeking at cavorting servants, and exploring herself behind the rocks. In the second hour, upon their reunion, Heathcliff and Cathy actually broke all boundaries and launched into a montage-ful of illicit sexual encounters both in- and outdoors. 7/10
