The Bitter Kitten Movie Club: "Wuthering Heights" (2026)
Tom & Lorenzo’s Pop Style Opinionfest - Tom Lorenzo
Tom and Lorenzo dive into Emerald Fennell's 2026 reimagining of 'Wuthering Heights,' starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, discussing its b
Key takeaways
- The film is a radical reinterpretation of Emily Brontë's novel, with major character changes that alter core dynamics, including reimagining Heathcliff as white and shifting the father's role to be antagonistic.
Main topics
- Adaptation vs. artistic reinterpretation
- Casting choices and racial representation in classic literature adaptations
Notable quotes
"I liked the first two-thirds of the film... but as soon as they started having sex, the quality just fell off completely."
Conclusion
While acknowledging Emerald Fennell's bold cinematic vision and strong performances—especiall
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:23) We're Tom and Lorenzo. And this is the Bitter Kitten Movie Club. Hello, kittens. Welcome back to another edition of the BKMC, a supplemental edition of the PopStyle Opinion Fest podcast, where we take a look at one film per week and just unpack whatever we can unpack. This week's film is director Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights from this year, 2026, starring Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi Hong Chow. Speaker 1 (0:48) Alison Oliver, I'm doing it, Shahzad Lateef, Martin Clunes, I'm doing this all off the top of my head. And the little kid, what is it? Oh, yeah, Owen Cooper. Speaker 2 (1:00) He's Speaker 1 (1:00) so good. So, let's start with our history with this particular film. We both tried to watch it on the plane during our recent trip to Europe. And I turned it off, and actually... I thought I turned it off after only maybe 15 minutes, but we started watching this film, and I was like, oh, wow, I got like 45 minutes into this before I turned it off. Speaker 1 (1:27) That's not really a commentary on the quality of the film. I turned it off because it's a story about incredibly irritating people, and who wants that on an airplane? Speaker 2 (1:36) You're already just in the world of irritation. And that was Speaker 1 (1:41) the thing. And the second thing is, um... when you're watching a film on a plane with headphones, you know, well, I'm partially deaf, so that's me, but I have to jack the headphones all the way up just to drown out all the, you know, the engine noise and all that. And this is a film that, you know, doesn't always reward you for top volume because there's a lot of sound effects, there's a lot of musical cues and everything, and a lot of yelling. And that's what I mean. I was like, all right, I'll watch this at home. And that is part of the reason why I put it on the list for the BKMC this month because I was like, I do want to see it. Having said that, I didn't. I was not looking forward to watching this based on those 45 minutes. Now, what did you think on the plane? Why did you turn it off? Speaker 2 (2:24) I turned it off because I was just not, I just wasn't interested. And it's funny because we were on several planes and I tried twice, two different planes. I only Speaker 1 (2:32) did it once. I Speaker 2 (2:33) tried twice. It's not Speaker 1 (2:35) a plane movie. I just wouldn't call it a plane movie. But I was like, Speaker 2 (2:38) you know what? I'm going to watch something else. And I did great movies. I was like, forget this one. As you, I was like, I'll watch it later. Uh, I'm a huge fan of the book. Uh, I read the book when I was a teenager, loved it, was obsessed with it. Um, so, but I'm not, you know, I'm not the kind of person who reads a book and expect, you know, people to do exactly like, you know, page by page, word by word, follow everything the same. No. I mean, I, I feel like people, when they decide to make a movie. tell a story, they should tell whatever they feel like telling, you know, whatever. Let me just Speaker 1 (3:13) stop you there and ask, like, before we get into critiques, what's your take, just your first one-sentence take on this film? Did you like it or not? Speaker 2 (3:23) I didn't like the story. That's how I put it, because it's not the book. Yeah, okay. But Speaker 1 (3:30) as a film? No, I didn't like it at all. Okay. I... Speaker 1 (3:36) Yeah, first two-thirds of the film, even though I wouldn't have called it perfect, there were scenes and choices made that really got on my nerves, but I was in it. I was like, all right, this is incredibly freaking cinematic. She's got a point of view. She's doing what she wants to do. I'm sorry, this isn't the one-sentence version. I should be more precise. I liked the first two-thirds of the film, and then as soon as they started having sex, the quality just fell off completely, and then it's just completely derailed in the final act. I Speaker 2 (4:07) have to say, the movie about, uh, uh, Diana, uh, what is it, the print, what's the name of Speaker 1 (4:15) the movie, uh, with Kristen Stewart? Uh, Spencer. Speaker 2 (4:17) Spencer. After I watched the movie, my, my, my... idea of how things should be done in terms of a movie changed completely. After I watched that movie, I was like, you know what? People are allowed to tell a story like that. I agree. Speaker 1 (4:32) I agree. Speaker 2 (4:32) That changed my perspective. I was like, you know, you're the director or the writer, the script writer, whatever. Speaker 1 (4:39) Screenwriter. Speaker 2 (4:40) Screenwriter. I'm sorry. You do whatever you feel like doing. So I think that's fine. If she wanted to tell the story she told. And to her Speaker 1 (4:49) credit. Speaker 2 (4:49) Loosely, slightly based on the book. That's fine. To Speaker 1 (4:53) her credit, she was very, very open about this, right down to the choice to put the title in all the promotional work, to put the title in quotation marks. Almost to serve as scare quotes as if, you know, it's Wuthering Heights scare quotes. It's not actually Wuthering Heights. It's Emerald. You know, she should have called it Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights, but then people would have raked her over the coals for it. um she Speaker 2 (5:16) should just call it kath and he well Speaker 1 (5:18) we Speaker 2 (5:19) were saying that saying Speaker 1 (5:19) that before the um we flipped on the mics we were talking it out and and lorenzo said you know if she had called it something other than wuthering heights and i said yeah she should have just called it kathy and heathcliff so um let's Let's do this. I'm going to turn this over to you, and I want you to... You don't have to give us a book report, but you read the book. I have read a lot about the book. I know what the story entails and who the characters are. I read the Speaker 2 (5:45) book when I was a teenager. I don't remember every line. But you're Speaker 1 (5:48) basing this on the same research I did, basically. I Speaker 2 (5:51) was shocked with all the changes. Why don't Speaker 1 (5:53) you unpack a few of them? There Speaker 2 (5:55) are a lot of things... Well, first of all, the father in the book, he's a nice guy. He's, you know, he's okay guy. And she didn't introduce the brother. You know, Catherine has a brother. And the brother is the asshole in the book. Right. Primarily. He's the one who goes after Heathcliff and treats him like shit. you know it's not the father the father actually was nice to he yeah in the book uh so that's a major uh change that a you don't have the brother and then you make Speaker 1 (6:27) the father you know act like an so many Speaker 2 (6:31) things like um uh nelly the character nelly she's just a maid someone who works you know in the house she's not like a close company like a companion or whatever whatever you want to call it uh what else uh isabella it's actually um Edgar's sister, not a ward, not like an orphan that he's taking care of. Speaker 1 (6:51) I'm not sure why that change was made. That's one thing where she kind of complicated it instead of simplifying it. I Speaker 2 (6:57) guess because they look different, you know? Speaker 1 (6:59) Oh, right. Oh, right. Because she cast Shehzad Latif and a white woman. Okay, well, I didn't even think Speaker 2 (7:06) of that. That's one way to look at it. What else? Speaker 1 (7:10) He could have a white sister. I mean, that's not impossible. Speaker 2 (7:13) Let's talk about... you know everyone the the whole thing on the internet even before the movie was released about you know casting Jacob Elordi as the guy, as Heathcliff, because in the book, he's supposed to have dark skin. He's supposed to look different. He's supposed Speaker 1 (7:29) to be exotic. Speaker 2 (7:30) He's supposed to be exotic, however you want to interpret that. The book is actually Speaker 1 (7:34) not very clear about how exactly. Can I just interject? Because I did do some reading on it, and my understanding, I actually did some scholarly reading, and I don't know how much this has held, but my understanding is... It's vague to sort of imply that people in the Yorkshire Moors would think anybody was exotic that walked in from the out. They thought he was an American at one point. Yeah, but the point is that he looked different. He looks different, exactly. Speaker 2 (7:58) And also, Catherine is not supposed to be blonde. In the book, she's fair, but she has dark hair and curly hair, nothing like Margot. Speaker 1 (8:07) Yeah, I mean, that stuff, the racial decisions she makes in this film are questionable, to say the least, and I think we should unpack that soon. But it doesn't bother me about hair color. I agree. Speaker 2 (8:18) But Edgar is supposed to be fair and white. And that's one of the reasons why Heathcliff hates him so much. Because, Speaker 1 (8:25) again... Heathcliff is dark and exotic. And she switched that. And, again, I'm not sure why she would make that. All right, fine. Let's get into this. So those Speaker 2 (8:32) changes alone, it's a whole different book right there. Speaker 1 (8:36) Well, yeah, because, yeah, she's switching the dynamic between those two characters. let's face it, she made the two non... the only two non-white-out characters in the movie an impediment to Kathy and Heathcliff's, and she all but turns Nellie into, you know, responsible for Kathy's death. I Speaker 2 (8:56) also hated, hated that. The fact that she turned Nellie into this evil, reasonable, you know, evil... I don't think she Speaker 1 (9:05) was evil. I think her... her... Speaker 1 (9:10) disapproval and the abuse that Kathy constantly visited on her made her unsympathetic to what Kathy was going through. Speaker 2 (9:18) I mean, Nellie was jealous of Kathy, you know, in the book and, you know, did a few things that weren't very nice, but it's... I hate the way the movie keeps blaming her for everything. Right. Which is not the case. And, Speaker