If your adaptation is so far divorced from the main themes of the original text that it’s no longer recognizable, just call it something different because it’s not an adaptation anymore.
Why does it feel okay when Frankenstein adaptations go off script or Dracula adaptations go off script but not Wuthering Heights? Because those adaptations are either: A. Still emphasizing the same themes or adding new ones which are in line with the old. B. Adding new themes which enrich the original themes but are entirely different.
Heathcliff being a victim of his family’s racism and classism is important in a basic understanding of his character. If you strip that away, his character becomes flat and only motivated by his own violence.
Wuthering Heights is not a love story, it’s a story about breaking generational cycles of trauma. It’s a story about how even when you break those cycles, some of that pain still remains, it still haunts. But you’re allowed to leave, and you’re allowed to become something different than what your abusers tried to make you.
It’s a story about how you choose your own demons. About how sometimes you’d rather choose your own desolation than choose to be better than the people that hurt you. Heathcliff and Catherine aren’t meant to be romantic. They’re what happens to the people who contribute to the cycle rather than break it.
It doesn’t matter how pretty your movie is, it’s not Wuthering Heights anymore.
