The new Wuthering Heights film has come out, and needless to say, the Internet has a lot to say about it. Some friends have been sending me Instagram clips of people’s ‘critique’ (to put it democratically). These clips provide valuable insight into 21st Century discourse, the art of adapting literature, and the tendency of certain online commentators to resort to smug self-righteousness at the mildest provocation.

I first read Wuthering Heights as a teen. Tried to read it, anyway. I remember one of my former Wymondham High tutors praising the novel from the rooftops, and consequently getting a tad irate with 14-year-old me when I gave up after a few pages. I found it convoluted, hard to follow, and just a bit dull. I had successfully conquered other canonical novels (like Pride and Prejudice and Middlemarch), so I assumed that if I didn’t like it, it must be the book’s problem, not mine.

Fool was I ever! It’s humbling to revisit books as an older person and realise you were completely smug and wrong the first time. I ended up reading Wuthering Heights three times in my early 20s, and it has become one of my favourite novels ever. I’ve even written about it twice for university coursework. Said Wymondham High tutor is thoroughly vindicated.

The Catcher in the Rye is another book I hated as a teen and have since loved as an adult. Realising you were wrong is the best feeling ever.

So I was very excited to watch Emerald Fennell’s new version. The honest truth is – it’s fine. It’s a very, very weird film, and much racier than anything Emily Brontë put to paper. The endless sex between Heathcliff and Cathy does get a bit much towards the end, and I’d have loved Fennell to adapt the whole novel, rather than just the first half.

That said, it is nowhere near as awful as several online reviews would have you believe. It’s funny in places, beautifully shot, and the child actors are fantastic.

It takes several creative liberties. It focuses exclusively on Heathcliff and Cathy’s relationship, and neglects everything Brontë wrote afterwards. This is not new. Several adaptations have done the same.

But fear not, dear reader! Several members of my generation are available to flock to Instagram and point out where Fennell ‘went wrong’. Thank goodness for their wisdom.

One video showed a male commentator criticising Fennell’s portrayal of Isabella Linton, a minor character in the book who has a terrible marriage to the central antagonist, Heathcliff. Without spoilers, Fennell interprets Isabella very, very differently from Emily Brontë, and to be fair, it does get a bit weird in places.

This commentator was narrating the book’s plot to his, I’m sure, numerous fans. He argued that the cinematic Isabella was too far-removed from Brontë’s version, and that he was here to explain ‘exactly what was lost on Fennell’.

I tried not to roll my eyes too loudly. I don’t blame people like this. It’s a human impulse to have something to say (don’t I know it – I write this column every month!). It’s especially gratifying to sit in smug superiority over a popular film director and claim that something was ‘lost’ on them, and to validate this claim with a long plot summary of the original text. It’s a show of both moral superiority and greater cultural sophistication. Double whammy.

But come now. Yes, Fennell portrays Isabella very differently. Surprise surprise – the clue’s in the word ‘adaptation’. Yes, much of Isabella’s narrative voice gets cut from the film.

But that doesn’t mean this was ‘lost on Fennell’. It’s not like she forgot to read that chapter. She chose to change it because she was adapting it in her own image! Shock horror! It’s only what every film director does.

Another commentator made a video reacting to the film’s tagline: ‘greatest love story ever told’. The video showed him dramatically rolling his eyes, gazing at the camera as if he had just heard news of World War Three, and saying, ‘okay…I have never heard someone say so many wrong things one after the other consecutively in a row!’

As if he’s the first person to notice Wuthering Heights’s resistance to clear definitions of a ‘love story’. Bless him.

Once again, thank goodness he’s here to enlighten us.

To be fair, at least these commentators are getting people talking about the film and the novel. That can only be a good thing – it’s how works of art stay alive!

But it’s a revealing insight into how smug we get at the slightest opportunity to stand on our soapboxes.