The Dragons Review: “Wuthering Heights”

0:00 This is a movie designed for anxiety, which is why I'm saying it's a horror film, because that's not not what a love story does, right? A love story makes you feel good. This movie made me feel very bad. Yeah. And I did it well. Did it well. So you don't watch very much of the Winter Olympics, right?

0:30 In an ideal world, I would watch every Olympic event. However, I have found it so hard to navigate watching the Olympics since the rise of streaming that I just can't deal with it anymore. And so I watch almost nothing except what gets filtered to my algorithm, which has been Alyssa Liu winning the gold medal. Eileen, I don't know how you say your last name. Eileen Gu.

0:53 Eileen Gua winning. Winning gold. And I can't remember anything else. Amber Glenn skate, which looked great. I mean, I love figure skating, but I haven't watched that much of it. Yeah. I almost exclusively watch figure skating, not out of disinterest in other sports, but just out of, like, lack of time and understanding of how to stream them properly.

1:13 And like, we have Peacock, which, yeah, is supposed to make things easier. But like, the replays have been, like, expiring after a certain amount of time. So I kind of have a bone to pick with Peacock over this. I went to go watch, watch all of the replays for ice dancing. Like ice dancing is a separate, completely separate event right from Paris. Bigger skating and Chalk Bates, like did extremely well and I'm obsessed with them.

1:39 And I went to go watch like all of the replays because I like to see, yeah, I want to see their free skate and all that stuff, but I also want to see who they skated against. So I like to watch the replays. And the replays had like expired by the time I went to expiring. At all. And also they put it all under the umbrella of figure skating so they didn't have a separate one for ice dancing and for figure skating was just all under figure skating.

2:02 I'm like it's not the same event anyways. So it was very like my sister has been, we do it all during Snoop Sunday. So my sister's like you're psychotic. But I have been upset about it and the fact that I couldn't rewatch everything. So I guess I've just been re watching it over YouTube which is fine but I always cry during figure skating.

2:24 Like every single time. What was your reaction to Alyssa Lou's performance? Like pure joy, tears. I, I just, I don't ever remember because I grew up. I mean, not what Like I would watch figure skating, went for the Winter Olympics, but like Michelle Kwan, Cara Lipinski, like all them, I love them. I don't ever remember watching a figure skate. That was that joyous that like losing like, like just the way her body was moving was like pure radiance. Like it was beautiful.

2:59 It was, it was like this is the way this sport is meant to be done. Like this is like we have achieved a new pinnacle here. I thought it was amazing. Yeah. So good. So good, so good. I was pretty sad for Ilia melanin. I saw his free skate for the group round but I didn't see his individual skate.

3:19 I know he didn't do very well. Obviously this was not his best showing if you have to watch anything by him. He had a routine to the theme of succession that was in incredible. It is so good. He is like such an amazing skater and that's why I'm sad for him. Like obviously like he's gonna have another shot. He's so young, like he's gonna be just fine and like everybody has their off days, but he's just like he's so good and that routine is so good.

3:47 And I'm yeah, it stinks that he had an off day. But anyways, all this to say, every single time I watch figure skating at the Olympics, I find myself pulling up the literal YouTube video for every single Olympic performance of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moore. Are you familiar with these people? Oh my God.

4:06 OK, you have homework. You have homework. And it is. No, write this down. I'm not kidding. Actually, I'm just gonna find you to like. Just send it to me. You have my cell phone number. I'm aware Tessa Virtue and Scott Moore were an ice dancing pair from Canada that were like like on a different level. They had been skating together since they were like 7:00 and 9:00 and they retired at like 28 and 30, I want to say. And they retired after the 2018 Olympics. But their final routine ever was to and like you, you're going to understand why I'm was a mess after his routine. But it was to like a combination of songs from Moulin Rouge, Roxanne.

4:47 It was insane. And so I always end up watching like the Olympic ice dancers and then watching them just to see whether anybody had even come close. And then they never do. And then I just sob over them. I did spend like half an hour just going through old perform old like figure skating performances because I was trying to explain to Derek, like how much the sport has like changed from what I remember. And I showed him an old Oh my God, what is that guy's name? I remembered it on the day he was a he was like the American male figure skater when we were young. He was like bald.

5:23 He was like, I have to look this up. Sorry. I think his name is Scott something Scott Hamilton. Do you remember Scott? Yeah. So I found this fucking wild. So 90s performance of him doing figure skating. He's dressed in a patchwork shirt and purple overalls, and he's skating to something by The Rolling Stones.

5:46 I can't remember what it was. And it was like, so out there and so weird. I'm like, I just love how different this sport can be, You know? It's like, you take it, everyone has to do the same fundamental things. But from in there, from in those boundaries, you can be like, so creative about it. It's wild. There's a lot of artistic expression. I think he, I think he announced at. This year's Olympics, Yeah, I think he Yeah, I know. I know that Tara and Johnny are usually the announcers but I didn't know if they were doing it this year but. I'm pretty sure I saw him, yeah.

6:15 That would make sense. Somebody needs, I posted this on my bookstagram if that's the right word for it, but somebody needs to take Tessa Virtue and Scott Moore's skating partnership. I want to be so clear. Just the skating partnership because they do in fact have spouses and children, OK. But separately, skating partnership and write a book about it because it would go crazy. Yeah, like a romance.

6:41 Fanfic. Yes. Yeah. Like, they've like, kissed on the ice before. Like, it is. It's like the kind of thing where you watch them and you're just like, how were you not in love? Saw the pictures you posted. I was like, so much heat. These are so. Hot. The chemistry is insane. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you have to think, well, I don't know, maybe it's like that because they really never, they really never have.

7:05 I don't know. I don't know. I mean, a lot of these partners are. Married, like a lot of them were married. They're also professionals, so maybe it's nothing. That's why I'm saying someone needs to write a book, needs to be a book. Fan fiction. Fan fiction on Tessa Virtue and Scott Moyer, please.

7:26 Rachel Reed Rachel Reed, This has your name written all over it. It's actually has your name. It really does. Yeah, it really does. And you could change the names. You could change everything about them and just like, send me Adm be like this is for you and I will read it. Oh, and it's perfect because they're Canadian. Yeah, that's perfect.

7:46 They're Canadian. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I did last weekend and this weekend again, I've actually like, you can ask, you can ask Connor how many times Roxanne has played in the living room. It's too many. Times I've been, we've been still very deep in F1, so I haven't really. I started one season is starting. Oh, do you like it?

8:06 I started Drive to Survive. Yeah, yes. To be clear, when I say I'm deep in F1, I'm deep in drive to. I'm not watching F. One, yeah, yeah. But I like it. It's fun to. It's like the whole like partnerships and like who can meet whose needs and who bails. On Drama. Drama so much. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, But we've been pretty deep and drive to survive.

8:28 And there is a bit of a clock on it because the new F1 season is starting in March. So we're like, OK, we got a we got it because we don't want to be spoiled. Like no spoilers for this real live event. Like things like I'm getting updates on Instagram and I'm like, no, I can't look at. It as somebody who cares a lot about not spoiling people, I feel like you need to give up on that one because. No, we're so close.

8:51 We're so close. But yes, all right, I'm Abby, I'm Ronnie, and this is Dragons in the Details, The podcast that better helps. Oh, sorry, the podcast that helps you better understand your favorite fantasy books over the course of an undetermined number of episodes. Not this week. This is a special bonus episode.

9:12 So we just wrapped our Avatar season. We literally finished recording that about 20 minutes ago and now we are moving into a special bonus episode. I realized I'm supposed to say this later, but whatever. This is our Wuthering Heights cozy chats discussion. So the way that this episode is going to work, I we have both seen Wuthering Heights. We both saw it exactly a week ago today. I have not read the book.

9:36 Ronnie has read the book. Ronnie has told me that this is her favorite book. I don't know if she still feels that way, but I believe that Ronnie very much like this book. I have not read the book we are going to discuss. It's the movie we have that. We did the same thing we normally do. We had a bunch of questions that we asked each other. We're just going to see kind of how we felt about it. You know, a lot of people are talking about this movie. We thought, why don't we just throw our hats in the ring too? Why not?

9:57 This is bookish content. So disclaimer, much like this movie, this podcast is rated R. Do not listen to it with your children. Do not watch Wuthering Heights with your children. I mean, you could do it. You want. This review will contain spoilers for Wuthering Heights the movie. So the movie is fair game by Emerald Fennel as well as some white spoilers. Still spoilers, light spoilers for Wuthering Heights the book by Emily Brotte.

10:28 It won't be crazy spoilers. As Ronnie told me before this started, it's basically what you would get if you read a review of the movie. The level of spoilers, it's not going to be crazy. If you've seen the movie, you've already been somewhat spoiled for the book. So you know, we'll, we'll keep it high level.

10:43 We'll keep it light. I'm still planning to read the book after this. I don't think this discussion will ruin that for me. But like there will be some spoilers for the book. So if you're looking for 0 spoilers for the book, you're not just skip Ronnies parts, you're. Not going to get that, but also like you wouldn't have gone to see Wuthering Heights the movie if you were looking for 0 spoilers, right?

11:00 Right. Exactly. So sorry guys. Do you want to do announcements? Sure, yes, if you are a regular listener here, just a reminder for you that season 3 is going to be on Crescent City. So we just wrapped season 2 that was on Akutar. We are in our bonus episodes slash kind of break period. So this is just fun stuff while we ourselves reread Crescent City. If you would like to continue listening to this podcast podcast and continuing on your theory journeys with us, we recommend that you start Crescent City now or continue reading Crescent City.

11:34 Maybe start rereading Crescent City. They are long, but they are great. We would not be covering them if we did not think they were great. Also, reminder, we're doing a couple bonus episodes and then taking a little break. So this is the first of our bonus episodes. This is our Weathering Heights episode and then we are going to be doing a Places of Prythian episode that is mass versus spoilers only. So if you were again a regular listener of this podcast, you know that we have typically Acatar only spoiler sections and then mass versus spoiler sections. The Places of Prythian episode is going to be a mass versus spoilers podcast.

12:08 So it's a bonus episode. I think that's fair game. So it will be mass for spoilers. And as always, we are looking to grow as a podcast. And so if you could, if you haven't already, please like this podcast comment any thoughts that you have. We love reading your comments. As you guys know, usually with our typical episode structure, we will shout out any comments that we think are great.

12:31 We always try to respond to you guys. And if you could subscribe through whatever channel you consume us through sounds weird to say, we would greatly appreciate it. Yeah. I don't know how I feel about you consume us. Anyways, just just subscribe through whatever channel you you get your podcast through. Mean a lot.

12:47 Back to you. All right, We have a fun question this week. I really like this fun question. Ronnie, what was your favorite book you ever had to read for English class? Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. It's a great one. I never haven't read it. Really recommend it. He's like Brave New World was very much like a dystopian book.

13:06 And the premise was basically like, in a world where citizens are basically like, genetically engineered and socially conditioned, like, what does that mean for the world, at risk of, you know, spoiling anything further about the plot? And I would comp it to, I don't think we actually read anything by Kurt Vonnegut in that year. And so it was basically our equivalent of that in that year. So if you like anything by Kurt Vonnegut, like if you like like Slaughterhouse 5 or like any of those books, and I think you would like Brave New World.

13:39 I know it's not fantasy, but I thought it was really fun. And it was definitely like, at that time the least, like anything else that I was being asked to read for school at that time. So I thought it was fun. What about you? Ironically, it was Jane Eyre for me. And never read Wuthering hype. And I never read Wuthering hype, it wasn't on the syllabus.

14:02 It is not like Jane Eyre I want to be so. Clear. I loved Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre was like the first book I read. I feel like for English class where I was like, oh, I understand. Like you know how old books are written and you're like, what the fuck is happening? I feel like I'm missing so much. Like I felt like I read Jane Eyre and I actually understood what was going on.

14:20 I think it was the first book I'd read in English class that was both about and written by a woman, which I really appreciated. And I just thought that the plot was so good that I don't want to give away the twist, but there's a twist. I thought the twist was good. I didn't see it coming. The imagery was so good where, again, I don't want to give it anything away, but there's some very visceral imagery in the Jane air.

14:45 I just it has stuck with me. I would love to. I might do a Bronte Sisters summer and read Wuthering Heights and reread Jane Eyre. I'm saying summer. It's only February. Maybe it's a Bronte Sisters spring. I don't know. Yeah, no, I really liked Jane Eyre. I also liked Rebecca. Going to throw that up there too. I thought Rebecca was a very good book. I don't even remember who wrote it. It's creepy.

15:05 It's a creepy book, but it's it's. Who's a buyer it's. Jane Eyre esque Daphne Demario Demario. Yeah, Gothic. It's very it's, I might be wrong. I haven't read either of these books in a really long time, but they are very similar plot points and equally good. But I think it's like 100 years later with Rebecca, basically.

15:28 Yeah, interesting. But yeah, I don't. I guess you could call Wuthering Heights a psychological thriller. That seems like maybe a little bit drum. Did I say Wuthering Heights? I meant Jane Eyre, Rebecca and Jane Eyre. You're saying Rebecca and Jane Eyre? I'm saying. Yeah. OK, that makes more sense. Yeah, Sorry I confused my Brontes. No, no, I don't think you did.

15:45 I think I misunderstood. Cool. Cool. All right, we're gonna dive in now. So spoiler alert for the alert and lightly the buck. All right, so Ronnie, what were your initial impressions of this movie? What did you first think when you were walking out of the theater? Yeah, I was torn between two emotions. The first was, wow, fuck them all. And then just like, actually very, like, deep sadness for Heathcliff.

16:23 I hate to say it, but like, watching Catherine's situation unfold, it did feel like death was where she would end. So just as a refresher for everyone, like the end of that movie was Heathcliff, like, draped over her dead body. Yeah, it was theatrical, macabre, like horrible, but it doesn't end. It didn't end on this like big crescendo. Like the film was crescendoing, but the ending itself was like, silent.

16:50 Like the film went silent. He walked in and we just watched Heathcliff, like, mourn and like, lay next to the dead love of his life and like, not really like, accept that she's dead. So I was, I was just like very, very sad. That was my, my first thought was like, I hate them all. And also just like really, really just purely sad, which was actually a much simpler emotion than how I felt at the end of end of the book. But how did you feel?

17:18 Well, I texted you listeners, Ronnie and I saw this not only on the same day, but hour like half an hour apart from each other's, which is not, which was not the plan. So she texted me and she said I just saw it. And I and I saw that as I was walking out of the theater and I texted you and I said that was a horror movie movie.

17:35 Like this was in no way a romance movie. This was a gothic horror movie. And I liked it. I didn't have a problem with that. I thought that was totally fine. But I thought it was so it was not then. We'll get to this question later. But it was not the movie I thought I was going to see. But I was OK with the movie I did end up seeing. I thought in the technical sense, I thought it was extremely well done.

17:58 I thought the set design was like amazing. I thought the acting was really good. But there was this like sense of like unease and dread and it's kind of exactly what you said. Like I and This is why I'm kind of saying it's a horror movie because you walk out of the movie and you're like, what was the point of all that?

18:15 Why did we go just go through like 2 hours of like anguish basically, in my opinion, like for Kathy to just die and Heathcliff to be like in this awful place. Like what? Like why do we do all that? You know, like I'm, I was kind of left wondering what the point was. But I definitely, I cheered up when Heathcliff is like climbing onto Kathy's dead body.

18:37 I mean, the visual imagery of that scene was just like with the blood. I mean, it was fucking crazy. The whole ending montage of like, her dying and like, bleeding out and like him there but not actually there. Like the movie took the imagery of the book and brought it to life in a really beautiful, haunting way.

19:01 Yeah, while the movie was like aesthetically, honestly really, really good. I thought so too. And I walked out. Yeah, I agree with you. I think it was, it was haunting. It was. It was haunting. It was haunting. I thought the scene exactly what you just said, where she thinks Heathcliff is there and then you find out that it's Linton and that she's hallucinating was gut wrenching.

19:25 Just like, and even though, and I want to be so clear, I texted you this too, or maybe I put this in the discord. Everyone in this movie is a horrible person. Everyone like I did not like any of these characters, but my heart still like broke for Kathy in that moment. Like no one should have to go through that, you know?

19:42 And I thought that was very, very, very sad. Yeah. I mean, it was, I thought, I thought it was very technically well done. But I would definitely categorize I think the most that maybe not the most interesting thing about the movie, but the most fun thing about the movie for me was that it was marketed as a romance. And then it turned out to actually be a horror movie, which I think is really fun.

20:02 And I'm and we'll talk about it more. Anything else on that one? I was just like, holy shit that was depressing it. Was it was pretty. Singularly depressing is what I would say. This will be the theme of. I think how I feel generally is like, this is called Wuthering Heights. I know the quotes are there, but it's called Wuthering Heights.

20:19 The feelings that you come out of that book with are layered. The feelings I came out of this movie with were singular. I was like, wow, that was fucking depressing. Like, yeah, through and through. Yeah. I'm not saying the movie didn't have layers. Like, I'm not saying that I didn't, like, feel different things throughout, but I was like, who?

20:36 OK, rough. Yeah. All right. What's this movie What you expected it to be for? Me. Not at all. Not at all. And that doesn't make it bad. That doesn't make it bad by any means. As I said, I was happy for it to not be what I thought it was. I just want to say I told you that the fact that Bella Swan thought this was a fun book was fucking crazy. I know you did.

21:00 I know you did. What I thought I was getting was a deep, brooding, yearning, world ending romance set in the Moors. What I got was Alice in Wonderland gothic horror Fever Trip about terrible people doing terrible things, continuing a cycle of abuse, but what that I think was ultimately about the horrors of being a woman.

21:25 That's what I took away from this movie, that this is a movie about women, for women, women by women. But it is gruesome and like horrifying like that. That was what I took away from it, and I'm not upset about that necessarily, but the marketing was so different from what the movie was, and I don't think that means it was a failure.

21:46 So many people saw this movie and so many people think this is a sexy movie, which I'm flabbergasted by, frankly. I didn't think this movie was sexy really at all. Maybe that's because I read a lot of sexy books. I don't know. But I was not like, there's no nudity in this movie. Did you notice that there is not a single scene of nudity? Yeah.

22:07 Like, this is not. This is a movie about sex for power, not sex for love or romance, like I which I think is really interesting. But I think what I think is interesting about this, too, is that the biggest critique of this movie that I've heard is that it's so different from the book. And this is like Wuthering Heights for the TikTok generation.

22:27 It's just sensational, sensationalizing it, like sexualizing it, like making it way too sexy. And I feel like that's what the marketing was, but I don't think that's what the what the movie actually was. Like, I felt that the movie was a gothic horror. I felt that the movie was about power, not about sex.

22:44 Like I feel like I having not read the book, I feel like I felt how I heard the book was if that makes sense, rather than how the marketing led me to believe I would feel if that all makes sense. Yeah, Yeah, I think it does. I think there was more. Well, OK, let me start from the beginning, I guess I think the the yearning of Heathcliff for Catherine and Catherine for Heathcliff is undoubtedly there.

23:13 Yeah, In this movie, I felt that it was there, and I felt that the affair lended itself to what people were complaining about in terms of this being like a sexy movie. However, I had two expectations coming into this. One, it was just a sultry, sexy movie that didn't have depth. I did not feel like that was the case.

23:34 And then two, it very loosely interpreted the source material. I did feel like that was the case. The reviews, as far as the depth of the movie and like what the movie was, were unduly scathing in my opinion. Like I did not think that it was just sultry sexy. Like like Heathcliff came in from nothing.

23:54 The whole bond that Kathy and Heathcliff shaped that was very clearly 1 sided and kind of demented. It is much more overtly done in the book. I will say that like there is a much clearer sense of ownership in the book than in the movie. So I think people who read the book were probably like missing that and they were like, Oh well, they just, they just like loved each other and whatever.

24:18 No, it was so fucked up from the beginning. Like it's so it was like such a pretty relationship. She like clearly she clearly was like, I own you, right? But then in the affair, like I, I genuinely felt like Kathy felt like she couldn't survive without Heathcliff. So I did feel like there was yearning, but there was also like actually self destruction and self ruin that was happening on both sides. Heathcliff was sending himself into a a spiral when he took on Isabel.

24:48 He was basically like, I'm just going to damn my soul to hell here. Like, fuck it. Like I'm going to take this completely innocent woman into my home. She's going to marry me and we're going to get back at Catherine. And then Catherine fucking died. He was his own undoing in that, and she was her own undoing. If you are not reading between those lines, then yes, I think you can totally say like, yeah, they were just like dumb, horrible people in love.

25:12 And in a sense that's true. But there is self ruin, like they ruined themselves. They broke themselves 100 percent, 100%. And so in that sense, it was not just a sultry, sexy love movie. No, absolutely not. No, I think I thought then this is kind of getting into our next question, but that's OK. I thought the first half of the movie, the childhood up through Kathy marrying Linton and Heathcliff leaving was some of the best filmmaking I've ever seen. I thought, I really thought that first half the movie landed so hard.

25:46 I was like, these relationships are all fucked up, but I understand why everyone is doing what they're like. I in my my interpretation, I'm like, OK, Kathy has a horrible father. She's been horribly abused. She wants something. That's her hers, that's her own. Heathcliff is there. Heathcliff fills that role as her brother, which is obviously kind of fucked up.

26:06 Heathcliff falls in love with Kathy because there's kind of no one else around. And Kathy helps him, protects him. He protects her. Like I I understood all of that and I understood the yearning and I understood the longing. The scene where Heathcliff puts his hands over her face to to protect her innocence basically, while also like getting hard on her back and like ruining her innocence in the same moment. I thought that was like brilliant. I thought that was so good.

26:31 And then the second-half of the movie where Heathcliff comes back and it's just like tainted and twisted and like, yes, he still loves Kathy, but he seems so hell bent on revenge that like nothing could possibly like sate him. I was like, I'm not quite sure that this is making sense. Like, why? Like I'm not quite sure.

26:50 Like, why did he come back to Kathy? Why didn't he just go live his life? He seemed to have a good life. I understand because then we'd have no story. But I wasn't it. I think the second-half of the movie didn't work for me as well as the first half of the movie, but I thought the first half worked really, really, really well.

27:04 Yeah. And I mean, I mean, the fact that Heathcliff is basically driven mad, the fact that he's close, entire character becomes hinged on a revenge is part of the whole point. Yeah. But I think what we didn't get in the first half, like I think, like to your point, the first half made sense. The second-half didn't make sense as much because I think we didn't get enough justification in the first half.

27:27 And we get more of that justification in the book. Yeah. And I think that's fair. I think that's fair. On the other point of like, was the movie what I expected to be actually two more things. Obviously the reviews were like threads of source material are used. This I expected, and this was kind of true. There are characters that were omitted entirely that were like pretty significant.

27:48 And so Catherine has a whole brother in the book, like an entire brother. And you as a result of the brother being omitted, get a character that doesn't make sense in my opinion with Heathcliff. We can talk about this a little bit later, but like basically Kathy's father is both the man that brings home Heathcliff like the a man that has compassion in his heart to bring home an orphan and care for an orphan orphan, but also a man who abuses her, gambles away their wealth.

28:17 Like he is a character that doesn't really check out. And in the book you have that character split and Henley, the brother is the one who causes the ruin. So the brother is like, resentful that the father brings home Heathcliff and, like, loves Heathcliff and the brothers, like, what the fuck? Like, I'm your real son.

28:38 Yeah. And then gives Heathcliff a lot of this motivation that we're kind of missing. And that part didn't really make sense to me. So that character was missing and and that I expected we also lose some other elements that I'll. I'll talk about later in our future questions. But it was a loose. It was a loose interpretation.

28:55 And we were told it was going to be. So in a sense, like, that's fine. Yeah. Emerald Fennell gave us just that heads up that that was going to be the case. But there were there were parts of it where I was like, was this really like, could we not have the extra character? Like we kind of needed that extra character.

29:11 Yeah, it's funny because from my impression with the father, you're totally right. We have this moment at the beginning of the movie where he like takes pity. We see Heathcliff get like slapped in the opening scene, right? And then we see his Kathy's father take pity on Heathcliff, and you're getting set up for, oh, this is a good dude, that Kathy has a good father.

29:30 And then the rest of the movie, he is repulsive, right? He is just grotesque. It is, like, so bad. And it's hard to reconcile those two things. I'm all for complicated characters, but they need to kind of make sense. Yeah. And he like he was never designed to be that way. Because that does not make sense.

29:48 It doesn't make sense. We don't. We don't need to omit Kathy's. Yeah, interesting. OK, what worked? For you, the cinematography was incredible. The visual framing of the scenes around, specifically around Wuthering Heights, like the grounds and the Moors, I think we're incredible. The wardrobe and costume, well, it definitely like departed from the period a bit, especially when you got into Kathy's like thrust cross. Did I say that correctly?

30:17 Thrush cross Grange. I always mispronounce. It so hard. Grange costumes were like definitely a little bit off period, but like stunning and like so fun, like visually visually fun and breathtaking. I also just thought like in the vein of cinematography, like the use of rain and gloom, just generally, of course, like the gothic aesthetic always, you know, makes great use of those things. But it created like these incredibly like tense romantic scenes between Kathy and Heathcliff that were that were really good.

30:49 You're what say about that? The ending honestly was like until the ending, I was kind of like, yeah, there, there was some really, there's some really good scenes and framing and all that. But the ending, whoever's doing this, the cinematography fucking brought it in that ending montage. It definitely works for me and I say that because of how much it deviated from the book.

31:13 The fact that it worked for me, I was like, this is good one. That the scenes themselves, like the fact that we were switching between her on the bed, her bleeding out, her talking to Edgar, her talking to Heathcliff who wasn't actually there. Heathcliff like riding across the Moors then back to her.

31:30 Like it was so good. The scene where she was like sitting up against the like skin room was amazing. The skin room amazing. Next level. So good. Amazing. Really, really good. And on top of all of how good the set was, how good the costume was, how good the directing was, it also just made me like Catherine more.

31:57 And to be clear, I don't like Catherine. But in the book, fucking hate Catherine. Like there I felt for her in this moment, I felt sad for her. I wanted Heathcliff to be with her. And in the book, like, it's like I just told told you about how like there's much more ownership in the book. Like, it's candidly a bit of a question in the book as to whether Catherine truly, truly loves Heathcliff at all or whether she just felt like he was part of her.

32:21 And we get a teensy bit of that. But in this scene, like in her final moments, it is extremely evident that she needs him desperately, as desperately as as he needs her. And watching her like bleed out need him, he dead next to him. Like it made me feel for them both. And I always kind of felt for felt for Heathcliff in that scene. I felt for Catherine too.

32:42 And I thought that was amazingly well done. Yeah, I mean, it's just devastating. Like, you know, he's not going to get there in time. They haven't spoken, right? They broke off. They haven't been together. He's fucking pining for her. She's dying, and he's never going to see her again. And it's like, it's really brutal.

32:57 Even though I'm with you, I'm like, I thought Kathy sucked. Like I really did, like, especially before the Heathcliff breakup, I was like, Oh my God, like this girl is a fucking piece of work. She's such a brat. She's just terrible. I understand why she's terrible, but she sucks. And then you still feel it when she's dying. When you realize what's going on, you're like, oh fuck, I feel so bad for her.

33:19 Yeah, that that ending also had, I don't know whether you felt this, but like in the theater, I have weirdly like Romeo and Juliet energy happening. I don't know why my mind went there. But in those last few minutes when, like, Heathcliff was racing to reach her before she died and you like, knew how it was going to end and you knew that he wasn't going to get there.

33:39 I felt exactly how I felt when I was like desperately waiting for Juliet to wake up. When was killing himself? It like evoked the same type of like panic that like they were doomed, like they were doomed. Yeah, I mean, that's probably what Emerald Fennel was going for. A given that Isabella was talking to Litton about RJ when they were having tea. Yeah, yeah.

34:03 I had a few other scenes that stood out. We already talked about the skin colored room. Skin colored room definitely worked. The entire set deck this sets the set decoration Oscar worthy like hands down Oscar worthy. I thought they were unbelievably good. I will get. It OK? I thought cross range was.

34:25 I thought they both really good. We're so, and I'll get it to this more, but like they were so evocative and I thought that they said so much about the scenes and about the characters without actually being a character themselves. But I'll get it so that when I'm responding, when I'm doing my part on this, Yeah. And then the only thing I had left was just the montage of Kathy settling into her wealth at Thrush Cross Grange was also like beautiful one.

34:53 The score, the score was score for that part was amazing. I didn't think there was enough music generally in the film. Like I wanted more music in general, but the score for that part so good and what a wardrobe for that whole. It was just it was getting more and more opulent. It was obviously not acceptable for the period, but like she made those decisions. It was so not appropriate for the period to the point where we understood it was intentional and it was just opulence for the sake of opulence.

35:22 You were understanding that she was settling into this like ridiculously wealthy. False. Yeah, yeah, she's becoming a doll. Yeah, yeah. Like that's what she's becoming, a doll for Isabella to dress up. Like. Literally. That's what's happening there, yeah, Yeah, I thought about you. What works for you?

35:42 The first hour, as I said at the opening scene particularly, I loved it. I thought it was so fucking good, the hanging, because I think that opening scene actually did exactly what this whole movie did for me, which is you think it's about sex. You think you're about to see a very graphic sex scene and then what you actually get is death and and horror and depravity, which is exactly what this movie was. You think you're getting a sexy Rob in the Morris and you're getting a gothic horror.

36:12 So I thought that scene was incredible. I was revved up for it. I was like, fuck yeah, what am I about to watch? I'm here for it again. I thought Kathy and Heathcliff worked in the first hour. In the second hour, I'm not sure they worked as well. But we've already, we've already talked about it a bit.

36:28 The score incredible. The set design, I really, I really thought the set design was so good. Like, yeah, that's. Good. It was Tim Burton esque in its exaggeration, right? It spoke volumes, like Kathy's father's death scene with the bottles in the back. I thought that was brilliant. I was like, OK, I know exactly what's happened here.

36:50 You don't have to do, you don't have to change any dialogue. You don't have to tell me. Like this is just, it's, it's like you're seeing the movie through Kathy's eyes and you're seeing what she's thinking about. And what she's thinking about are the bottles and bottles and bottles that her father drank to put him in this grave, right?

37:06 Like, I thought that was so good. I actually watched Architectural Digest, did two set tours for Wuthering Heights and Fur Thresh Cross range. I highly recommend watching both of them. They're so interesting. Just some interesting points for them in Wuthering Heights. I thought this was really, really cool. They intentionally kept the ceiling really low because they wanted Jacob to have to tilt basically to fit within the kitchen because they know how tall he is to kind of show that he doesn't belong here.

37:35 He never belonged here. It was always supposed to feel kind of like claustrophobic and encroaching for him. There's a giant boulder in the kitchen that in the start of the movie, it's there, but it's not as big. And then as the movie goes on, it grows and grows and they literally start to have like the wall look like decaying flesh, Like there's just all these little elements.

37:56 It's almost very. Have you seen Annihilation? It's it's a great, great movie. It's another horror movie, but it's very much about like nature coming in and like overtaking living organisms, overtaking things that it shouldn't. I thought they did a great job with Wuthering Heights of this idea of like nature is taking it over.

38:14 Like basically like the humans, the humanity are losing control here. We're giving into our base or instincts. We are losing ourselves to our nature basically. And like, I thought that was really well reflected in the set design and everything. I thought that was really cool. And then, yeah, Thresh, Cross Grange, I mean, just so crazy. That hand fireplace was wild.

38:40 The skin room, I mean. It immediately made me think of a padded cell and a mental asylum, which I think. Is what it's. Supposed to make me think of like, yeah. And just the dollhouse, the monochromatic dining room, like it's all a fever dream, which only works to kind of heighten the emotions. And like, I just the sets become.

39:01 I have I have this picture here it is Kathy in I don't even know what room you call this, but it's the white room with the red floors. And she is wearing a white top and this blood red skirt. I mean, there Kathy is always in red because, like, she dies bleeding out basically, right. And there's a lamb in it. I'm like, oh, OK, so Kathy is the lamb to slaughter. Like that is how this movie is going to end. Like she is going to end up sacrificing herself for this love, basically, which I thought was really cool. I really just thought set design, score, first half of the movie worked really well.

39:34 And the last scene, as you said, the last scene where Kathy is dying, I thought, I thought worked really well, too. Yeah. I just have in my notes, like the set even it's so interesting. Like these sets for these two locations are polar opposites, but both of them give you such unease and tell you something is wrong. Like this is this is not a safe place, this is not a home. Like they both create this completely different sense of unease, but both of them are just off kilter for me. I think the entire movie is intended to give you a sense of discomfort.

40:06 Like, yeah, at no agree. Are you like, oh, I'm super comfortable watching this, watching this movie. Like, you're either worried about Kathy's father being drunk and gambling their wealth away. You're worried about Heathcliff. You're worried about the fact that they're in love, but they're not going to do anything about it.

40:22 You're worried about the fact that they're having the fair and they're going to get caught. You're worried about the fact that she's going to die or that she's like not told him about the child that she's carrying. Get the moment. Like there's always something that you were stressed about in this movie and the set and the the like framing of each still reflects that. Totally, totally.

40:43 This is a movie designed for anxiety, which is why I'm saying it's a horror film, because that's not, that's not what a love story does, right? A love story makes you feel good. This movie made me feel very bad. Yeah. And it did it well. You did it well. Yeah. All right. What didn't work for you? OK.

41:01 Nellie didn't really work for me as portrayed in this movie because I was unclear. I think I am meant to believe that Nellie, even though she kept Kathy and Keith Cliff apart, did have Kathy's best interests at heart, but she felt very underwritten to me. I didn't fully understand her motivations. Like I think that's how I was supposed to feel, but that never really came out.

41:27 It did seem like she actually. It's what didn't work. It's what didn't work. She's supposed to be way more important. She's supposed to be way more important. Yeah, she was incorrectly done, in my opinion. Yeah, Nellie just. It was. She was too flat. Yeah. Of a character she was supposed to be a lot of who we got this story through and a lot of who was like rightly or wrongly telling us what was going on and responsible for manipulating what what happened.

41:55 Like what you saw with her seeing that Heathcliff was there and also what you thought at the end with her kind of keeping Catherine's included and learning the letters. That was supposed to be kind of her role, but we only got it when it was convenient, it felt. Totally, totally. And that just like made it confusing.

42:14 I agree. Like, at the end of the day, you didn't actually need Nelly in this story. And I think that's a real disservice to the book, is my understanding. Like, you could have just had Kathy saying, Heathcliff, I can't marry you wouldn't necessarily have really changed things. I mean, maybe it would, but it felt she just felt underdeveloped to me massively. Yeah.

42:38 Isabella, I'm also going to say, didn't work for me. She was a she was a really. I thought she was so funny. I thought she was fantastic until she let Heathcliff chain her to the fireplace and I was like, what are you doing? Yeah, she's terrible. She's terrible. But like I thought, the actress did well.

42:56 I thought the actress did well. I really like that actress. She was a normal people so I really like her. But it's she was just such a weird character in such a weird movie. First of all, her UN intentional sexual innuendos everywhere were hilarious. Those worked very well. But I don't know. I didn't like I did not like the turn where Heathcliff, Heathcliff in the second-half of the movie I'm going to put in didn't work for me. But we'll talk about that later when we talk about Margot Robbie and Jacob Allordy.

43:24 It just got a little too inexplicable to me. I'm like, why would Kathy let Heathcliff do this to her? Like it's it. This is where we cross a line into like. Too modernly psychosexual for me, I guess. Like, this weird BDSM game that they're playing. Yeah. She really, in the book, developed a lot in the, like, latter half. And so you see her, like, entranced by Heathcliff just because, like, he's hot and mysterious. And then she basically lands herself in this like, frankly abusive relationship and like, suffers consequences later. But instead of seeing that side of things, we just see like the beginning of it and really lose out on pretty much all of the depth.

44:10 In my opinion, such as yeah, it's exactly it takes such a sharp left turn, it goes for the shock value so quickly it doesn't develop at all. Yeah, she's, she's objectified like she's used as a tool by Cliff and we didn't get. Well, she's certainly objectified in this movie too, I'd say. And then the last thing that kind of didn't work for me, which we talked about earlier, earlier, was I kind of find found myself walking away from the theater being like, what was the point of all that?

44:37 What was I supposed to learn from that movie? What was I supposed to work take away from? But this was just horrible people perpetuating a toxic cycle of abuse throughout generations, and it ended horribly for them. And I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to take away from that. You know, I don't really know why this story, why this movie was made necessarily.

44:57 Yeah, which doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. And I'm thinking, I think about it a lot. Like I find myself still thinking about it a week later, but I'm not finding the purpose of it. You know the point of it all. Yeah, I think, I think this is what people are talking about. And I'm not trying to like, I'm trying to give too much merit to the people who are writing like in my, again, in my opinion, like overly scathing reviews for shock value. But I kind of think this is what people are getting at when they say that the plot has been minimized to basically like star crossed lovers or like a doomed relationship that didn't really pan out.

45:38 You leave without a bigger lesson. You leave with like a lesson of, you know, Catherine and Heathcliff were self ruinous people. And like, that's what you take away from it all. And So what didn't work for me were a few things. But I'll start with just like an overarching comment, and I don't know if you're going to like this.

45:59 And I'm sorry to everybody who really loved this movie. But like, ultimately what didn't work for me was that this was named Wuthering Heights. Even with the quotes, didn't like it did not work. And I'm going to say like, I'm totally good with movies that are like inspired by books. And you could have even called it like Kathy and Heathcliff or like something that like directly points to that book.

46:21 And there are plenty of adaptations of books that are like loose and choose to call themselves something different. And I just wish that she did like that because now, like, people are going to say that they saw Wuthering Heights and they did not see Wuthering Heights. And like, before people come for me and they're like, the director told us this. I agree.

46:37 The director told us this. They are selling copies of Wuthering Heights. I know that with this movie as the cover art. Yeah, actually. Does. Not make any sense. So that was number one thing that didn't work for me is like this is not and it's OK. Like I still enjoyed the movie. Again, I very much enjoyed the movie, but this is not Wuthering Heights, which brings me to the second point, which is exactly what you just described as like the So what is so, so different?

47:03 In my opinion, it was so different. And maybe people have like a less dramatic take than I did. But like Wuthering Heights, the book, a huge part of it is again, there's a there's a brother, Kathy has a brother who like goes away to school and comes back and tries to ruin Heathcliff's life effectively on the basis of class and on the basis of him being racially other.

47:25 It's not said exactly what he is. But this becomes this is like a book about classism and that largely contributes to this self destruction, the fact that Kathy adheres to this classism against her own heart. And this snowballs into this huge devolvement of both of their characters. He is a ruined man as a result of it, right? Like, he's like, maddened by the need for revenge. And she follows this path of, like, wealth and unhappiness. And it's actually like a very complex, layered lesson. And like, we didn't.

47:59 I don't feel like we got much of that lesson. There, but it it feels like it goes away. Like when when Kathy chooses to marry Linton, that is there. The class element of it is obviously there, but it's also a little bit like she likes shiny things, she likes nice things. She wants a better life for herself.

48:17 But then it we lose it. I feel like by the time Kathy is lying on her deathbed, I am not thinking she's here because she made a choice to better herself. I'm thinking God, that it's hard to be a woman like, you know, like that's what I'm thinking. Yeah, yeah. So I just, I think we, I think we got like a much more deluded version of that in the movie and don't feel like Jacob Lordy being cast as Heathcliff promoted that in any way. Like I, I don't think it was, I don't think it was the best. We'll talk about it later.

48:52 And then we also missed a layer to the story that was there in the book that I think was really important. And I'm curious whether when you hear it, you're going to think differently. It's like it's literally on page one of the book. We start off the story in the book knowing we so, so we get the book from the perspective of others primarily. So we start off the book knowing that Heathcliff is the landlord of Wuthering Heights.

49:17 So in this book, we learn a lot about things through a guy named Mr. Lockwood who, like, rents Thrush Cross Grange from Heathcliff. And then we learn a lot of this love story through, like, this guy and Nelly and other people. So we have this, like, layered perspective, one, through the perspective of others. And then two, you start this whole thing with the perspective of, hey, Heathcliff kind of made it like he. Yeah, he has something.

49:45 So you you also go through all of this knowing like Kathy's got all these reservations, but like, something's going to happen that lands him here. And you, you just know a lot about the end from the beginning. Yeah, I think we lose, we lose so much of that in in the movie, and it really changes the way that you view the plot.

50:03 So I just don't think it's Wuthering Heights is what I'm getting AT. And it's like, Wuthering Heights is really good. The movie was really good. I just wish, like, there were elements of it that I was missing. And I feel like this was still a good slice, but it was very much the Kathy and Heathcliff slice.

50:19 Like, we got a slice of their childhood and their upbringing from their perspective, with some kind of core deviations from the plot, like lack of brother and the fact that she never had a kid. And that was, yeah. Like, what didn't work for me was, I guess, the lack of depth and the name and the fact that it's the cover of Emily Bronte's book, which just feels quite wrong.

50:41 Disagree. I will tell you this, having seen this movie, I'm really excited to read the book because I feel like the book will be. Yeah, this and more. Yeah, I agree with you. Like I think having not read the book, this is a good movie. It's really hard to argue that this is a bad movie when there is so much attention to detail.

51:01 The acting is almost across the board very good. I do have. What's the one reservation for that? The score is good. The cinematography is good. I think it's a very technically profound, good movie. It's really hard to argue that it's not. I don't know if it's Wuthering Heights. I haven't read the book.

51:18 You're telling me it's not. I believe you. But I definitely walked away from that movie theater a little sad for Kathy. And I thought this was a movie about being a woman, and maybe this was a movie about being a woman, but it sounds like the book is not a book about being a woman necessarily. It's that and more like that's what I'm saying is like there's, there's just a lot more.

51:39 And I think like the I think some of the core plot lines and things that you take away from the movie are definitely there in the book, but the book has a lot, a lot more to it. Yeah. So. Yeah, no, I think that's fair. All right. What did you think about Margot Robbie's? Performance. Honestly, I thought she was quite good. She was much better than I had expected her to be in this role. Especially considering that Kathy at this point was supposed to be like, sorry to be this way, but it's acting and it's a job.

52:15 Supposed to be pretty young. I was going to say, like, there were times where I felt like she was acting like she was like 17, but obviously she's Margot Robbie and she like, looks amazing, but she doesn't look like she's 17. You know, like I thought Margot Robbie played the role very well. I specifically thought that she did the unhinged parts well. And I say that because the romance parts and the chemistry and the tension, like all that is, is impressive. But like, that's not, I think what makes Kathy, Kathy, what makes Kathy Kathy is her snapping into like mean crazed Bella like that.

52:56 I thought she did really well when she's not getting her way, when she was devolving into like a hallucinogenic state at the end, I thought she did really well. And so in those moments when she was not really herself, I thought she was excellent. Don't get me wrong, if you said fan cast, Wuthering Heights, she would not have been my original pick. But I think as far as how she executed, I thought she did a great job.

53:22 So no complaints about Margot Robbie? What about you? I agree. I especially think when she started to play games with Heathcliff and Isabella and start to manipulate them, I thought she was really good. Yeah. I thought she's been childish. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I think she did a really good job in making a terrible person, an unapologetically terrible person, still sympathetic.

53:49 There is no reason there. I mean, there are reasons to root for Kathy. Like she again, like she had a really tough upbringing with this father, at least in the movie. But she's so horrible to everyone around her. But I still feel for her, you know, And I think that's pretty hard to pull off. So yeah, I think, I think Margot Robbie did a really good job here. I really have no qualms with Margot Robbie's performance, except maybe it would have all made. No, But actually even that I, I actually think her age even worked with it because it almost spoke to how terrible Kathy was. Because if you get a younger actress playing Kathy, then you're like, oh, she's just a kid. She doesn't know better.

54:25 But when you have Margot Robbie playing Kathy, you're like, she's just sucks. She just sucks, you know, like that she just, there's no, there's no redeeming here, you know? Yeah. Yeah, but I agree. Pretty good. All right. Yeah. What did you think of Jacob O Lordy's performance? Didn't work for me. Didn't work for me.

54:43 I loved Jacob O Lordy in Frankenstein. I thought. I thought he brought such tenderness to that performance. And I didn't see any of that here. Really. Like it's, it was, it was very strange to me. I understand in the book that Heathcliff is a person of color and I don't know why we needed to cast Jacob O Lordy in this role. I don't know.

55:05 I thought Heathcliff just felt very one note to me. He's in love and then he's out for revenge. Like those are those are the motivations. He doesn't have much of like a character outside of his love and obsession with Kathy in this movie, at least for me. Like everything he does is for Kathy and he takes this like really villainous turn in the second-half and I it doesn't.

55:27 It just didn't quite work for me. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, that is like that is Heathcliff sole motivator. Yeah. It was almost like, I don't know, I agree with you, but I'm trying to put my finger on what it was. It was almost like he, Jacob Lordy, wasn't willing to play mad enough like mad as in mad in the head enough for what we needed Heathcliff to be. Because he's like, he's supposed to be like a Wildman. Like that's what he's he's supposed to be like. And he wasn't playing tender because Heathcliff is not tender.

56:02 No, I know. But I he has range. Yeah, I know, I know. But he like he I didn't think he brought it in this role. I thought he was fine before he ran away and I thought when he came back he was kind of lackluster. Honestly. I think the chemistry between the two of them when they were hooking up was good. But like, like when we were just getting Heathcliff as Heathcliff, like Jay Velordy wasn't doing it for me. And like, yeah, like Emerald Fennel made such a bold choice and casting him in the 1st place and said she outright said I worked with him in Saltburn and I knew I wanted him for this role.

56:40 I knew he was going to be right for it. And I just didn't get that. And I like him a lot. Nothing against him as actor. I just like, just didn't, yeah. Yeah, I'm like, even having a hard time remembering. This feels to me like a role that is more of a physicality role than a kind of a dialogue role.

57:00 Like I can't really remember any of his lines. Like I know he's got like this so hot me line, like I know that's part of it, but like. Probably the most memorable moment is when he's with Isabella and he's like, I am only doing this to get back at Catherine. Do you want me to stop? That was good.

57:20 Actually, that was pretty good. I didn't think it was he was Jacob Lordy in that scene. I know, I know, I know. No, I I think you're right. He didn't quite it didn't quite get dark enough for me. He didn't quite take it to the especially with the Isabel of stuff like the dark depraved places that I think it needed to be.

57:42 I don't know who, I don't know who would have done it better, but like, what we needed was another white actor. So I'm not literally saying this, but like, this level of insanity I feel like we needed. Is it Ramsay Bolton from Throne of Glass who imprisons Theon? He takes over. Do you remember what I'm talking about?

58:02 Who? What? OK, hold on. Do you remember him? No, you said Throne of Glass, not Game of Thrones. I was like, who the fuck are you talking about? Sorry. Yeah, I remember him. OK, so I feel like we needed like the Ramsay Bolton Game of Thrones level kind of like, yeah, like villain, predictability, villain. Yeah, I just.

58:27 Didn't get it, just. Fell flat to me. I also had a hard time understanding him if I'm being really honest. Like a lot of it was just kind of like a little mumbled for me, but that's just me. Definitely understood him. I just didn't. I didn't think he. I don't know how else to describe it. You couldn't see madness in his eyes. He wasn't giving Anti hero.

58:49 Yeah, Just what we needed him to give. Yeah, he was definitely given tall. He was giving tall and imposing tall when he had the full hair and like that was that was pretty Heathcliff and if you just didn't say anything, he was definitely. Well, that's what I mean. I feel like this movie required a a physical presence that wasn't quite what Jacob already had. Like, I feel like it required a Wilder man for lack of like a better description.

59:22 And Jacob Alordi gives a little bit too much British prep school boy. I know he's Australian, but like, you know what I mean? He's like, too clean. Yeah, too good looking. I don't know. Cool. All right, Ronnie, would you recommend people see this movie? Honestly, if you if you like dark gothic film and you haven't read the book, definitely 100% and if you have read the book, I would still recommend it, but you must separate it from the book in your mind.

59:48 In my opinion. I thought it was a really fun watch. I left and it stayed with me and I I would watch it again. So like I think that's that's a recommendation, but I just wouldn't expect it to be. To be Wuthering Heights the book, and that's OK. I would also recommend people see this film. I think it's so unique. I think it's got so many interesting things going on that even if it doesn't quite all work, I think it's totally worth worth watching.

1:00:17 Yeah, I would recommend people see it having not read the. Book yeah, yeah, I think if you haven't read the book, it's like a no brainer like yeah you'll it's like a worthwhile. Yeah, I agree. And if you have read the book and you cannot get emotional and upset because like I have seen people on social media and we need to just calm down.

1:00:33 I think we all need to calm down. People are like, and this is definitely a hot take. I know this is a hot take. People are like Emily Bronte would be so sad. She's rolling in her grave over this adaptation, and like, if Emily Bronte knew that her book in any way was being adapted to a big screen and being shown all over the world, I think she'd be OK with it.

1:00:54 It's. Really hard to say that this movie has no vision. It's so clearly an adaptation. It is so clearly Emerald Fennels version of Emily Brontes Wuthering Heights, right? That's that's what this is like It's visually that is stamped all over the place. Unless the book is a fever dream that I am not aware of.

1:01:15 Unless, unless the book has vases of goldfish swimming about it has people fingering jello fishes. Like if that's in the book, then I miss speaking. But like, you know, there's so much visual madness to this movie that I think it's, I don't know for me. I hear, I hear you guys who have read the book and are like, it's not like the book. Ronnie, I think everything you said here is a totally fair criticism, but I mean, Dune, for example, very different from the book.

1:01:42 No one's complaining. No, I have not heard a single complaint that the Neville news Dune is too different from doing the book should be called Dune. Like this feels so weirdly fucking targeted to me. I don't know. That's just my opinion. Yeah, cool. You're being very silent. He has to say I. Don't know if Dune's necessarily that comparable, but fair.

1:02:04 The book's very different. The book is very different. The book is very different from the movie. There's a lot of plot points that have changed. Like it's yeah, Harry Potter has a bunch of plot points that have been omitted as well for the sake of adaptation. Yeah, yeah, you're always getting it filtered through something. Every adaptation is different somehow. Yeah, something we're all going to have to deal with as we move into the 4th Wing adaptation for the screen, by the way. Yeah.

1:02:31 All right. Cool. So that concludes our Wuthering Heights cozy chat. I hope you guys enjoyed it. It was very doom and gloom cozy chat, but I hope you still enjoyed it. All right, Ronnie, what are you reading? What am I reading? I am reading. I think I'm reading Lady of Ashes. I'm reading the Lady of Darkness series, which is basically an easy pill to swallow is the way that I would describe it.

1:02:55 It's like easy fantasy to read, but I'm enjoying it. It's a complete series so when I get to the end I will report back on how it is. But so far, who's it? By Melissa Row Rich. Yeah, and there's six of them. Holy crap. So I just needed, I needed something that was just easy. It's just like, nice, say, fantasy, but it is funny. My sister came over one night and was like, what are you reading right now?

1:03:19 And I was like Lady of Darkness. And she's like, you are the lady of Darkness. It's not a very nice thing to say. OK. Yeah, but it's good. It definitely takes inspiration from a lot of books that we like to the point where it's like maybe a lot of inspiration. I'm, I'm gonna actually just reserve judgment until I'm done. I will report back.

1:03:42 What are you reading? Right, so I have read like so many books since we last spoke because I got super duper sucked into the the Kindred curse, Kindred's Cursed Saga, Spark of the Ever Flame, Glow of the Ever Flame, something else of the ever flame. I don't know. I read them on Kindle. So it's like the the titles just go. It is not a complete series.

1:04:08 It is 3 out of four books are out. The 4th book was supposed to come out in 2024 and it has not yet, so I guess everyone's a little worried about what's going on there. OK. Here's what I'll say about it. She's. Alive. She's alive. Apparently it was indie public, like it was self published and then it got picked up by a publisher.

1:04:29 So people think that like the publisher is like saying, wait, we need to edit this because I will say the third book. Here's what I'll say. This is the closest non mass first book that has felt like the mass first to me that I've ever read. I mean that as high praise. It's pretty good. The second book in particular is so Akka math Mist and Fury coded like there's they're really, really similar. And the love interest is fucking superb in the second book. I think he's so good.

1:05:03 The second book could easily be one of my top five favorite books. And the first book, much like ACOTAR is OK, but you kind of know that the more exciting stuff is like coming coming down the pipeline. Yeah. 2nd book is superb, second book is really fucking good. The third book is so weird. Like it's good but it is frustrating as fuck. Like there is no downtime.

1:05:32 We are just pinging from crisis to crisis to crisis at every moment. It's exhausting to read. Desperately needed an editor, basically. You don't even have an editor. No, I definitely don't. Usually at least like. I don't know. OK, I think maybe she had a proofreader, I don't know. But the reason book 3 is so frustrating is because book 2 was so good and it showed so much promise.

1:05:57 So I think it all kind of depends on how she lands book four. I would recommend you read it. I did think it was really good. The magic system is really interesting. The main character, the female main character has an incredibly frustrating, annoying trait. I'll just tell you, you can we can edit it out if we don't want. She refuses to kill anyone and that continuously comes back and bites her in the ass and she literally just will not do it. And you're like, you want to shake her. And you're like, why are you so, so stupid? Why do you keep making this choice? I assume the author is going somewhere with it, but it's really annoying to read.

1:06:33 I realize I'm kind of ragging on this book. I really do think it's pretty good. Like you're telling me to read it and then you're telling me the third book is and the 4th book is we don't know where and it's going to come out. The third book is mostly good. The things that happen are interesting, and you get a lot of time with interesting characters that you love.

1:06:50 But if you read it, you'll say there it's just like, yeah, like, you know, like, oh, now this, now this, now this, now this. So that's annoying. I have also read The Last Letter, which I read in about 6 hours, which for those of you who don't know, is a contemporary novel by Rebecca Garros. That was a weird fucking book that had this Sheen of a Hallmark movie. Felt like I was watching a Hallmark movie, and it was about literally childhood cancer.

1:07:21 So it was a very tonally all over the place. Yeah. I have read about that one, like read reviews about that and people have, I won't spoil anything here, obviously what people have used that to basically justify the claim that Rebecca does not always write happy endings. So when everyone said that, I'm all doom and gloom. I'm trying to even like, explain, try to explain this. It is such a out of left field fuck you ending in this book. It is literally just a random act of awfulness and it's gut wrenching and you're definitely like why the fuck would you do this?

1:08:04 That being said, I was reading her acknowledgments and she was like, I wrote this book in three weeks and she's obviously taking a lot more time and care with the imperian. I don't really have any justification or defense for the choices that she made in this book, but I think she's definitely grown as a writer since then.

1:08:21 Like you can just tell the way the book is written like she's she's at a much higher level now. I think this was written in like 2019. Yeah, I would definitely read another one of her contemporaries for fun, but I cannot say that this was a fun read given how it. Happened, right? Yeah, that's what I've heard. And yeah.

1:08:40 And henceforth, wife not taking part, Yeah. Would you recommend it? I was just thinking that like, I can't. In good conscience I can't. But that doesn't mean I think it's a bad book. I do actually think it's a good book. But if you feel like both having an easy read, it's an easy read that will bring you to your knees if that's what you're looking for. Yeah.

1:09:02 Then I recommend it. Yeah, I need easy reads that don't bring me to my knees right now, which is what I'm reading Lady of Darkness. Yeah. But maybe that one will bring me Chinese, so I will let everyone know how that one goes. I do. Recommend Kindred's Curse. Yeah, I would never read that. We've heard really good things about it.

1:09:20 I think my TBRS that are high right now because I have very long TBR I need. I'm going to finish Lady of Darkness and then I'm going to read Looking at the Crowns of Niaxia. Niaxia. Yeah. I. Keep saying that, yeah. I actually read a sample and then decided that I was just going to like dive into the will of the many because I knew I needed to read it.

1:09:43 And then I also want to read Spark of the Ever Flame and subsequent books. I think you'll love the second one. I think you'll love Azure. But yeah, cool. All right, that is it from us this week. Thanks for tuning into our cozy, not so cozy chat about Wuthering Heights, about Doom. I feel bad. I feel bad right now, much how I felt when I left this movie. I like don't feel good.

1:10:10 Yeah, it's like, I don't know, I feel ick in my soul because like, sad movie, sad thoughts, sad. I also feel sad because I know that there's also discourse about this movie. Like guys, we're just throwing in our our two cents. These are just our opinions. You don't have to agree, OK? It's just a book.

1:10:28 It's just a movie. Chat between friends. Chat between friends about a movie. We thought you guys guys might be interested. Yeah, so you can find us on social media. We are drags in the details pod on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok. I was like, I'm missing a big one here TikTok, but we have a website is drags in thedetails.com. We are also drags in the details pod server on Discord. Our Discord is my favorite place on the Internet. Tons of theories in there all the time. We're always chatting.

1:11:00 They are doing a mass first reread in publication order. So if you have read the mass 1st and you would, I guess you don't have to have read the mass first. If you would like to read the mass first in publication order, they are doing that literally right now as we speak. They're having a meeting. So there's a, a virtual component to it as well. We love our discourse.

1:11:20 That is it from us and love you. Bye. Love you. Bye.