Gaston (Beauty and the Beast)

DisneyChar
name = Gaston


caption = Gaston
first appearance ="Beauty and the Beast" (1991)
created by = Ben Bartley
Andreas Deja
voiced by = Richard White
aliases =
relatives =

Gaston is a fictional character and the main antagonist of Disney's 1991 animated classic "Beauty and the Beast", and was voiced by Richard White. In the Melbourne stage production of the film, he was played by Hugh Jackman. He is also believed to be a major inspiration for the character Caledon Hockley (played by Billy Zane), the villain of "Titanic".

Biography

Gaston starts off as the local hero, whom Belle considers intolerably vain and arrogant, with a bumbling companion, LeFou, pursuing Belle through the village as she borrows a book from the local bookstore. Their meeting starts off pretty well, but Gaston's sexist remarks about women drive Belle away from him and she goes home, leaving him disappointed. The next day, Gaston organizes a wedding outside Belle's garden in an attempt to "surprise" her. He forces his way into Belle's house and attempts to strongarm her into marrying him. While he attempts to corner Belle, she manages to open the door that he has pinned her against. This causes him to lose his balance and fly headfirst into a mud puddle that lies in front of Belle's house. Furious and humiliated, Gaston storms off.

Gaston doesn't stop there, however, as the villagers in a local pub, along with Lefou, sing a song about Gaston's greatness to cheer him up after being rejected by Belle, when Maurice storms in and warns the villagers about a monstrous Beast who has locked Belle as a prisoner in the tower of his castle. Thinking he is insane, Gaston orders the villagers to throw him out of the bar. In a surprising display of animalistic cunning, he takes advantage of the village's dislike of Belle's father, Maurice, to organize a lynch mob and threaten the old man with imprisonment in order to pressure Belle into marrying him. Belle, however, manages to prove her father's apparently insane claims about a Beast inhabiting the huge castle in the woods to be true by using a magic mirror the Beast had given her. Gaston grows even more frustrated after his plan fails, but becomes insanely jealous upon learning that Belle has fallen for the Beast and not him.

Completely berserk, Gaston convinces the villagers that the Beast is a man-eating monster that has to be brought down immediately, and after locking Belle and Maurice in the cellar of their home, Gaston leads the lynch mob to storm Beast's castle and leave no one alive. In the ensuing battle between the rioters and castle servants, Gaston confronts the Beast alone. He fires an arrow into him, tosses him onto a lower section of the roof and taunts him. When Beast doesn't respond, having lost his will to live since Belle's departure (to rescue her lost father, who was searching for her), Gaston uses a makeshift club to try and kill the Beast. The Beast, however, regains his strength when he sees Belle return, and viciously fights back. He soon has Gaston at his mercy by holding him above a chasm by the throat, and the evil hunter pathetically begs for his life. The Beast almost drops Gaston, but decides to spare him on the basis that he isn't a killer like Gaston, and merely tells him to leave and never return. However, when Beast climbs up on a balcony to Belle, Gaston foolishly attempts to finish what he started. Dangling dangerously from the balcony, Gaston manages to mortally wound Beast by stabbing him in the back with a dagger, but gets his comeuppance when he loses his footing and falls into the deep chasm far below.

On an interesting note, two of Gaston's actions were edited out of the final version of the film: during his battle with the Beast, Gaston was originally intended to shout "Time to die!", but it was changed to "Belle is MINE!" in order to edit violence and fit Belle back in the sequence; and while falling from the tower, Gaston's sadistic laugh was changed to a mere, high-pitched scream.

In other media

House of Mouse

Gaston was a regular in the television series "House of Mouse" and in the special "Mickey's House of Villains", and was voiced again by White. A recurring joke in the series is that Gaston is liable to boast that "nobody can [perform a specific action] like Gaston." In one episode, Hades retorts mockingly to one of Gaston's boasts, "Nobody can be extremely annoying like Gaston."

Kingdom Hearts

Although a world based on "Beauty and the Beast" (Beast's Castle) is featured in "Kingdom Hearts II", Gaston is strangely absent despite being the main villain of the film, making him the only Disney villain not to appear so far in the Kingdom Hearts series with a world based on his movie featured as a playable level. Xaldin of Organization XIII replaces him as the primary antagonist of the world. As the Beast turns back into Prince Adam during the game's end credits, it is implied that his fight against the Beast took place during Sora's absence form the world.

While the Beast's Castle world has been confirmed to feature in the upcoming "", whether or not Gaston will appear has yet to be revealed.

Notes and references