Gaston (disambiguation)

Gaston is the main antagonist from the film Beauty and the Beast. He was voiced by Richard White.

Personality
Gaston is strong and handsome, and is all too aware of this. He is the rude, vain, sexist and arrogant huntsman who is hailed as a local hero, desired by many of the young women of his village. He is also apparently quite wealthy, as he bribes Monsieur D'Arque (who runs the asylum) with a considerable amount of money. While he is closed-minded, he is still intelligent and capable of being remarkably cunning. Gaston believes that Belle would best suit as his wife based purely on her lovely appearance, and when she turns down his proposal, his desire to marry her only intensifies. Over the movie he evolves from a narcissistic but harmless and humorous buffoon to a menacing, murderous villain. His popularity among the villagers makes him capable of rapidly persuading them to form a lynch mob, whether for a wedding, collecting Maurice for the asylum, or even charging off to attack the Beast's castle. he has long black hair tied up in a ponytail to keep his chest length mane out of his eyes while hunting. It got out of its ponytail twice -- once when Belle got him muddy that the wet hair slipped out, and when battling the Beast in the rain.

Beauty and the Beast
Gaston starts off as the local hero of a small French village, pursuing Belle through the village as she borrows a book from the local bookstore. Their meeting starts off 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 strong arm her into marrying him, again making sexists remarks about women and wifery. 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.

That night, 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 talking nonsense, Gaston orders the villagers to throw him out of the bar. In a surprising display of animalistic cunning, he bribes the owner of the local asylum, Monsiur D'Aquire, to threaten to throw Maurice into the asylum in order to pressure Belle into marrying him. While D'Arque realises that even Maurice's nonsense about a beast and his odd inventions do not make him insane or dangerous, he is willing to accept the bribe. Considering the management of asylums of the 18th century, this is an extemely harsh threat.

However, just before they arrive, Maurice has left for the castle on his own. LeFou is ordered to stay there and wait for their return.

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 and shocked that Maurice was indeed telling the truth, but becomes increasingly jealous upon learning that Belle has more sympathy for the Beast than for him.

In his jealousy and pride, 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. Gaston proves to be an even fighter, and declares that Belle is only his, and that she could never love a beast. Enraged, the Beast lunges forth and 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 realises that now Belle has returned to him, he doesn't need to kill Gaston, and merely tells him to leave. In spite of this, Gaston refuses to give up. Determined to finish what he started, Gaston literally stabs Beast in the back with a dagger while dangling precariously from the balcony. The Beast rears backwards in pain, causing Gaston to lose his balance and fall screaming from the roof and dies.

Richard White stated in an interview that while he himself doesn't know whether Gaston survived, he does mention that the viewers never saw the body, implying that he might have survived. However, the 2002 DVD commentary confirmed his death, and mentioned that the skull and crossbones seen in his pupils as he falls, which were speculated to be some sort of demonic subliminal message, were intended to confirm his death.

Disney Parks
Gaston Is also seen at The Disney Parks. At the American Parks, he is only seen in parade and shows. He is not seen at Tokyo Disneyland, but in Parades. At Disneyland Paris he is a regular character available for meet and greets.

Trivia

 * On an interesting note, most of Gaston's actions were edited out of the final cut 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.
 * Moments prior to his plunge from the castle, Gaston was supposed to stab the Beast in the back, and later in the leg, but the second injury was cut from the final script; it was also originally intended for Gaston to commit suicide after stabbing the Beast in the back and laugh madly as he fell from the tower, believing that if he could not win Belle, nobody else would (which might explain why Gaston chose such a dangerous position to stab the Beast from behind, despite knowing that he would never win Belle's heart).
 * Gaston has recently been enjoying a considerable degree of fan popularity on the internet, with the character himself becoming a minor internet meme.
 * In addition, he was ranked 11th in a poll by UltimateDisney.com on the top 30 Disney villains of all time, and 5th on the Nostalgia Critic's countdown of the top 11 Disney villains.
 * Gaston made numerous appearances on House of Mouse as a guest character. His most notable appearance, in the episode "Daisy's Debut", had a running gag in which he frequently injected himself into other people's conversations to say that "no one [verbs] like Gaston!"
 * Spike.com ranked him 9th. in their "The Top 10 Hollywood "Villains" Who Got Totally Screwed".
 * Gaston is the youngest Disney villain to date, apparently being in his mid-20s at the oldest.
 * The Nostalgia Critic listed Gaston as Number 5 on his "Top 11 Disney Villians" list.
 * Gaston is based on the Avenant character from the 1946 Beauty and the Beast film. A character named Avenant was originally intended to serve as the villain of a proposed sequel to the Disney film, as Gaston's younger brother, but the idea was scrapped.