This article is about the wolves from Beauty and the Beast. For the characters from Frozen, see Wolves.
The Wolves are minor antagonists in Disney's 1991 animated feature film Beauty and the Beast.
Appearances
Beauty and the Beast
These meat-eating predators are shown to be inhabitants of the Black Forest surrounding the Beast's castle.
After Maurice gets lost in the forest following his separation from his horse, Philippe, three wolves spot Maurice and immediately chase him all the way to the castle. Even when Maurice manages to get inside past the gate and close it, they still try to get him and one manages to bite his foot, but he still gets away safely.
Later on in the film, when Belle runs away from the castle after the Beast frightens her, she is ambushed by the wolves and attacked by the whole pack. During the chase, one of the wolves inadvertently fell into the thin ice of the lake and was stranded, slowing him down from the rest of the pack. The wolves almost kill her, but the Beast turns up, possibly tipped off by Lumiere and Cogsworth (who saw Belle leave and alarmed the Beast to save her from the wolves), and fights the entire pack of wolves to save her. Although they manage to bite him several times, the Beast throws one (possibly the alpha male) against a tree and knocks him out cold, and the rest run off in fright, never to be seen again for the rest of the movie.
Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas
The wolves make a cameo in the midquel, taking place several weeks after their encounter with Belle and the Beast. When Belle, Chip and Philippe go into the Black Forest to look for a Christmas tree, the wolves are seen watching them with angry glares and growls, but this time they don't attack them. This may be due to the memory of their past experience with Belle and the Beast, and they know not to mess with them in order never to get hurt again.
Gallery
Variants
Trivia
- The wolves were originally planned to make one more appearance nearing the climax, where Gaston, after surviving a fall off a cliff due to Belle throwing a rock at him just as he was about to shoot a downed Beast, stands up with a broken leg only for him to be surrounded by the wolves, with it being heavily implied that they finished him off shortly thereafter. This idea was however scrapped from the final film due to the dark and gruesome nature of said scene.
- In the initial draft for Linda Woolverton's take that would become the final version, the Alpha Male that Beast knocked out would have ultimately been finished off by Beast to Belle's protests, which had her teach him the concept of mercy, which would eventually be echoed in the planned climax of the movie shortly after Gaston ran him through with his sword.
- To call them villains is rather unfair because these wolves, savage as they acted, were just predators looking for their next meal, which is harder during winter. Though, it could also be possible that their aggression was amplified as part of the spell. Also wolves are predatory by nature and they could have also attacked because they felt threatened and were defending their territory.
- In real life, wolves are normally afraid of humans and tend to stay far away from them. Their behavior in The Enchanted Christmas was closer to their actual behavior.
- However, France, where Beauty and the Beast takes place, historically suffered from numerous wolf attacks, with 5,400 people having been killed between 1580–1880. So their behavior is excusable to some degree.
- The planned involvement of wolves fatally attacking Gaston was eventually reused as Scar's death in The Lion King. It features the Hyenas devouring Scar after he falls off a cliff during a royal battle with his nephew.
- They appear to have inspired a group of wolves in Frozen, as the latter group plays a similar role in attacking the main characters and being a form of the setting's antagonistic wildlife.
- In the live-action remake, most of their sounds are a mixture of those of Panthera cats such as leopards, tigers, and lions.
References
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