Villains Profile: Gaston

Hello & welcome back to A Look at Disney and today, we continue our hunting Villains Profile by looking at one of my all time favorite Disney villains as we look at Gaston fron Beauty and The Beast.  Now Gaston amongst the 4 villains that we are looking at sticks out a bit as the odd man out as while he hunts for sport, it doesn't exactly come into play with his villainy that much. But of you recall what I said, last week about Marahute being McLeach's trophy, a similar view can be used here with Belle being Gaston's unattainable trophy.  Which in many respects is much more sickening.  With that out of the way, we will be looking at Voice Actor, Entrance, Personality, Grand Desire, Villain Songs, Lackey, Most Evil Deed, Demise, & finally, Is Gaston A Good Villain? With that outta the way, let's begin.  

Voice Actor 

Richard White

Something that caught my eye, when I looked at Mr. White's Disney Wiki Page is how it described how he went about voicing Gaston.

In a 1991 interview with Newsweek promoting the film, White said that he based Gaston on overconfident jocks he had seen during his teenage years.

This totally makes sense as Gaston comes off as the overconfident jock type in the movie. Now sure, people have described Gaston in the past as looking like your typical Disney prince to give the allusion that just because someone looks like a good guy, they aren't. Sort of a proto-Hans, if you will.

And while I do see that, I think that unlike with Hans,  Beauty and The Beast wasn't trying to hide the fact that Gaston was the bad guy and that is quite clear in how White voices the character.




Entrance



We first meet Gaston during the number, Belle (Little Town) and even from there, he doesn't hide his arrogance and it's quite clear that the Little Town is infatuated with him. Especially, the Bimbettes.  But he has eyes for only one girl in town.

 



It's a great introduction to set up Gaston and what his grand desire is. Which I'll be touching on a bit down below.   You really get the sense that the town fawns over Gaston here as their hero and that's even more evident in his villain song.



Personality


Gaston's personality is perhaps his biggest draw as he's so prideful, arrogant, egotistical and vain.  That is perhaps his biggest downfall as his vanity gets in his way and causes him to mess up his goal. Now, even more than that,  as we see the film go on, we see Gaston become more of a monster as Beast becomes more human. I brought this up in my original review of the film.

 At the beginning, it is all perfect but by the time he reaches Beast, the rain caused his hair to get messed up and some of it is now in his face. Also pay attention to his facial expression during that scene because you can see the anger in him and how he is ready to explode. Here take a look.







This right here is step 4 and the final step to Gaston becoming the villain of this film. Oh sure, leading the mob is one thing but here during the confrontation with Beast, Gaston has become the cold hearted monster that Beast was at the beginning of this film. Gaston may appear to be an aloof type of bad guy but I think that is where people don't give him enough credit because his arc in this film is quite fascinating and there are little hints that help throughout the film to see how Gaston will turn out in the end. Some more obvious than others such as this, The Mob Song and his deal with D'Arque but in the end, Gaston is a smart villain

Now, I mentioned in my review that there were 4 steps in Gaston becoming the villain of the film. And we will be touching upon as this article goes along.  One of the biggest things that that is quite noticeable with Gaston is how his appearance changes throughout the film as he goes from looking a good looking type jock but by the end of the film as observed by that picture up above,  you see Gaston losing his composure.



Grand Desire


I'll let Gaston explain this for himself.

So I'm making plans to woo and marry Belle

It's a simple set up but it's more about how Gaston goes about it, that makes him such a loathsome character. In the beginning of the movie, we see him set up a wedding at Belle's cottage and propose to Belle on the same day, in which he lets his ego get the best of him as Belle obviously said no.

 



While this doesn't go his way,  he uses Maurice's crazy story of the terrifying Beast to have him locked up as we see him make a deal with D'Arque and uses that as leverage to get Belle to marry him.

Who by the way, is voiced by Tony Jay.   This deal here just goes to show how underhanded Gaston can be.









Villain Songs

Gaston

As I mentioned the town loves Gaston and here, we just hear them showering the brute with praise after being rejected. Listening to this song and seeing how the town adores him, it's not hard to see why Gaston thinks he's invincible and can get anything he wants.  As it comes across as though, he's rarely been told no because of how much everyone in town fawns over him.

Gaston (Reprise)

While the first version of this song is all about fun and celebrating the brute, here is where we get our first real taste of him becoming the villain of the piece as we see him whisper to LeFou that he is evolving a plan to woo and marry Belle. And it's clear that he'll stop at nothing and do whatever it takes to make her, his.

The Mob Song

While Gaston is a great song,  I feel this is more Gaston's true villain song as we hear his menace come to light and it shows how much of an influence, Gaston has over the little town as he is able to get them to follow him by using their fear of the Beast and the villagers would follow him with anything he said but feeding off their fear was the right tactic because it makes it seem to the villagers that in their minds, the attack is justified as they think by doing this, they'll be preventing Beast from attacking their Little Town.

Lackey

LeFou

I like LeFou as he's a fun comic relief type lackey and once again going back to how people adore Gaston, that is most evident in LeFou and how much he worships the ground that Gaston walks on. On the same token,  there does seem to be a genuine friendship between these two.  They do seem enjoy one another's company but it's made clear from the get go that Gaston is the one in charge.

Most Evil Deed

Well, this one was easy.  It has to be Gaston having Maurice locked up in the insane asylum and using that as leverage against Belle to get  her to marry her. As I said prior, that is just underhanded and shows what lengths, this brute monster will go to, in order to get what he wants.

Demise

Gaston's death is just great. The final fight between him and Beast is fantastic as we see how far these two characters have come.  Gaston has become the monster and Beast has become a good person and he has nothing left in him to fight until he sees Belle and that gives him, his second wind. And we get a great fight and Beast is willing to let Gaston go but just as Beast is ready to let Gaston go, Gaston goes to stab our hero in the back and he falls off the edge as he loses his balance.

Now something interesting is that apparently in the original release of the film, skulls and crossbones appeared in Gaston's eyes to confirm his death.  

The 2002 DVD commentary confirmed his death, and mentioned that the skull and crossbones seen in his pupils as he falls, which were either speculated to be some sort of demonic subliminal message or that he had seen death himself, were intended to confirm his death.

Now, I've not seen this as the film on VHS (which is what I watched this on) had this edited out.

Interestingly enough, Disney made absolutely certain to remove the skull and cross bones from Gaston's pupils as he fell to his death in the theatrical and VHS version, yet made no attempt to do so in the later releases on DVD and Blu-ray.

And when I saw the 3D Re-release of the movie, I don't remember seeing it on the big screen either. It's neat but if it was there that time, I must've missed it.   

Is Gaston A Good Villain?

Yeah, he's one of my favorites.  He's one of the most entertaining villains in the Disney canon and I love seeing him become the monster that he is by the end of the film.  He starts out seeming like an entertaining buffoon but by the time of the final fight, he's become such a cruel monster.  Join me next time as we close out this hunting edition of Villains Profile by looking at...

Clayton