All he ever wanted was the woman he loved to love him back. He could have had any other woman in that town, but he chose to remain single for Belle. He defended her father against LeFou's insensitivity. If Gaston had lived, I'd imagine him like an old Mr. Miyagi getting drunk and crying over his dead wife.
shareLol!
shareOne thing I first thought about watching again is that Gaston is basically the Beast the way the Beast was at first. In that sense Gaston is a tragic figure because he probably also could change for the better.
shareOne thing I first thought about watching again is that Gaston is basically the Beast the way the Beast was at first. In that sense Gaston is a tragic figure because he probably also could change for the better.
You mean like in Cocteau's version? I believe that Disney wanted to avoid resembling that movie too closely. It certainly would've been a possibility, but Disney just likes to kill off their villains.
shareI agree. I wouldn't call him a "tragic figure" because he's not a hero.
But I really do feel sorry for him.
He was just a misunderstood dumb who knew was successful with women but he only wanted belle.
Of course belle had the right to "refuse" him, but his odd behavior was just the result of his sadness and his desperation.
So sending him to his death at the end, with terror in his eyes, made me care for the character.
i don't think he was sad at all. He was furious because Belle preferred the Beast to him, not sad. HE couldn't believe she didn't want him. And his death was entirely his own fault, the Beast had let him go, he came back to stab the Beast out of pure spite.
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Gaston is more of a 'real hero' than a tragic figure. To Gaston, The Beast is an ugly monster that captured the love of his life and her father. The Beast is a threat to the village and its people. Gaston is the village hero and hunter. He wants to protect the woman he loves and his community.
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Gaston always reminded me a little of OJ Simpson, actually.
Both sports heroes who were believed capable of doing no wrong in their communities (Gaston only in a local sense), both narcissists prone to treating people like objects, and neither above bullying/harming/disrespecting women (yeah Gaston clearly wasn't above striking Belle especially if the Broadway version is canon, and he probably wouldn't have minded killing her if she stepped out of line too much, depending on how much leeway the town was willing to give him if he arranged an "accident" or something - or just had her committed with her "crazy old father").
And, above all, compelling cases have been made for both as to how they really aren't "evil" necessarily (in Gaston's case that he's really the hero, in OJ's case that his walking on all charges was the right verdict). I only draw the comparison because OJ Simpson documentaries and miniseries have been streaming regularly since 2014 ever since the anniversary of the trial's zenith started.
Only difference is that Gaston STILL has alot of defenders whereas most everyone acknowledges now that Simpson WAS pretty terrible and a wife beater at the time, and that the excitement over his not guilty verdict was pretty tasteless (even if he got locked up on trumped up charges later). I keep hearing about how complex villains like Frollo or Scar are, but I don't think anyone would go so far as to say that either was the HERO of their films, even if they both show some development as characters. But "Gaston was right" or "Gaston is the real hero" pages pop up perennially and still get hotly debated without being ever resolved...
He won't win the 2016's american presidential election for sure.
shareHe didn't love Belle. He just wanted her because he thought she was beautiful. He knew she loved books and yet he grabbed her book from her and threw it in the mud. He laughed at Belle's father as soon as Belle's back was turned. It was his idea to get Belle's father put in an insane asylum. He incited the crowd against the Beast, even though he realized Belle cared for him. That's not love; that's extreme selfishness.
shareI'm okay with the current ending, but I think it would have been clever to have Gaston suffer the same fate the Beast did at the beginning of the film, rather than just fall off a cliff and die (Hollywood's #1 go-to way to defeat an antagonist/end their life). One of the points of Gaston's character was to show how not so different the Beast was from him, thus showing how the Beast changes.
Now, a SMART way to have remade the climax/ending would have been to have that done for Gaston, but NOPE. The remake gave us basically the same fight scene and fate for Gaston, only less invigorating. In their determination to "fix the mistakes" that weren't mistakes in the original animation, they ended up missing some good opportunities.