10 Famous Movie Villains With Lame Motivations

3. Gaston (Beauty And The Beast)

Gaston Beauty And The Beast
Disney

The Motivation: Belle rejected him.

In both versions of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Gaston is a big dumb hunk of meat whose one goal in life is to marry Belle, the town bookworm who constantly has to fight off Gaston's unwanted advances. Gaston sings about her, follows her, and generally proves a nuisance, seemingly unable to take no for an answer.

This obsession with Belle morphs into jealously when he discovers that she has feelings for the titular Beast, and so, he locks her away with her father and heads to the Beast's castle - with a group of bloodthirsty villagers in tow - aiming to kill him.

From here, things don't end well for Gaston at all, and he falls to his death from the top of the castle - but not before harming the Beast, upsetting Belle, and presumably scarring most of the villagers for life. And all of this was because he couldn't handle the fact that Belle preferred someone else over him.

Bear in mind, Gaston could have literally any woman he wanted, and we even see several potential brides fawning over him, including a trio of attractive blondes in the animated version. It's not like he didn't have any other options. In the end, he died because he was jealous of the Beast, and because Belle told him no. Pretty sad for such a huge muscly dude.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!