10 Famous Movie Villains With Lame Motivations

3. Gaston (Beauty And The Beast)

Amazing Spider Man 2
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 almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.