Why Gaston From Beauty And The Beast Looks So Familiar
No one's slick as Gaston, no one's quick as Gaston...and nobody looks quite as familiar as Gaston. As a specimen, yes, he's intimidating, but if you feel like you've seen this self-obsessed bully somewhere before, that's because you probably have.
As it turns out, Gaston's real name is Luke Evans, and he's starred in quite a few big-budget blockbusters, showing up in places like Mt. Olympus and Middle-earth. But if you still can't place this singing soldier, then keep on reading to find out why Gaston from Beauty and the Beast looks so familiar.
Clash of the Titans (2010)
When Clash of the Titans hit theaters in 2010, the sword-and-sandal epic made a pile of cash but drew quite a bit of flak from critics. But really, the only one you should listen to is Roger Ebert, who praised the film for "the energy, the imagination, the silliness." Sure we can all agree it's not Citizen Kane, but Clash of the Titans offers up a whole lot of mythological fun. Plus, it's the movie that introduced mainstream moviegoers to Luke Evans.
The first movie Evans ever auditioned for, Clash of the Titans focuses on a young demigod named Perseus (Sam Worthington) who sets out to get revenge after Hades (Ralph Fiennes) murders his human family. Along the way, he rescues a princess, fights a kraken, and encounters a whole host of bizarre creatures, from jinn to gorgons to giant scorpions. However, the one character Perseus doesn't meet is Apollo, the god of music (Evans).
If you've seen the film, then you know Apollo is only on-screen for a brief moment near the beginning, appearing at a divine council at Mt. Olympus. Apollo and Hades don't get along, and when the god of the underworld asks Zeus for permission to wage war on the mortals, Apollo cautions his dad to lay off the humans. Of course, Zeus disregards his kid's advice and unleashes Hades upon the world.
Still, even though it was a tiny role, Evans was glad to get the job, as playing in a Warner Bros. project "opened a lot of doors" and put him on the path to success. But while he had a lot of fun making the movie, he did admit to MTV that he wasn't crazy about his outfit. "I was in 22-carat, gold armor," he explained. "It was hot and heavy." But hey, as Billy Crystal used to say, it's better to look good than to feel good.
The Three Musketeers (2011)
Paul W.S. Anderson's take on The Three Musketeers isn't exactly what you'd call a faithful adaptation. We've got zeppelin-powered warships, Guy Ritchie-style action scenes, and booby traps straight from Raider of the Lost Ark. And in the middle of all this insane swordplay, there's Luke Evans as Aramis, one of the three titular musketeers. The warrior-poet of the group, Aramis is an ex-priest who gave up the clergy after realizing "being a man of God and a man of the cloth aren't always the same thing." Still, you can take the man out of the church, but you can't take the church out of the man, as Aramis prays for every one of his outmatched victims.
In addition to wearing a sword at his side and a cross around his neck, Aramis is skilled when it comes to agility and strength, taking a few pages straight from the Bruce Wayne playbook. In fact, when we first meet the quiet musketeer, he's standing on top of a building, waiting to pounce on his unsuspecting prey, like some sort of 18th-century Caped Crusader. Those ninja skills come in pretty handy when the musketeers are called to save the French queen (Juno Temple) from a nefarious plot involving blackmail, missing jewels, and a goateed Orlando Bloom. And true, while The Three Musketeers isn't what you would call a first-rate film, Evans manages to stand out from the schlock, with his rosary, rapier, and wry sense of humor.
Immortals (2011)
A year after Clash of the Titans, Luke Evans worked his way up the Greek pantheon and got to play the head honcho thunder god himself. In Tarsem Singh's Immortals, Evans plays Zeus as a benevolent deity who forbids the Olympians from meddling in human affairs. After all, this Zeus believes in the concept of free will and wants the mortals to make their own decisions. Of course, his hands-off approach doesn't sit well with the rest of the gods, especially when the genocidal King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) decides to conquer Greece and unleash the Titans upon humanity.
Fortunately, Superman is there to save the day. Henry Cavill plays the character of Theseus, a peasant warrior who finds a fabled bow, protects a virgin oracle, and puts Mickey Rourke's boxing skills to the test. Defeating legions of soldiers isn't too difficult for the mighty Theseus, as he was trained in combat by an elderly sage (John Hurt), who's secretly Zeus in human form. Evidently, Zeus is totally cool with gods helping people so long as they don't use their powers. But when Hyperion frees the Titans from their prison, Luke Evans decides to toss his divine hat in the ring, taking out the zombie-like monsters with some mad Indiana Jones skills.
Although, we've got to say, somebody might want to call CPS on this guy as Zeus is a bit harsh when it comes to disciplining his kids.
The Raven (2012)
Described as "Seven with Edgar Allan Poe," James McTeigue's The Raven is a bloody mess of a thriller, starring John Cusack as the renowned mystery writer. Set in the weeks leading up to his death, the film finds Poe caught in a game of cat-and-mouse with a serial killer super fan, a murderer who draws inspiration from Poe's stories like The Cask of Amontillado and The Masque of Red Death. Things get personal, though, when the killer kidnaps Poe's fiancé (Alice Eve), and the writer soon finds himself at his wit's end. Fortunately, our boy Luke Evans is there to keep him focused on the case.
In a role originally meant for Jeremy Renner (who dropped out due to Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol), Inspector Emmett Fields is a 19th-century super cop. A well-read man, the detective quickly realizes the killer is staging the murders to resemble Poe's work, and while Fields initially suspects the author's involvement, he soon teams up with Poe to bring the killer to justice. With his deductive mind and Poe's literary genius, the unlikely tag team tracks the murderer across the streets of Baltimore, avoiding all manner of pitfalls and pendulums along the way.
As for Evans, the actor provides a steady anchor for a clunky film, acting as a much-needed counterbalance to Cusack's over-the-top performance. Plus, he's got guts enough to butt heads with an angry Brendan Gleeson, which is probably far scarier than facing any serial killer on the planet.
Fast & Furious 6 (2013)
After The Raven, Evans traded his 19th-century horse-and-carriage for an armored dune buggy in Fast & Furious 6. The 2013 action flick found the Brit playing Owen Shaw, a soldier-turned-international crime lord with ties to everyone from the cartels to the CIA. With a crack-team of car-savvy criminals, Shaw plans on building a super-weapon that he can sell to the highest-bidder. Of course, the crook gets more than he bargained for when Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) shows up, ready to ride or die.
But stopping Shaw is no easy task. The dude is ruthless, the kind of guy who'll plow straight through traffic in a giant tank if it means getting away with the goods. Basically, he's Dom's exact opposite and views his own gang as expendable. "A team is nothing but the pieces you switch out until you get the job done," he tells Dom. This man is all about pragmatism and precision, going so far as to use Dom's own family against him. Even worse, Shaw has an unexpected member of his criminal crew—Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Dom's girlfriend who survived the events of Fast & Furious, only to wake up with amnesia.
Of course, if you mess with Dom's family, you're going to wind up in a coma. But while Shaw took a serious tumble in Fast & Furious 6, Evans wound up in the third-highest grossing film of the franchise. The actor then briefly returned for Furious 7, followed by The Fate of the Furious, where Owen teams up his big brother Deckard (Jason Statham) to rescue Dom's infant son. And since The Fast and the Furious franchise is now one of the top ten highest-grossing series ever, Evans is probably feeling pretty good about choosing a life of cinematic crime.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) and The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)
Of course, The Fast and the Furious isn't the only franchise featuring Luke Evans. In 2013, Evans took a trip to Middle-earth for parts two and three of Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy. Showing up first in The Desolation of Smaug, the British actor picked up a bow for the part of Bard, an archer from Lake-town who helps the dwarves on their trip to the Lonely Mountain. He's also the guy you want to call when you've got a fire-breathing dragon on the loose, and in The Battle of the Five Armies, Bard goes full-MacGyver and creates an improvised bow to shoot down a scaly Benedict Cumberbatch.
Once Smaug is out of the picture, Bard goes on to become the de facto leader of Lake-town, leading his people to safety and finding himself caught in a war between elves and dwarves. And after trying to negotiate the peace, the bowman starts throwing down with all manner of orcs, ogres, and trolls, which is pretty impressive for a guy who was sailing a barge just a couple of days ago. However, Bard's archer abilities don't seem to run in the family as his ancestor, Girion, missed his chance to kill Smaug when the dragon showed up years ago. But you can't deny the family resemblance, especially since Evans is the guy under all of Girion's old man make-up.
Thanks to his leading man role in such a major series, Evans finally became a familiar face. "It was very weird," Evans told Collider, "because for a long time no one really recognized me from my films, but The Hobbit has totally changed that...."
Dracula Untold (2014)
The Batman Begins of monster movies, Dracula Untold takes the legendary vampire and gives him a superhero spin. In this undead origin story, Vlad the Impaler (Evans) starts off as a noble prince hoping to atone for a past full of murder and mayhem. Really, all he wants to do is lead his country in peace, but when Sultan Mehmed II of Turkey (Dominic Cooper) shows up and demands 1,000 boys for his army, Vlad decides it's time to make a deal with the devil.
Finding an old nosferatu (Charles Dance) lurking in a nearby cave, Vlad makes a bargain with the beast in exchange for its powers. Suddenly, our hero finds himself gifted with all sorts of super-skills, from Predator vision to Wolverine healing abilities. Plus, he's got this nifty trick where he morphs into a flock of bats. Gifted with all these supernatural powers, Vlad can take out hundreds of soldiers at a time, becoming a defender of truth, justice, and the Transylvanian way.
Of course, being a vampire isn't all it's cracked up to be. Sure, he's got super strength and insane hearing, but he's also got this craving for human blood. If he can resist the urge for three days, Vlad will return to his mortal form, but that's easier said than done when there are so many juicy humans running around.
True, Dracula Untold isn't what you'd call a great movie, but hey, you get to see Luke Evans murder bad guys with a legion of man-eating bats before killing a whole bunch of dudes with a bloodthirsty vampire army. Seriously, that's just good B-movie fun right there.
High-Rise (2015)
You could describe Ben Wheatley's High-Rise in all sorts of ways. It's hilarious, terrifying, and completely bonkers, much like the character of Richard Wilder. Played by Luke Evans, Wilder is a failed documentarian who's moved into the worst apartment building on Earth. Designed by an oblivious architect (Jeremy Irons), the luxury high-rise is sharply divided by class, and when the building begins experiencing power shortages, things quickly devolve into anarchy. There's theft and vandalism, rape and murder, and 24/7 parties that just don't stop. It's like a perverted Snowpiercer, with the lower-class residents on the bottom floors squaring off against the aristocrats at the top.
True, we should probably mention Tom Hiddleston here, as he's the main character of the movie. Playing Robert Laing, a doctor who bounces back and forth between both sides, Hiddleston is at the top of his acting game. But honestly, Evans steals the show every time he steps on-screen. Brash, violent, and losing his mind, Wilder lives on one of the lower floors and decides it's time to bring the bluebloods down. He launches his little revolution by crashing an elite pool party with a group of kids in tow, but as things take a turn into the apocalyptic, Evans grows obsessed with making a documentary to expose the architect...and that's when things get really disturbing really fast.
"As an actor," Evans told the Chicago Sun-Times, "this was such a rich role to play. My character does show all the colors of his personality—from the charming, chauvinistic alpha male, to this creature that you would be terrified to meet on the street or in a dark alley. It's interesting to see the decay of human nature in all its different facets." And while it's true that Wilder turns into a feral animal by the end of the film, we've got to admit, the man has some pretty sweet dance moves.
The Girl on the Train (2016)
Based on the novel by Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train centers on Rachel Watson (Emily Blunt), a woman who drowns her sorrow in bottle after bottle of alcohol. Struggling with a painful divorce, Rachel rides a train past her old home every single day, watching her ex-husband (Justin Theroux) and his new family from a distance. But Rachel is also obsessed with a couple living a few houses down, dreaming about their private lives and believing they have the perfect marriage. Unfortunately, her fantasies come crashing down when she witnesses the wife, Megan (Haley Bennett), having an affair with a mysterious man.
Furious, the alcoholic tries to confront Megan, but after blacking out, she wakes up to find herself covered in blood. Even worse, her memories have disappeared...and so has Megan. Wondering if she's responsible for a horrible crime, Rachel decides to investigate, which ends up with her visiting Megan's husband, Scott (Evans). Pretending she's Megan's friend, Rachel tells Scott about his wife's affair and grows uncomfortably close to the grieving husband. But Rachel quickly learns this guy is far from being the perfect mate. He's angry and possessive, a man with a violent edge, and a suspect in Megan's disappearance. Well, assuming Rachel isn't the one responsible, anyway.
Interestingly, the role of Scott was originally meant for Jared Leto (and, as a side note, Chris Evans was supposed to play Rachel's ex). But with all due respect to the Joker, Evans is really the perfect guy for the part. The British star does a fantastic job of making us feel both sorry for Scott and scared of the guy at the same time, bringing an intensity we're not sure that Leto could've matched. Plus, The Girl on the Train was a nice break for Evans, who told Esquire, "It was very nice to be playing in a contemporary story. You don't have to think about dragons and monsters or costumes. You're wearing jeans and a T-shirt. You're wearing normal stuff, and you're living as an everyday guy."
And for a dude who's played Dracula, Zeus, and Gaston, that definitely sounds like a nice change of pace.