The most recent (and likely final) Venom trailer offered audiences their first look at Riot, a gigantic symbiote who serves as the film’s antagonist. Over the past six months, Sony has gradually pulled the veil on Venom, revealing a movie that heavily borrows from the “Lethal Protector” comics.
In the movie Venom, it appears that the evil Life Foundation, headed by Carton Drake, played by Riz Ahmed, has retrieved the symbiotes. Drake thinks the experiments being conducted by the Life Foundation will ensure the survival of the human species. Drake starts investing in space exploration because he believes that environmental collapse would drive humanity into space, where they will eventually encounter symbiotes. He thinks that through associating with these symbiotes, humans will have the advantage they require to live in a world that is dangerously unstable. At SDCC, Ahmed stated, “He’s trying to do the right thing by humanity and rescue the future, but as they say, to create an omelette you had to break some eggs.
However, it follows that Venom is not the only symbiote in town. Using other symbiotic warriors as his operatives, Drake has been experimenting with this space goo for some time. Riot, a symbiote, is the most significant of them and has since been identified as the main antagonist of the movie.
Riot’s Comic History & Venom Movie Role Explanation This Page Page 2: Riot Is Just One Of Venom’s Five Symbiotes.
Riot is the Venom Movie Villain
Riot differs from other symbiotes in that, unlike most of them, it goes from host to host, bonding with anyone in search of its prey. According to filmmaker Ruben Fleischer, “He has a special quality. Riot might show up anywhere, so you never know.” The Riot symbiote, as the trailer demonstrates, transforms into a large, monstrous creature akin to Venom from the Ultimate Comics line when it takes possession of a host. Riot will eventually take control of Carlton Drake, as shown by the final shot of the trailer, which shows Drake/Riot attacking Venom.
From the standpoint of the story, this makes perfect sense. The use of “doppelganger” villains, adversaries who are warped reflections of the hero, is a common trope in superhero movies. In the comic books, Spider-biggest Man’s foe is Venom, and Superman fights renegade Kryptonians, Sinestro the Yellow Lantern, Sabretooth, and the Green Lantern. The benefit of this strategy is that the antagonist inverts the hero, exposing precisely what kind of monster they may become if they ever let loose completely. Riot and Carlton Drake joining in this respect is a stroke of genius; it enables the movie’s other reflecting villain to be a physical threat, and eventually the two will bond together as a single horrific entity.
Who is Riot in the Spider-Man Comics?
Venom had a bad reputation as Spider-Man up until the early 1990s. However, Marvel recognised the character’s potential and started Eddie Brock on the path to becoming an antihero and the focus of his own ongoing comic books. That sparked David Michelinie’s legendary Venom: Lethal Protector series, in which Eddie tried to make a fresh start in San Francisco. Eddie, unfortunately, quickly ran afoul of the Life Foundation. This group predicted that the Earth would soon experience an extinction-level disaster in the comics. Since Carlton Drake was a businessman and not a scientist, he came up with the idea of offering affluent people access to a survival bunker. Drake understood this was his chance to construct the ultimate super-soldiers to defend the bunker in the event of an apocalypse when he saw Venom in San Francisco. He kidnapped Venom and took symbiotic “seeds” from it in order to make his own symbiotes.
One of Drake’s creations was Riot, even if the character didn’t have a name right away. The moniker “Riot” was given to him by a line of action figures, and although though there is very little relation between the action figure and the comic book character, the name stayed. In the Lethal Protector run, he was merely one of Drake’s mercenaries bound to a vicious symbiote. At the conclusion of the Lethal Protector miniseries, Riot’s host was put to death, but the symbiote survived and has since moved about a lot. Petty Officer Howard Ogden, a member of the US military who participated in the fight against Carnage, served as the most recent Riot host.
Page 2 of 2: Riot Is Just One Of Five Symbiotes In Venom
Riot is One of Five Symbiotes
Riot was one of the five symbiotes that the Life Foundation produced in the comic books. The additional symbionts were:
The sole member of the five symbiotes named in the Lethal Protector storyline is Scream. She encircles, entangles, or chokes foes with her “living tendril hair” as a weapon.
Agony can spit acid that can burn through most materials by using her metabolism. She has the ability to take substances inside herself, even Spider-web. Man’s
Lasher is a symbiote who grows whip-like tentacles on his back and utilises them as weapons.
Phage, like Carnage, likes to shape his symbiote into vicious bladed weapons.
The five symbiotes normally cooperate, and in this instance they were a powerful enough group to easily defeat Venom and Spider-Man. In the Lethal Protector miniseries, they were only vanquished when Spider-Man and Venom turned their own technology against them.
Which of the Five Symbiotes Appear in Venom?
Eddie Brock was depicted as a journalist researching the Life Foundation in the first official Venom still. There were whispers that the Life Foundation was “testing its medications” on susceptible individuals, and not all of them survived, according to the notes in Eddie’s notepad. The Life Foundation conned the homeless and needy into participating as test subjects in their studies during the initial run of the Lethal Protector. Eddie’s annotations unmistakably imply a faithful recreation of the comic book arc. One early casting call contained a role that would fit one of the five symbiotes, which backed that theory.
Marvel Characters Venom Could Appear (Besides Spider-Man)
This has been proven via trailers, yet it is also evident that Sony is drastically altering the five symbiotes. Scream’s origins seem to have changed; she now seems to be one of the first people to arrive to the Asian alien crash site and has unintentionally become attached to a symbiote. She is presumably taken to an ambulance after collapsing, but she escapes before going on a murdering spree in a metropolis. She ends up being taken prisoner by the Life Foundation, likely inspiring Drake to think about symbiotizing people. Eddie Brock runs into Scream during his break-in at the Life Foundation.
Surprisingly, it appears that Toxin is the name of one of the symbiotes in Venom. In the comics, Spider-Man has only really thought of the Toxin symbiote as an ally. The Toxin symbiote, which was the “spawn” of Carnage, was bound to a police officer whose strong moral fibre enabled him to restrain the symbiote’s appetite for blood. Like in the comic books, it’s possible that the Toxin symbiote won’t be a villain after all. Fleischer said in a statement at SDCC that he didn’t want to give too much away but hinted that “there may or may not be additional villains in the movie.” That kind of remark is obviously meant to give viewers the impression that other symbiotes, possibly even other members of the Five, would indeed appear in Venom.
Of course, it’s impossible to predict how closely Sony’s symbiotes will resemble their comic book counterparts. It’s certainly feasible that the other symbiotes will be very different from the ones we’ve seen in the comics as well. The trailer hints Riot resembles the Ultimate Universe version of Venom more than the 1990s edition. The five symbiotes, however, are only minor supporting characters and have not been given any remarkable character arcs or personal development in any storylines. Sony has plenty of area to work with in Venom given that this is the case.
