- "The one with Drake is Riot."
"Who's Riot?"
"Riot is who you would call a team leader. He has an arsenal of weapons." - —Venom and Eddie Brock[src]
Riot is the overarching antagonist of the 2018 film Venom. was a symbiote originating from Klyntar and an enemy of Venom. At the time of his death, he was bonded with Carlton Drake. He is Venom’s older and abusive brother.
Biography[]
Riot originated on the planet Klyntar.[1] At some point, he found himself on an asteroid with some other symbiotes. They were found by astronauts employed by the Life Foundation, and were contained and taken back to Earth. However, in transit, Riot escaped his containment, causing the spaceship to crash in Malaysia. He bonded with one of the astronauts, allowing the man to stay alive. As the man was taken away for medical treatment, Riot transferred himself into the EMT, Corinne Wan. They walked to a nearby village, looking for food. While there, Riot shot spikes out of Corinne's body, killing all but an elder woman. Riot transferred himself into the woman's body.[2]
Riot fighting Venom.
Arriving at an airport, Riot followed a little girl that he soon possessed, leaving the elder woman to die. Later, Riot arrived at the Life Foundation where he met Carlton Drake and bonded himself towards him. Later, when Drake interrogated Eddie Brock, he changed into his true form asking where Venom was, but got no answer.[2]
In a different room, Riot talked to Carlton Drake about their next move and what they were going to do with Eddie, where Drake said that he ordered his men to dispose of him. Later, when the ship was about to launch, he killed an employee who didn't want to launch it and angrily started killing everyone. On his way to the ship, Riot encountered Venom, he demanded him to get in the ship but, he did not like the idea of invading the planet so they began to fight. During the fight, Riot lost connection with Drake temporarily but just in time to save his host of falling and he pierced Eddie at the back of his chest.[2]
Riot getting ready to kill Life Foundation employees.
Finally, inside of the rocket, Riot realized that Eddie is not dead because Venom has a bond with him just in time, . He called him a traitor and Venom punctured the ship with Riot's tendril blade so that the ship would not reach space, causing the unburned RP-1 to spill out. As Riot watches in horror, The fuel comes into contact with the rocket's engines,, causing it to ignite and rupture the tanks and the hull of the rocket, thus exploding in mid-air. Riot was incinerated to death along Drake.[2]
Personality[]
Riot represents the worst side of the Symbiotes; an intensely sadistic maniac who seems to enjoy nothing but destroying and killing everything in sight, for hardly any reason at all. This is different from the protagonist Venom who, while vicious and not hesitating to murder people, still has standards and often doesn't hurt innocents, preferring to kill bad people after its interaction with Eddie Brock, making him more of an anti-hero/anti-villain. They also have different relationships to their hosts: Venom grows to genuinely care for Eddie and ultimately bonds with him, while Riot often switches between hosts and couldn't care less even about Drake.
Much like Drake, Riot has a hatred for humanity and seeks to bring the symbiotes to Earth, though unlike Drake, who does it because he wants to evolve humanity in his own empathy-free way, Riot seems to do it solely because of his own bigotry against them. Despite working together, they have quite different personalities: Drake is a cold, calculating, sophisticated and pragmatic genius whose corporate status is important to his publicity, occasionally compelling the man to put a nice facade and acts for publicity, while Riot is a rampaging brute who has no taste for pragmatism and is solely interested in immediate consequence. However, the immediate consequence would catch up to him as Venom punctured the fuel tanks of their rocket, therefore causing his death.
Powers and abilities[]
Powers[]
- "Eddie: You can take this guy right?
Venom: He has got s**t you have never seen.
Eddie: What does that mean? What are our chances?
Venom: Pretty much zero." - —Eddie and Venom discussing their odds against Riot.Riot is stated by Venom to be the strongest and most brutal Symbiote. Through Venom, he had humiliated weaker symbiotes including Venom himself in combat. Carlton Drake, on the other hand, lacked superhuman abilities of his own, but he proved compatible with Riot and the dynamic between the duo gives birth to a chaotic and unpredictable killing machine.
- Possession/Symbiotic Enhancement: Being a symbiote, Riot can possesses any living beings upon physical contact with them, passing into their flesh as if intangible and taking full control of their bodies. Once inside the host, Riot is able to enhance their physical abilities to inhuman levels, allowing them to overpower other humans with ease and heal from severe injuries such as broken bones and damaged tissue in seconds. Riot displayed that it can suppress its host's mind to fully control their bodies should they reject him. Should they accept it, both it and them can able to almost meld minds with them and work collectively with them while sharing the same body as demonstrated through the teamwork with Drake. The abilities it can use while bonded with a host, as well as how good its host exploit them for their advantage, is fueled by the compatibility to each other.
- Superhuman Strength: Riot can enhance its host's strength to superhuman level, to the point where he can smash through machinery and break solid rock with ease.
- Superhuman Mobility: Riot can enhance its host's speed and agility to superhuman level, allowing him to move several feet per second and scaling buildings, as well as being able to move on all fours with ease.
- Superhuman Durability: Possessing absolute control over its mass and that of host it bonded with, Riot can enhance its durability to the point of immune to bullets and sharp weapons.
- Regenerative Healing Factor: Riot symbiote can heal its host at accelerated rated, as demonsteated when it healed Corinne Wan's body after her ambulance crashed.
- Shapeshifting: Thanks to its full control over its mass, Riot can form constructs and appendages from its very being, which Drake can exploit in combat.
- Symbiotic Costume: Riot has the basic ability to fully emerge from Drake while remaining attached to him, enveloping its host's body to form its own as a sentient, malleable but durable suit complete with eyes, claws and a mouth with powerful jaws and sharp teeth while increases in mass, turning him into powerful opponent.
- Construct Creation: Riot can create various weapons as extensions of his body, including bladed armaments such as swords, knives, lances, axes, claws and even a wrecking ball with spikes. Riot's mastery over its shape-shifting ability enables it to create weapons from its very being, including blades, flails, darts, spikes, and claws. Its mastery over this ability reaches to an extent where the constructs noticeably more solid in form and can be detached and/or launched at will. By slamming his hand on any solid surface (ex. ground and catwalk), he can create a trail of spikes that will ram a desired target. In fact, Venom is skeptical about the chance of it and Eddie to win the fight against Riot.
- Biological Assimilation: During the final fight between Venom and Riot, Riot momentarily absorbs Venom and Eddie into its body, making him appear more larger, though both of them managed to break out of it after Anne Weying used a high pitch frequency from a P.A. system to weaken the Symbiotes. Additionally, Riot demonstrated the ability to separate other Symbiotes from their hosts through physical contact, as it was able to rip Venom off Eddie's body for a short time.
- Leadership Skills: Riot was a natural leader among the symbiotes and very good at it, being the leader of a pack of four symbiotes who planned to take over Earth. Even Venom begrudgingly acknowledged this as he remarked it as his group's team leader.
Weakness[]
- Sonic Vibrations: As powerful as the symbiote is, exposure to extremely loud noise and even that of intense sonic vibrations drives the alien crazy.
- Intense Heat: Aside from the intense noise causing the alien to go crazy, Riot can also be injured through exposure to intense heat, such as from lasers, fire, etc.
Relationships[]
Allies[]
- Jameson † - former symbiotic host
- Corinne Wan † - former symbiotic host
- Suzy † - former symbiotic host
- Carlton Drake † - symbiotic host
Enemies[]
- Eddie Brock - enemy
- Venom - former ally and killer
- Lloyd Emerson † - victim
References[]
- ↑ Ryan, Sean (w), Kudranski, Szymon (a), Herring, Ian (col), Sabino, Joe (let), Sanchez, Darren (ed). Venom (September 14, 2018), New York, NY: Marvel Comics.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Pinkner, Jeff, Rosenberg, Scott, Marcel, Kelly (writers) & Fleischer, Ruben (director) (October 5, 2018). Venom.