With Venom’s latest trailer we finally got a glimpse at the villain for this project. It appears that Venom will be having a show down with fellow symbiot Riot. Personally I feel that Riot will most likely be a secondary villain, with his human form being the primary antagonist. In fact at this point it looks like Venom is going to follow the basic Marvel formula used by Iron Man, The Hulk, Ant-Man and Black Panther, where our hero is unwilling to become a protagonist yet by the end of the film he faces off against a rival who has similar powers and only through facing this mirrored version do they find meaning in being a hero. Honestly I had high hopes that they where going to avoid all the super powered heroics and just have Venom go after a bunch of humans, ones he could easily massacre, thus using morality to create the drama, rather than an opponent who has kind of the same powers as as Venom.

So who Is riot?

In the Venom Comics the group known as The Life Foundation create their own Venom knock offs, Riot is one of these false Venom Symbiot’s. Their intention was to have these creatures be the police for a new Utopia that The Life Foundation was to lead. His powers include Chameleon, Chemical Secretion, Healing, Shape Shifting, Super Strength and Wall Crawling. There is not much else that we can say about Riot.

From a production stand point the choice of Riot does make some sense, he is relativity unknown, allowing for greater creative freedom and means they can do what ever they want. I just wish they avoided the hero fights someone with similar powers trope, but it does not mean the film will be terrible and even then I suspect there will be another villain for Venom to face.