The Actor Who Plays Mr. Negative In Insomniac's Spider-Man Is Gorgeous In Real Life
Until 2018's "Spider-Man" PS4 game, the Marvel villain Mister Negative hadn't gotten off of the comic book page very often, but he certainly made an impression as the game's main antagonist. Peter Parker (voiced by Yuri Lowenthal) first meets him as Martin Li, the head guy in charge of the homeless shelter where Peter and his aunt volunteer (via IMDb). At first, Li seems like a cool dude, until his eyes flash with a strange glow and he turns into the supervillain Mister Negative, who looks like an otherworldly, photographic negative of Li.
As the story unfolds, Peter learns that Mister Negative and his gang, the Inner Demons, are after a bioweapon made by Oscorp called Devil's Breath. Originally, it was developed as a cure for genetic diseases, particularly to help Mayor Norman Osborn's (Mark Rolston) son — and Li and his parents were used as test subjects. While Li got his sick black and blue energy powers, his parents were killed, so he's bent on revenge against Osborn.
Spider-Man thwarts Mister Negative's initial plan, getting him thrown in prison, but then he and the rest of the Sinister Six break out and unleash the virus on the city. To get the antidote, Spider-Man tracks Li down, and goes up against the shockingly powerful Mister Negative in an epic battle.
The storyline gives the villain plenty of emotional depth, but who is the man behind his voice?
Martin Li is modeled after his voice actor
Mister Negative is voiced by and modeled after Stephen Oyoung, who did both voice acting and motion capture for the role — thus, when he's not in the negative, Martin Li looks a lot like Oyoung. It was a big role for the actor because he got his start doing stunt work, yet this was the whole character: "I had done a lot of [motion capture] up to that point," he told ComingSoon. "It was always the action or the body, never really the face, never really the voice."
Working in live action, animation, and video games, Oyoung has done stunt work for "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" and "Deadpool," as well as motion capture stunts for games such as "Star Wars: The Old Republic" and "Batman: Arkham City" (via IMDb). He's also had several guest roles, including in the first episode of "The Book of Boba Fett" as a reptilian alien — Dokk Strassi — paying his respects to Boba Fett. Although he did the physical performance, the episode's director actually did the character's voice.
As someone who grew up loving comics, Oyoung is eager to keep working in video games. "I want to be the Samuel L. Jackson of video games," he told ComingSoon. And he's on his way: his next big video game role will be voicing Jason Todd, aka Red Hood, in the upcoming "Gotham Knights."