Mazer Rackham

At Battle School, Mazer is the example everyone studies. The official story says he flew his ship into the enemy and died saving Earth. To the cadets he's a name in a history book, someone none of them ever expects to meet.

At the forward base near the Formic home world, Ender meets the teacher who will train him. It's Mazer Rackham, alive. He says the story of his death was kept going as inspiration. And he explains what he saw in the war: the Formics are a hive mind, and without the queen the rest can't act. The tattoos on his face, he explains, tell his story, as Maori tradition holds. Mazer spent decades thinking about the one strike that worked and concluded that the next war will also be won by whoever understands the enemy.

Mazer pushes Ender without letting up. He says there's no teacher like the enemy and builds tougher and tougher simulations, with Ender's friends commanding the squadrons. When Ender complains, Mazer doesn't ease off. He wants Ender to think like the Formics and know them as well as he knows himself. The friends Ender brought from Battle School, including Petra, Bean and Alai, get the squadrons, and Ender starts giving them orders over a headset from inside a simulation room.

In the final test, Mazer watches Ender break the rules and destroy the planet. Then he reveals the truth: the battles were real, and real pilots flew those ships, light-years away. For Mazer, the mission was accomplished. For Ender, the guilt was just starting. Mazer insists the losses were acceptable and that Earth is safe. But Ender saw something the adults ignored: the Formics didn't seem to want another war. That gap in how they see things closes Mazer's story in the film: he won twice, and both times he needed someone who understood the enemy.

Ben Kingsley wore Maori facial tattoos for the part. Card had suggested Andre Braugher or Will Smith for Mazer.