Ender’s Game is now finally out in the world, and one of the best images from the film is Ben Kingsley’s tattooed face, and Kingsley recently spoke out about why his character wears it.
As explained on The Wrap, the Ender’s Game character is named Mazer Rackham, and he’s from New Zealand. Kingsley went a little further about the face design on Jimmy Kimmel, telling Jimmy he was “quite privileged” to wear the face design.
“They are Maori tattoos,” Kingsley said. “They’re called Ta moko, and the tattoo gives you the lineage for your whole family, your status as a warrior. In my case, my father’s status as a warrior. All his forbears, it’s all mapped out in the face, so when you greet a Maori, you know their history.”
To this, Kimmel joked, “It’s like Facebook on your face,” and Kingsley added, “There’s not a lot of handshaking and sharing of family photographs” when Maori get together. “You just stare at each other and read their faces.”
It’s too bad Ender’s Game is coming out a day after Halloween, because if the movie’s a hit you would see this face design everywhere among trick or treaters, It’s been a long road for Ender’s Game, and we’ll find out this weekend if there will be a major new sci-fi franchise, or if it will be a good one-shot movie for genre fans everywhere.
