Lando's Copilot
About halfway through Return of the Jedi, Lando Calrissian is paired up with the diminutive, animal-like, non-verbal alien Nien Nunb, who acts as his copilot on the Millennium Falcon. This mirrors a larger progression in the second act of the story, as the other heroes – Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, and their companions – join up with the diminutive, animal-like, non-verbal Ewoks on the forest moon of Endor.
Given that Nien Nunb parallels the Ewoks, it is appropriate that his flight suit is red, a color symbolically associated throughout Star Wars with the appetitive part of the soul and what the psychologist Carl Jung refers to as the unconscious: the unruly feelings, instincts, and desires not recognized by the conscious mind. The primitive Ewoks, who initially want to eat the heroes, are symbolically associated with this same part of the soul, and the way Luke and his friends tame and harness them to fight the Empire symbolizes the process that Jung calls integration: the bringing of the unconscious into harmony with the rest of the psyche. Lando’s partnership with the anxious Nien Nunb is suggestive of this same process.
Lando’s previous counterpart, in The Empire Strikes Back, was the cyborg Lobot, who had a computer built into his head. Lando’s pairing with Nien Nunb thus reflects Return of the Jedi‘s overarching theme of nature superseding technology: just as Lando moves from Lobot to Nien Nunb, the Ewoks defeat the technologically superior forces of the Empire, and Darth Vader’s natural familial affection for his son Luke frees him from his enslavement to his cyborg suit.
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Characters: Lando Calrissian / Nien Nunb
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Concepts: nature and technology
Influences: Jung
Interpretive Tools: Tripartite Soul Theory
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I'm really impressed with your insights in finding so many thematic parallels across the vast range of this oeuvre.