Ellyn Stern Epcar* oversaw roughly 70 voice actors representing five distinct Navajo dialects enacting the story of rebel fighters at war with an evil galactic empire. All the resonances you might imagine emerge from this take. When Luke Skywalker discovers the charred remains of his family, massacred by Imperial Stormtroopers, the scorched earth policy of 19th Century American Indian fighters comes to mind. When Obi-Wan Kenobi tutors Luke on the ways of the Force, it evokes the generic Native American mysticism we know from pop culture (even though actual Navajo religious beliefs are a lot more varied and complicated than "Stretch out with your feelings."). The Imperial Commanders seem to speak in a harsher dialect with relatively gruff voices. In their crisp, dark uniforms, they push the Nazi metaphors that were always there to the limit. The Storm Troopers retain their thankless cannon fodder status, sounding like put-upon grunts whose fate in the eventual Death Star explosion is still worrisome.

And then there's Darth Vader. James Earl Jones's Vader balanced malevolence and mellifluousness. Navajo Vader's thunderous voice is simply terrifying.

The nicest surprise is how C-3PO, voiced this time by a woman, becomes a soulful and complex bundle of tensions and contradictions. 3PO respectfully gathers the bodies of slaughtered Jawa for burning in one scene (the first such solemn burial in the series), but later hisses, "I can't abide those Jawas. Disgusting creatures!" when encountering a living one. C-3PO's anger, self-pity and self-loathing come through as tragicomedy in this vocal performance. He (she?) transfers the Jim Crow discrimination he routinely faces (most famously at the Mos Eisley Cantina) to his fellow droids and to anyone at or beneath his station. Miraculously, we still love him because, underneath all of his cowardice and political maneuvering, he is a mindful and lonely soul: His fretting over wounded R2D2 at the end of the movie, wherein he offers to donate any of his own parts necessary to restore his companion, is heartbreaking in plaintive, feminine Navajo.

Yes, this is "Star Wars" I'm talking about. No, I'm not smoking anything.

Navajo Princess Leia is sweeter and prissier than Carrie Fisher. She seems more the precocious teenager Fisher was at the time, which makes the putdowns she lobs at 30-something Harrison Ford that much funnier. Both Han Solo and Luke Skywalker sound tougher than their American incarnations. Luke's famous whine is gone, making it easier to see the seriousness that long underappreciated Mark Hamill brought to his character's angst and arc.