What a fantastic and very important post, oojason! I haven’t read through your entire post yet so apologies if you touched on what I’m about to say.
This topic is so fundamentally tied to the purpose of this website: to petition for the unaltered original trilogy to be released officially. This website is now over 10 years old, and still the potential of this happening is still just rumors and speculation (although Disney’s acquisition of Fox and the conclusion of the last Skywalker Saga film this year could be hints to it finally happening).
I really think reiterating this truth is more important now than ever. Since the Disney purchase of Lucasfilm and the release of some of the newer movies, I’ve noticed a pretty growing support for George Lucas and the prequels that just didn’t exist as much during the 2000s. On one hand, it is great to see that prequel generation growing up and giving George and those films some love (I am a prequel child myself). On the other hand, I’ve begun to notice that this has also lead to many fans supporting George’s Special Editions, and supporting George’s wish to maintain those as the definitive versions, seeing George as a mastermind who had everything planned out from the beginning.
Hopefully fans who feel this way will stumble across this post and see that what fans really deserve is the truth about how this franchise we all love actually came to be, and how the fight for a release of the unaltered original trilogy is just an extension of that desire to preserve a special piece of film history.