I've never been a huge Star Wars fan, and particularly in this modern Disney-era where its all garbage (Andor excluded). But the original trilogy are special movies. Even though they didn't resonate with me the same way that Star Trek did, they were always a fun watch.
For those that don't know, the original edits of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi have never been released on DVD, Blu-Ray, or streaming. Once the Special Editions were made in 1998, Lucasfilm has never released the originals again. But the Special Editions changed a lot about the films. Added scenes, cleaned everything up, and generally changed the appearance and feel of the movies. At the time, it was cool so see something "new" for the Star Wars universe, but it lost some of the charm or the original releases.
Starting back in 2011 a group of, well, nerds started collecting 35mm film stock of the original trilogy that had been sent to theaters when the movies were released. And they have painstakingly cleaned, scanned, and spliced these together to create 4K digital copies of the original trilogy; all for public consumption.
They finally finished Empire last month after six years of work! I downloaded A New Hope when they finished it years ago, and it is really cool to see it as it was originally shown in the theaters rather than the overly clean version of the Special Edition. I look forward to watching Empire and Jedi here soon.
You can download the files off their forum, or find them on your preferred torrent site (Search for 4K77, 4K80, and 4K83).
www.thestarwarstrilogy.com