The Special Editions were the first Star Wars movies I saw in the theater, so it was very exciting at the time. The new scenes and special effects initially seemed awesome. I didn’t even notice Han not shooting first when I saw it either. I bought the soundtrack to the ROTJ special edition release, which included Jedi Rocks.

In retrospect, the only special edition changes I actually like are the new establishing shots that flesh out Cloud City. I also think the new Wampa footage is okay, but unnecessary. Everything else either completely sucks (Han shooting first, Jabba in Episode IV, Jedi Rocks, etc.) or is just way too over-indulgent (new Mos Eisley footage).

What’s really ironic is how the 90s CGI has ended up aging even worse than much of the original practical effects from the 70s/80s. The Jabba scene in Episode IV is particularly bad, and the 2004(?) redo isn’t much better.

Also, the Special Editions presented a great opportunity to fix a lot of VFX issues with the original release. They did this to some extent, but inexplicably ignored some particularly bad green-screen shots, like in the rancor fight. Shots like those were ideal candidates for touching up in a later re-release, but instead they decided to edit Han’s character arc.

Looking back, it feels like George Lucas (and many other directors) just went wild after they saw Jurassic Park. They were like “Holy shit! We can just do anything now!!”. Except they seemed to have overlooked the fact that Jurassic Park used a careful combination of practical effects and CGI. In particular, many of the memorable close-up shots of the dinosaurs were practical effects. CGI was often used for shots where the dinosaurs were far away or moving fast. And very often, the CGI shots were used in dark or dimly lit environments (T-Rex at night, raptors in dimly lit kitchen). But Lucas thought he could just throw in close-ups of a giant, slow-moving CGI slug in a brightly lit Mos Eisley space port in broad daylight, and it would just all come out fine.