I mean, come on!
That is just a blatant rip off of Star Trek: 6 movie when the Klingon moon "Praxsis" exploded. If Lucas was going to "update" the shot and make it look "cooler," then why didn't he just make an ever extending spherical shockwave grow out of the destruction. That would make more sense as opposed to the Saturn ring effect he used - three freaking times!!
I think it would look more realistic if there was this giant plasma-looking sphere that expanded out of the Aldderan and Death Star distruction.
Actually, the ring around the Death Star wasn't that bad because I found it believeable that a shock wave ring could expand out from the DS equator since it did have the huge equator trench. Unfortunatly the ring expands out perpendicular to where the equator trench lies. So, dammit. That didn't work either.
Just leave it alone Mr. Lucas. It was fine.