Scruffy said:I never really minded the fact that Jabba in ANH:SE looked different than he did in RotJ. There are a few ways to rationalize it--Dark Horse did a Jabba miniseries in which he eats several people, sure to put on the pounds--but in the end, it's just a special effect in service of the story. No more or less suspension of disbelief is required than for any other questionable special effect. The change in Jabba's appearance is no more jarring than the change in the Emperor's.
I agree that the scene adds nothing to the movie, and it ruins the beat when the Falcon is properly introduced with a minor swell in the score and an appropriate exclamation from Luke. That is why it belongs in a special edition, and not the standard edition.
Dark Horse's comics series takes place before ANH, so it doesn't account for the difference between ANH and ROTJ Jabbas. And Jabba was a lot more than just different in size. They gave him an appearance that totally changed his personality, from sinister and clever to silly and cutesy. It wasn't just a bad special effect. A special effect that doesn't work is presumably at least intended to work, but with Jabba there was clearly no intention of making it consistent with the ROTJ Jabba, so the scene screams out contempt for what had been previously established in the films and thus for the old films as a whole.