Bingowings said:
Personally I never liked the way the weapon fired in the first place.

There is a big dish with a nipple in the middle so it just makes more sense to me that the smaller beams focused on the nipple thing (technincal term) and the large ray fired out of it and was focused by the dish.

Having everything fire out into space and meet there looks suitably science fantasy but doesn't really make much sense visually.

If you're talking about the appearance of the laser firing in ANH and ROTJ and how different they look, I 100% agree, and this has always bothered me.

If I had been on the forums before ANH:R, I might have requested to make the laser firing of the ANH Death Star to be more like the ROTJ Death Star. It probably would even be one of the easier effects to create! Just add an extra laser beam coming out of the center of the dish upon firing.

In my opinion, it just "looks right" to have it that way in ROTJ.