Hey Harmy,
Just finished my first viewing. Overall, it was fantastic. I'm not going to make a list of everything I love because it would be too long so I've made a few notes on some areas that stood out to me.
- I felt some of the Hoth scenes were a bit too blue. Mainly all the exterior scenes from when we first see the probe droid to when Han rescues Luke. Some of the scenes in this range seemed bluer than others and I think roughly a 50% mix between the GOUT and the Despecialized for those that are particularly blue would be about perfect.
- This is just a matter of personal preference, but I like the blue R2 in space, rather than the black. I know the black is technically Despecialized, but all it does is reproduce the visual error from the GOUT. To me, the Despecialized editions have always been more about removing the offensive and fake/out of place changes that were made in the special editions (Jabba, CG Cloud City entrance, Sarlaac beak, etc.) while preserving the technical improvements of the effects (ie. matte lines, see through spaceships, color suppression, etc.). If I want to watch Star Wars in its original form, I'll watch the GOUT, but for my go-to version I'd much rather watch one that includes the technical improvements while at the same time still feels like the original.
- Han's "vest" when being put into carbon freeze. For the same reason as R2 above, I like the the "vestless" Han better. I know it's just a shadow and not really his vest, but it is still noticeable and creates what appears to be a continuity error. Even though my brain knows it's not, my eyes still notice although not as much as the black R2.
Well that's pretty much it. As I said, I thought it was fantastic overall and look forward to the final version as well as ANH and ROTJ. These will all hopefully be my go-to versions of Star Wars.
Michael