I, like many other nerds, spent the weekend re-watching parts of the Star Wars canon. At the risk of making a wholly unoriginal observation: the special edition of Episode IV is worse than the original. From the unnecessary CGI Dewbacks to Greedo shooting first, every addition is a subtraction from the original theatrical cut of the film.
The changes are bad in ways that are so inexplicable they're almost interesting. Consider the worst addition to any of the special editions, by far: the Jabba scene. For those of you who have never seen it—or had purged it from your memory banks—you can watch it here:
Leave aside the awfulness of the CGI Jabba—did it look good even back when the special editions first came out?—and instead focus on what they're saying. OK, now watch the original Han/Greedo scene (fast forward to 5:06):
Remember, the Han/Greedo scene takes place just a minute or two before the Han/Jabba scene. Given the proximity of the two sequences, then, is it really necessary to have lines of dialogue like this, virtually back-to-back:
Greedo: Jabba's put a price on your head so large every bounty hunter in the galaxy will be looking for you. ... He has no time for smugglers who drop their shipments at the first sign of an imperial cruiser.
Han: Even I get boarded sometimes!
...
Jabba: What if everyone who smuggled for me dropped their cargo at the first sign of an imperial starship? ...
Han: Look, Jabba: Even I get boarded sometimes! ...
Jabba: I'll put a price on your head so big you won't be able to go near a civilized star system.
More noteworthy than the repetition is the fact that the first scene, the Greedo/Han scene, is light years superior to the second. There's dramatic tension—an antagonistic alien with a gun drawn on a handsome smuggler trying to aid our heroes—in addition to dialogue. We are seeing Greedo's words brought to life: Jabba's bounty puts Han in constant danger, leaving him uncertain of where or when his very existence will be put at risk. As a result of this scene, it makes sense when he bugs out at the end of the flick before the assault on the Death Star. It's not just cowardice, it's a need to use the cash infusion he's just received to pay off a very real, very dangerous debt.
The scene with Jabba, meanwhile, is just blather. Lucas is telling, rather than showing. The addition of this portion is worse than unnecessary: it's boring. It also doesn't really make any sense within the flow the film, as Greedo has already said that the bounty on Han is enormous. Jabba's threat to "put a price on [his] head so big [he] won't be able to go near a civilized star system" feels extraneous.
The fact that Lucas felt the urge to reinsert this scene is remarkable. And it lends credence to the argument made by Mr. Plinkett in his famous takedown of the prequels, that George Lucas almost accidentally stumbled onto some of the great shots and moments from A New Hope. If he couldn't watch that three minute sequence and understand that the Jabba portion was totally unnecessary and didn't even look good, one begins to wonder how the original film turned out as well as it did.