Why you Should Watch Harmy's Despecialized Editions of Star Wars

George Lucas went back and edited a lot of the originals adding CGI that wasn't really needed. I don't mind watching the films with this in, but if you want to watch them like they were in cinema when they first released try Harmy's Despecialized Editions.

These use lots of different sources to try to recreate the Star Wars original trilogy as they were when they first released. However, a lot of the original shots are grainy and inconsistent with each other so Harmy has gone to the effort of cleaning these up. He has removed a lot of CGI that was added later too meaning most of the effects are practical.

As a whole I think the practical effects have aged a lot better than the CGI, a lot of them were created when good CGI was still in it's infancy. This means the films look quite inconsistent in their official forms. I don't think this is as much of an issue in the prequels, although the effects certainly haven't aged as well, because they use this sort of CGI consistently across the whole of the films. So I think these versions are absolutely worth a watch and may be the best way to watch the films because they are more consistent and preserve what the films were made to be when they initially released.