The biggest box-office hit of all time, Avatar, is being re-released on the big screen this weekend after an extremely-brief hiatus: Until the 12th of this month, the original movie was still being shown in a limited number of theaters.

The souped-up Special Edition of Avatar, which grossed $750 million in the U.S. and Canada alone during its initial run, includes nine minutes of new footage and will play on about 900 screens–all of which can project it in digital 3-D, including Imax.

The new footage will include an extended love scene between hero Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his Na’vi love, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), an extended death scene of Tsu’tey (Laz Alonso) and additional explanations on why the humans decide to wipe out the Na’vi.

You may call him “genius.” Or you may call him “greedy.” But because of this premature and revised re-release, I will also call out Avatar director, James Cameron, as “unfair” to the people who already dished out up to $20 or more per ticket to see the original Avatar only a short while ago who are now faced with the decision of whether or not to shell out more money to see the additional footage. And how about those that poured out even more dough to buy one of the 19 million copies of the movie already sold on DVD?

Cameron tries to explain the re-release by saying he thinks there were still people who wanted to see Avatar when the movie lost most of its 3-D screens to Alice in Wonderland in March. Cameron says Avatar was still selling out in theaters when the movie lost screens to Alice and other 3D movies, so, he decided three days after Alice was released that he would re-release Avatar in August. He then added the extra scenes because so many scenes had to be cut of the original release which he feels when added back, will more fully portray his original vision.

My Two Cents Worth: What I ask in response to all of that is: If this movie is being re-released solely for the people Cameron says missed out on seeing the original, and not simply out of greed, why add the footage he felt should be cut out in the first place? I just don’t buy that Cameron threw in the additional footage of a love scene for any other reason than just to make people go back for seconds or thirds so Avatar can break its own damn record. Whatever, it was a great movie either way the first time around and I am glad I saw it. You can do whatever you like with the re-release, but I just don’t need to spend another $20 to see an extra 9 minutes of film. Who’s with me?

P.S. Avatar will also be re-released in 14 overseas markets this weekend, including Britain, Russia, Australia, India and South Korea. The movie grossed $2 billion overseas during its first release.

Here is an interview with Cameron regarding extra footage in Avatar and the upcoming re-release of of another one of his movies, Titanic, in 3-D.