Oscar winning-director James Cameron's sci-fi epic, Avatar, opens in cinemas today amidst high expectations.

The movie has already been hailed as the future of filmmaking and the stunning fantasy world Cameron has created more than lives up to the hype, according to impressed critics.

Avatar “extends the possibilities of what movies can do. Cameron's talent may just be as big as his dreams,” wrote Peter Travers from Rolling Stone.

Calling the world Cameron has created in Avatar “an Eden in three dimensions, Manhola Dargis from New York Times praised the movie. Created to conquer hearts, minds, history books and box-office records, the movie is glorious and goofy and blissfully deranged.

Believe the hype. James Cameron's decade-in-the-making sci-fi dream project is an immersive epic unlike any other, wrote Luke Thompson from E! Online.

The movie, which has already received four Golden Globe nomination, stars Sigourney Weaver as botanist and it is the second time she works with director James Cameroon after a period of 25 years since the movie Aliens.

Cameron, who directed the mega-melodrama Titanic, said he first conceived the idea for the movie 15 years ago but the technology to realize his vision was not yet in existence.

From around the web, here are what rating sites have to say about Avatar:

Rotten Tomatoes rates Avatar - 82%
IMDB (internet movie database) - 8.4 out of 10 stars.
Yahoo! Users - B+
Rolling Stone - 3.5 out of 4 stars

If you can't wait to see Avatar or want to find out more about the movie, check out the video below. In it, Signorney Weaver gives a tour of Pandora, a fictional jungle-covered moon orbiting a gas giant, where the characters live.

Review Aliens