Flagging awesome movies before you've actually seen them constitutes an inexact science fraught with peril. Directors get distracted, stars stumble, brilliant scripts get watered down during "development" and exciting trailers cram all the good bits into 30 seconds, leaving in their wake cineplexes filled with disappointed audiences.

Consider this: Green Lantern footage looked pretty good at Comic-Con International but wound up on Wired's Most Hated Movies of 2011 list.

Still, hope springs eternal, and we've come up with nearly two dozen reasons to be psyched about films in 2012. For starters, Ridley Scott gets back to sci-fi, Batman fights off a new supervillain, Brad Pitt goes after a swarm of zombies, Johnny Depp plays a vampire (and Abraham Lincoln kills them).

Read on to get Wired.com's take on 2012's most tantalizing motion pictures.

Images courtesy movie studios unless otherwise noted.

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Story: The possessed biker with the flaming skull (and flaming everything else) joins a quest to save a young boy from the Antichrist in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.

Why it could be cool: The "requel" torches the lame first cinematic take on the Ghost Rider character, with Crank directors Neveldine/Taylor going for a much more ominous vibe. The 3-D footage they showed off at Comic-Con International last summer made the movie look totally hellacious — in a good way.

Cautionary note: Some film geeks got a sneak peek at the full movie at Butt-Numb-A-Thon, and most reports ranged from bad to horrible. But no amount of fanboy venom can douse my burning desire to see Nicolas Cage reprise the roll of Johnny Blaze — this time pulling off the Ghost Rider's wicked Penance Stare as well. —Lewis Wallace

Release date: Feb. 17