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Have we all caught our breath from the 2012 Oscar season? Can we start talking about next year? Don't worry, I'm not going to make predictions for the 2013 Best Picture nominees. I've learned that whatever I predict to win Best Picture at the beginning of the year is virtually guaranteed to not be nominated, and having that much power to destroy a film is too much pressure for me to take. No, I'm merely going to be speculating about what films are going to be considered for the big prize. And, to make it easier for me, I'll start with a genre of films that is typically anathema to the Academy.

It is true that in the last decade, sci-fi, fantasy, and horror films have started to find more traction at the Oscars. There was of course the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which is an anomaly we might never see repeated (or might we?). The Sixth Sense and Black Swan can be added to a very small list of horror films nominated for Best Picture. Cultural phenomena Avatar and Inception, as well as surprise hit District 9, all had strong showings at the Oscars, although the Academy didn't like them quite as much as the fanboys did. And then there are Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Midnight in Paris, which are Oscar films that just happen to have fantasy elements, rather than the other way around.

But then there are the snubs, both deserving and otherwise, depending on whom you ask. The two most infamous are, of course, The Dark Knight and Wall-E, both of which were threats to be Best Picture nominees but couldn't quite fight their way through the air of pretension that surrounds the Oscars. King Kong couldn't recapture the magic that Jackson spun with the Rings trilogy, and Star Trek, as the third best sci-fi film released in 2009, was left in the cold. And of course there is the Harry Potter series, eight epic films that created some extraordinary cinematic moments. Despite a push for the finale to get a Best Picture nomination, the series combined for 12 nominations and couldn't take home a single award. This could be a banner year for genre films, though, as there are at least four sci-fi/fantasy films that are serious contenders to be nominated for Best Picture, as well as a handful of others that should be considered. How many of them will overcome genre bias?

The Dark Knight would almost certainly have been a Best Picture nominee had there been room for more than five nominees, and many believe that the Oscars expanded the category to avoid such a snub in the future. If The Dark Knight Rises is as well received as its predecessor, it will be truly shocking to see it snubbed. Christopher Nolan will also have the potential for a Best Director nomination, and while a Best Actor nod for Christian Bale is unlikely, if Tom Hardy makes as much of his villain role as Heath Ledger did, he will be in the running for Best Supporting Actor. Even if the finale of Nolan's trilogy is not the phenomenon that its middle part was, a slew of technical nominations are in the cards for The Dark Knight Rises.

Despite the popularity of Ridley Scott, he has not been a big hit with the Academy. Since scoring back-to-back nominations for Gladiator (which won Best Picture) and Black Hawk Down (which wasn't nominated for the big prize), Scott has been largely ignored by the Academy. American Gangster was in the running but came up short. Now Scott is back with a film that is not necessarily connected to Alien, but takes place in the same universe. Largely eschewing the sci-fi genre since Alien and Blade Runner, the films that created his reputation, Scott is back with Prometheus, which is generating a lot of buzz on the Internet. The first two Alien films were players at the Oscars, each winning some gold, but neither competing for top honors. I suspect, though, that had Alien and Blade Runner come out today they would have been Best Picture nominees. If Prometheus hits the mark the way those did, it will be difficult to keep it out of a field of more than five nominees.

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