With the summer movie season approaching, one thing is certainly clear: people love superhero movies. With "Deadpool" and "Batman vs. Superman" already in theaters, there are still four superhero movies left to go; however, a divide in critical acclaim has certainly become present among the different franchises. Some are doing much better than others, which leads to a very important question of which franchises have the most potential going forward. For this list, I decided to rank what I believe to be the five main superhero franchises. Please keep in mind that this list does not rank the best franchises but simply which have the most potential for future advancement.

5. Fox's "Fantastic Four"

I don't even know where to begin with this movie franchise. There have been a total of four movies made, two reboots and millions of disappointed fans. Starting with the first in 1994, Fox has been churning out sub-par "Fantastic 4" films for the sole purpose of keeping the property out of Marvel's hands. This franchise has been marked by poor acting, choppy and unfinished plots and ultimately failure for the past 20 years. The most recent reboot of the film came out last summer and received an incredible 9 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Other than the sequel being indefinitely postponed, there hasn't been much news about the future of the film; however, I think it is safe to say that Marvel's First Family film career has been unofficially assassinated.

4. Sony's Spider-man Franchise

Most people consider it to be a part of Marvel now, but it is important to remember that the live action Spider-man properties still remain with Sony. I personally love Spider-man so it really hurts to put him so low on the list, but unfortunately Sony has been making the same movie from the very first time Toby Maguire put on the suit since the last time Andrew Garfield donned the wall crawler uniform. I do think this franchise has a few saving graces like its partnership with Marvel and its commitment to omitting the origin story, but I am very worried for its future.

3. DC Expanded Universe

I want to start this by saying that I liked the two movies in the DC Universe so far. I thought "Man of Steel" and "Batman v. Superman" were pretty good, although not devoid of problems; however, this is a list of potential and I am going to stick to that. Batman vs. Superman was a critical flop -- most people have expressed pure rage over Zack Snyder's take on the characters and story, so as of right now, things don't look good for DCEU, but this franchise isn't going away. When you think about superheroes alone, no other franchise can compare to having the rights to icons like Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash. If they play things right, the DCEU has a lot of bounce back potential.

2. Marvel Cinematic Universe

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is great. You can't argue that it has been churning out blockbusters since 2008's "Iron Man," but can it keep going? Marvel's Phase Three looks very promising with the introduction of new characters and even new dimensions, and much to their credit they have avoided succumbing to misplaced demands from fans to make a god awful Black Widow stand alone film. The only problem is that they have been loosing steam. With the exception of "Captain America: The Winter Soldier," Phase Two was good but disappointing, and the long awaited sequel to the Avengers was fundamentally the same movie. The question arises whether or not the MCU has reached its peak.

1. Fox's X-Men

I have been a firm believer that the X-Men franchise is the best superhero franchise of the 21st century, but aside from my obvious bias there is a lot of evidence that points to X-Men having a long future. The most recent is "Deadpool," the big surprise of 2016. "Deadpool" opened the door for main-stream R-rated superhero movies to be made, and has created a huge pool (sorry for the pun, maybe?) of new, loyal fans, and with a sequel and possibly an X-force movie in the works. The future looks very bright. Hopefully not overshadowed by "Deadpool," the prequel trilogy surpasses expectations. "Days of Future Past" is one of my favorite superhero movies of all time (if you exclude anything staring Christian Bale), and Apocalypse looks fantastic. My only fear is that the loss of Hugh Jackman as the Wolverine will deal a serious blow to momentum, but there is still huge room for potential recasting. He has defined an entire generations view on the character, but perhaps we will see a more comic accurate depiction.