People seem gleeful that superhero movies aren’t doing as well, as if it’s fun to ruin someone’s party. These are the same people who make fun of girls for liking Taylor Swift, post mean things on holidays and during the Super Bowl, and generally are the ones I hide or eventually unfriend online.

Look, life is short. Like what you like.

It’s OK to like superheroes. I mean, isn’t Hercules and every peplum character a superhero? Aren’t comic books modern myth? Thinking that there’s only one kind of comic book movie is like thinking there’s only one kind of animated movie.

And you know, you don’t have to like everything. Every movie is not for you.

But don’t you have to see too much to get this movie?

I never watched WandaVision, Ms. Marvel or the Captain Marvel movie and somehow, I really had fun with this movie. To be fair, I can also discuss ultra nerdified Marvel mutant history like how Cable is older than Cyclops despite being his son, you know? But you don’t need to know how Jean Grey wasn’t the Phoenix but an aspect of her or even care about comics to enjoy this.

Carol Danvers is Captain Marvel (Bree Larson). She’s been getting used to being back on Earth after thirty years gone thanks to being transformed into a Kree, one of the major alien races of the Marvel Universe. After her initial movie, she went back and destroyed the Supreme Intelligence that was the ruler of that alien empire which ended up causing a war that blackened out the sun, took away the oceans and ruined the air of Hala, the Kree homeworld.

Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) is an astronaut for S.A.B.E.R. whose mother was Carol’s best friend. Carol had left her behind after promising to come back, missing Monica’s mother’s death, which Monica also missed due to her being erased by Thanos.

Kamala Khan is Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellini), a Pakistani-American who has been given a bangle that unlocks the power to create hard light objects. She’s as young as the kids watching this movie and in awe of the other superheroes. She’s a real girl in a very comic book world, complete with a family — father Yusuf (Zenobia Shroff ), mother Muneeba (Zenobia Shroff) and brother Aamir (Saagar Shaikh).

As the story opens, Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton)* has been opening portals that weaken time and space — definitely a theme in the last year of these movies — and has the same bangle as Ms. Marvel. She refers to Captain Marvel as the Annihilator and begins destroying the worlds that Carol loves most — Skrull refugee planet Tarnax**, Aladna*** and Earth — to take the air, water and sunlight.

The Marvels also have to solve Carol’s feelings of being a failure, Monica’s loss of her aunt and Kamala’s hero worship to become a team. They also have to figure out why they keep switching places like Rick Jones and Mar-Vell.

I loved the Aladna scenes, a planet where everyone sings. It was like that in the comic and it’s silly, sure, but works within the movie. Prince Yan in the comics came from a planet where only women could choose their mates. He eventually married a Skrull named Tic and abolished the rules that only women could pick their husbands. That said, you don’t need to know any of that. You just need to know that this scene is a blast filled with big action and even some funny comedy where Monica asked Kamala if this is all fueling her fan fiction.

Of course the good guys win, but the end of the movie seemingly sets up…something you should definitely see in the theater.

Directed by Nia DaCosta, who wrote the movie along with Megan McDonnell and Elissa Karasik, this movie just sails along. Does the villain not get enough motivation, as some say? I mean, Carol ruined her entire world. I saw one review that said, “hacked to pieces in post” and “We could’ve had Dune Part Two this week but we got this instead.”

I don’t know how you can dislike a movie where hundreds of alien cats eat people set to “Memory” from Cats. Or one where a singing space prince gives a teenage girl a magical fighting scarf. I get the feeling that bad reviews for this are either going with the flow or would be bad regardless because people are on the wrong end of liking comic book movies.

And that’s fine. You shouldn’t need anyone to love your culture to keep on loving it. I can’t even imagine if we got a movie like this during the 70s made for TV movies where Spider-Man had a grappling hook or during all the cash-ins of the 80s that ignored the source material or even movies where the heroes didn’t get their costumes or stories right.

If you love comics, we’re lucky to see what we love communally on the big screen.

And if you don’t, there are a million other movies for you.

Find what you love and love it.

PS: This is far enough to spoil one thing: Lucky the Pizza Dog showing up in a scene that echoes how Nick Fury — I didn’t even mention how fun Samuel Jackson is in this movie because he’s so effortlessly good — found the Avengers was great. And the next spoiler was so good I clapped like a demented Charles Foster Kane.

*If you’re wondering who she is, she appeared in about two Marvel stories. In the comics, Dar-Benn is the pink-skinned Kree who killed Clumsy Foulup — yes, really, that’s his name — and General Dwi-Zan using a robotic Silver Surfer. He was killed during the Kree-Shi’ar War by Deathbird.

**In the comics, Tarnax was the star system that the Skrulls — who are the enemies of the Kree — came from. All of the Skrull homeworlds are also called Tarnax, like Tarnax IV, which was chowed down on by Galactus.

***Aladna is where Prince Yan comes from in the comics, too. Except there, he was engaged to Lila Cheney, a space-touring musician with her band Cats Dancing. Yes, I knew that without looking it up, I was a virgin until I was 24.