A few years ago, Magic Johnson told a story about Michael Jackson that seems almost unimaginable today. In the 1980s, the former Los Angeles Lakers superstar invited Jackson to a Lakers game, an invitation the singer was initially hesitant to accept because he was worried that his presence would create too much of a frenzy. As it turned out, those fears were justified. “He sat down; people went crazy,” Johnson recalled to Variety. “They were running from upstairs, the sides. We had to stop the game to get him out.”As popular as Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Drake are, all have attended sporting events without causing a stoppage in play. But Michael Jackson, after he became famous, was different. He existed on a truly singular plane of stardom—and nearly 20 years after his death, he still inspires a unique level of obsession, devotion, and curiosity from fans, even those who weren’t alive to see him in the flesh. The enormous success of Michael, the recently released biopic about Jackson’s life, is a testament to that staying power. Already, the movie is the second-highest-grossing biopic of all time, and there’s serious speculation that a sequel will be produced, given that the movie’s timeline stops in the late 1980s.Audiences haven’t been deterred by the critics largely panning the film for being shallow and offensively commercial. The flurry of headlines about what was left out of the film—most obviously, the 1993 lawsuit that accused Jackson of molesting a 13-year-old, and subsequent lawsuits alleging similar abuse—also haven’t mattered. (Jackson settled the 1993 lawsuit and denied wrongdoing; in 2005, he was acquitted in a lawsuit brought by a different accuser. Jackson, who died in 2009, was accused of sexually assaulting four children in a new lawsuit filed against his estate in February. The estate has denied the allegations.) Regardless of any prior negative buzz, the Michael filmmakers were counting on nostalgia overpowering the controversy about the movie’s moral footing—and they were right.I’m not ashamed to admit that I fell for it too. As I watched Michael in the theater, I was flooded by my own memories of Jackson. One of the movie’s core plot points revolves around the tensions that cropped up during the planning of the Jacksons’ Victory Tour in 1984, where the adult Michael reunited with all of his brothers in the Jackson family. I was 9 years old when my mother took me to one of these dates; tickets were almost impossible to get, but my stepfather at the time won a pair from a radio promotion. Our seats were so high up in the Pontiac Silverdome, which is just outside of my hometown of Detroit, that it was a wonder my ears didn’t pop. Not that I would have cared. Although I can’t remember every song the Jacksons sang that night, I still vividly remember how electric it felt to be in that audience.This is the exact emotional manipulation the Michael filmmakers seem to have been going for. They wanted me to remember how I’d kissed the poster of Jackson on my wall every day before school; the soap-opera-esque love triangle I’d manufactured between my Barbie, Ken, and Jackson dolls; the way I’d treated the debut of the “Thriller” video like it was the moon landing; how I’d prayed fervently for Jackson after his hair had caught on fire during a video shoot for a Pepsi commercial. In fact, a friend of mine from Los Angeles recently shared that she and her mother drove down to the hospital that treated Jackson for his burns to hold vigil. Even though those are specific memories, the millions of people around the world who’ve watched the movie may very well relate; for better or worse, it seems that many of them have chosen to take a trip down memory lane rather than deal with the complicated reality of Jackson’s life.[Read: The glaring omission of the Michael Jackson movie]It probably doesn’t help that, today, the famous are no longer that famous. Modern superstars certainly seem much more accessible than Jackson ever did, because of social media and the demand from fans and business partners for more visibility. But even younger fans who never got to experience Jackson the way I did enjoy his music and imitate his dance moves; his mythology never lessened over time. It’s more than just nostalgia driving people to the theaters. Jackson has existed as a foundational piece in music history, and no fan wants to feel as if they’re missing out on understanding one of the most consequential figures the industry has ever produced.This isn’t to dismiss concerns about the movie’s quality or the complete elimination of the child-sex-abuse allegations. (Scenes about the 1993 lawsuit were filmed, but legal issues led to millions being spent on reshoots.) But the gulf between what Michael delivers and what some people think it ought to be couldn’t be wider. Fans don’t want to feel uneasy about Michael Jackson. They want to see the poster on their bedroom wall. It’s worth thinking about why that is.*Illustration Sources: Zak Hussein / PA Images / Getty; Sonia Moskowitz / Getty; Ron Galella / Ron Galella Collection / Getty; John MacDougall / AFP / Getty; Lynn Goldsmith / Corbis / VCG / Getty; Toshifumi Kitamura / AFP / Getty; Bettmann / Getty.