Gravity is one of those intense film experiences that people discuss in terms of their bodily reactions to it. Although such viscerality tends to be deplored by film critics, they’ve jumped on the Gravity bandwagon along with the general public. Enthusiasm for the film got pervasive enough to bring the usual damp personalities out of the woodwork, keen to explain to everyone why they’re wrong to feel things. What, they ask, is so great about a movie featuring Sandra Bullock hyperventilating in space?

For the record, here’s what’s so great.

Gravity represents a return to “sensation cinema,” in particular the fast-paced female-centered action serials of the 1910s such as The Perils of Pauline, The Exploits of Elaine, and The Hazards of Helen. Borrowing the relentless crisis structure from the old serials, Gravity features the same kind of catalyzing breakdown of technology as in The Hazards of Helen, plus the action heroine who grapples with it. When Sandra Bullock’s character is faced with the absurdly impossible task of hopscotching from one type of spacecraft to another in oxygen-free zero gravity, she enacts a millennial version of Helen’s awesome leaps from motorcycle to train to speeding car in one continuous chain of disaster-avoiding stunts and thrills.