Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity looks to be a major hit. Its $50 million opening weekend set records for an October release, and is also its stars George Clooney and Sandra Bullock’s biggest opening weekend. If the film continues at this pace—and given the response from critics and audiences, it will—it should make a tidy profit for the industry and perhaps even get a nice awards bump come Oscar season.

It’s interesting, and perhaps encouraging, that Gravity‘s success comes at the tail end of some hand-wringing over the future of Hollywood and its summer blockbuster addiction. This round of hand-wringing was kicked off by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas publicly predicting the imminent downfall of Hollywood, and gained momentum when the summer movie slate offered up a couple of high-profile flops like The Lone Ranger. In spite of the hand-wringing, high risk, big-budget blockbusters are still the best way for studios to make money—meaning there’s no end in sight to the yearly offering of sequels, remakes, and comic book adaptations.

But whatever your perspective on Hollywood’s woes—or lack thereof—it seems undeniable that Gravity is on pace to be a true blockbuster, and one that doesn’t look like anything that’s come out of Hollywood recently. Perhaps this critical and commercial success could provide a learning opportunity?

We say yes. If the movie industry doesn’t learn from this, it is truly hopeless. Here are 5 things Hollywood absolutely needs to take away from the success of Gravity:

1. Take risks on things audiences have never seen before. Currently, Hollywood puts most of its dollars into existing properties—sequels, remakes, or adaptations of novels or comic books. Audience tastes are fickle, so why take a risk on something new?

Gravity proves that audiences will come out for something they’ve never seen before. It’s a thought that went through my mind countless times as watched it in the theater: I’ve never seen anything like this. Audiences’ hunger for new stories and new cinematic experiences is palpable. And uniqueness, in the current landscape of same-old, same-old, is a strong market differentiator. If Hollywood can serve up good movies that are unlike anything audiences have seen before, they will show up in droves.

2. Don’t be afraid to tell small, human stories. Hollywood blockbusters have been getting bigger. To appeal to the widest possible audience, the stakes have to be literally earth shattering. In 1978, it was enough for Superman to save Lois Lane from an earthquake; today, he has to have an epic battle with Zod and destroy half a city in the process.

The biggification of the Hollywood blockbuster was brought into sharp relief, for me, in a New York Magazine interview with scriptwriter Damon Lindelof, in which Lindelof was challenged to pitch a small story—the tall tale of John Henry—to an imaginary producer. His pitch starts small, but progressively, through a process of producer notes and script rewrites, the story morphs and takes on world-saving stakes until it’s a mess of Lone Ranger proportions.

Then there’s Gravity, which tells a story that’s almost laughably small compared to your average Hollywood blockbuster. Even at the most intense parts of the story, no more than a handful of lives were at stake; ultimately, we were asked to care for the fate of only one person. The climax contained no epic battle or huge explosions. Yet it was a completely compelling experience.

The lesson here? It’s not the size of the stakes or the gigantism of the plot that matters. It’s the emotional resonance, the humanity at the heart of the story, that captures our imagination, our interest—and our dollars.

3. Trust artists. The Lindelof article demonstrates that Hollywood simply does not trust screenwriters, actors, or directors. Even Cuaron was asked to change Gravity—to replace the female protagonist with a male, to give Sandra Bullock a love interest down at mission control, to add some flashbacks to life back on earth. These suggestions are truly laughable, and may have ruined the film, rendering it unable to achieve was it was trying to achieve.

My advice for those holding the purse strings in Hollywood: Want to run a creative business? Then partner with creative talent. If the talent you have is no good, get new talent, talent you trust. Then back off.

4. Make movies for grown-ups, too. The vast majority of Hollywood blockbusters are made for one person: an 18-year-old male. That sounds counterintuitive, since the whole idea of a blockbuster is that it appeals to everyone, but evidently Hollywood has decided that as this demographic goes, so goes everyone else. Some kick-ass movies have resulted from this strategies. Also some not-so-good ones.

Gravity seems to me to be a blockbuster made for adults. My showing was almost exclusively attended by people over thirty, and the gender balance seemed to be basically 50-50. Adults may not shell out their dollars as readily as teens, but nonetheless, films made to appeal to adults, and especially adult women, can tap into an underserved market.

5. Make smaller movies. Related to #2 is the issue of budget and run time. The average Hollywood blockbuster regularly costs more than $100 million to make, and often climbs higher than $200 million, leading to an incredible risk for a studio if one or more such films flops.

And Gravity? $80 million. That’s not a pittance, but compared to most blockbusters, it’s a small budget. And what Cuaron was able to accomplish with it was astonishing.

When it comes to run time, a lot of recent blockbusters have suffered from a bloat issue, regularly running near 2.5 hours, and overburdened with scenes that don’t work, poor pacing, and action sequences that go on just a bit too long.

But Gravity was a mere 91 minutes. No dead weight. No fat to trim. And no audience members checking their watches.

Moral of the story? Constraints aren’t always a bad thing—for creativity or for business. So, studio heads, after you’ve taken a risk on a group of artists you trust to make a small movie that grown-up audiences haven’t seen before—don’t be afraid to make some demands when it comes to the budget and the runtime. It’s good business, and it might result in good movies, too.

Of course, I’ve got no illusions that anyone in Hollywood is reading this, or if they are, that they’d take this advice. In fact, there are probably some studio heads sitting down to a power lunch right now, completely missing the point—and talking about Gravity 2.

Sigh.