Today is the 25th anniversary of the commercial debut of Tim Burton‘s Batman (i.e., 6.23.89). I remember paying to see it at Mann’s Chinese on that very day, and staring at a very cool-looking Batman silhouette that had been projected onto the red curtains before the show started. Variety‘s Matthew Chernov has posted a piece called “9 Ways Tim Burton’s Batman Changed Superhero Movies Forever.” The innovations he lists are fine, but he doesn’t mention the skyscraper swan dive. Before Batman no superhero had ever jumped off the roof of a skyscraper and plummeted 50 or 60 stories before not going splat on the sidewalk. Not because it made any fucking sense but because it gave viewers a killer adrenaline rush. Since then building dives have become a pestilence. 25 years later and they still haven’t gone away, the latest being Mila Kunis‘s terrifying backward plunge into nothingness in Lana and Andy Wachowski‘s Jupiter Ascending.