2. Genuinely Menacing Aliens
All too often alien invasion films, especially lately with the twin abominations of Battle: Los Angeles and Battleship still burning brightly, forget that no amount of special effects can atone for a poor villain. Even The Avengers (or Avengers Assemble or whatever we're supposed to call it this week) tagged a third act and some giant flying woodlice on to the end of the film in order to give the superheroes something to punch, without worrying that the audience simply wouldn't care enough about the villains. Those sorts of films forget that recognising a grotesquely human element is key to establishing a villain, and to convincing of their malevolence, but it's not and accusation that can be levelled at Independence Day. The aliens here, with there B-Movie design influences and impressive technology are rampantly evil, sucking planets dry and moving on to their next quarry with reckless abandon (an early outraged ecological message there from Emmerich), and we genuinely despise their intentions as well as their methods. We are supposed to cheer their defeat, and cheer we do, because we hate them enough to be invested in the outcome of the battle. We aren't simply there to marvel at how much money it must have cost to make their ships look "convincing" and biomechnical in a Michael Bay sort of way.