Will Smith encounters alien life in this Scientologist origin story from 1996.

Roland Emmerich’s alien-invasion blockbuster has all the spectacle, subtlety and American flags one expects from the Master of Disaster, in a movie so bombastic and insincere it makes The Day After Tomorrow look like a documentary. This means the irony of alien colonisers killing Americans to take Earth’s natural resources goes unexamined by a film whose main mission is getting the world to acknowledge an American holiday. But if you want to see Will Smith punch an alien in the face while yelling, “Welcome to Earth!”, then look no further or deeper than Independence Day.

Emmerich serves his paranoid, patriotic popcorn with an extra portion of ’90s extraterrestrial weirdness (see also Men in Black), and the CGI still looks great after 30 years. There are enjoyable performances from Jeff Goldblum, Brent Spiner and Bill Pullman as the heroic president you only seem to get in ’90s action movies (see also Air Force One). The only comparison you could feasibly draw between him and Trump is that we see him in bed with his own daughter (Mae Whitman).

The film is overblown and overcrowded (the trailer park family have nothing to do), but is consistently stimulating thanks to Star Wars-inspired intergalactic dog-fights, near-constant explosions, and actual dogs jumping clear of explosions. The result is unashamedly silly but smart enough to quote Airplane! and Some Like it Hot, and while ultimately disposable, Independence Day is Air Force Fun from start to finish.