People forget how well this film was received originally

Rating: 10/10 (2 August 2016)

And most people rating it today were maybe not even born when it came out. Different Generations see films differently. But I saw it weeks after it came out, and the Theatre was still filled to maximum on a weekday Matinée. I stayed in the Theatre and watched it a second time. I've watched this film many times since then and the magic is still there, especially in the extended cut. As with the new ID4 film, my favorite character was Dr Brackish Okun (Named after Special Effects man Jeffery Okun) played by Star Trek: Next Generation's Brent Spiner.
Emmerich and Devlin should have used this film as a template when making their sequel, it seems they had forgotten how to tell this story. The fast pace, multiple character stories, and wry humor kept you glued to it. Randy Quaid's "Russel Casse" basically stole the film just like Brent Spiner did with the second one. What works is the flawed characters, both of these people, Casse and Okun, have serious social character flaws but they both rise above their perceived Geekness to become heroes.
But what made this film great was the way they Composited practical special effects with the primitive Apple CGI of the time. When they showed the Alien Mothership and the 13-mile wide invasion ships, they looked not only big, but real. The Pyrotechnics were all filmed with real models of the cities that were being destroyed, upside down, so the Alien Weapons aftermath do not follow the laws of physics.
Another thing that was not done in the new version, but was exploited here, was the use of an Apple Laptop as mankind's best weapon against an alien invasion. In the new time-line generated by this story, we have to assume the Apple Cupertino plant was destroyed, and there never were any IMacs, IPhones, or even modern day tablets and smartphones. Instead, advances in computing and Aerodynamics were affected by the infusion of Alien Tech. So the world depicted in ID4: Insurgence was not the familiar landscape we see here, which was totally destroyed.
That probably made it difficult to insert modern day products into that story, as none existed. The Only thing we see there, was QQ taking over global communications due to by the void of ATT being gone.
Emmerich and Devlin created an invasion story of special magnificence, something so large we could not have imagined it until we saw it here. 1953's "War of the Worlds" came close, but we never saw the level of destruction that is shown here as three major US cites are totally eradicated, blown to smithereens, vaporized, gutted and otherwise obliterated.
It seems they tried to make the Alien Invasion force in "Resurgence" even bigger than what we see here, and it does not work at all. But the nature of the invaders was explored more in the sequel. This installment gives us a first look.
But mostly the interaction between Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith is clever, even the relationship between Goldblum and his "father" Judd Hirsh (From "Taxi") which is just like so many of us in our relationships with our fathers. Especially with Russel Casse and the love of his kids, despite his alcoholism. And President Whitmore and his daughter, Captain Steven Hiller and his Fiancé Vivica A Fox and her son. So this film explores how family dynamics would be affected in such a scenario. That aspect is severely lacking in the new sequel.
Mainly it's a story about heroism, not Jingoism. Nobody waves any one flag, it's the whole world united, Israel and Palestine working and fighting together for a common cause. Which is the world we all would like to see eventually. Here it takes an Alien Invasion to bring people together. Hopefully that won't be the case. Ironically, the world was closer to that goal when this film came out than it is today.