The best summer blockbuster is probably something like Jurassic Park, or Star Wars, or maybe one of the great superhero pictures like Spider-Man 2 or The Dark Knight. Even if you narrow the field down to just 1996 — the crop of blockbusters that came out 30 years ago — the best one is probably Brian De Palma’s first Mission: Impossible, a sleekly crafted and tightly paced star-driven thriller. But if you were to consider the summer blockbuster as a genre unto itself, that’s a whole different ballgame, and 1996’s Independence Day flies into contention.

30 years later, the all-American alien-invasion thriller is as much of a throwback as its inspirations were at the time of release. Though it recalls plenty of then-recent movies, Independence Day mostly hybridizes the big-canvas 1970s disaster movie with the gee-whiz 1950s alien-invasion thriller, following a number of interconnected stories as alien ships loom into our orbit on July 2nd. (The movie takes place over just three days, with its big de facto fireworks display taking place on the titular holiday.) It’s not an ensemble exclusively composed of humble down-to-Earth types, though; we’re pretty quickly dropped into the point of view of President Thomas Whitmore (Bill Pullman), a sort of fantasy version of Bill Clinton who never dodged the draft or got caught in extramarital dalliances. Whitmore’s comms director (Margaret Colin) is the ex-wife of satellite engineer David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum), who decodes the aliens’ “countdown” (and therefore is somehow the only person able to deduce that the ships looming silently over major world cities are poised to attack said cities), and eventually teams up with pilot Steven Hiller (Will Smith) to fly into enemy territory and deliver the world’s counterattack. They’re backed up by a bunch of fighter pilots, and also a crop-dusting drunk (and alleged past alien abductee) played by Randy Quaid.

But then, I’m getting ahead of myself, well into the material that the film’s marketing campaign kept largely hidden until its release. The movie was sold on the images of destruction wrought by those alien ships around the 40-minute mark, specifically of monuments (mostly famously the White House) being blown to smithereens. That it contained an entire second half featuring citizens of Earth figuring out how to fight back doubtless contributed further to its word of mouth. This material may not have been A-grade, but it showcased a rising star in Smith and, perhaps more importantly, overdelivered on the trailers’ promise of widespread destruction.

In the context of great summer movies, it’s easy to point to what Independence Day is not. Despite a few Spielbergian images and camera moves, it doesn’t offer much in the way of awe or craft. (Take a look at Spielberg’s own War of the Worlds from nearly a decade later for a movie that’s scarier, more thought-provoking, and functions as a critique of the earlier film’s rah-rah jingoism in the wake of 9/11.) And despite some aerial dogfights and an imitation Death Star run, it’s not Star Wars in its heedless momentum or mythic weight. Independence Day feels more like an illusion of an epic, with its intersecting storylines, massive spaceships, and occasional matte paintings of global devastation cleverly disguising how many of the characters wind up together in the same handful of rooms — and how most of those characters are Americans, despite the global scope of the attacks.

Indeed, President Whitmore’s famous pre-battle speech explicitly recalibrates the idea of July 4th into a global holiday, to be forever remembered as the day the world came together to fight back against invasion. It’s a touching message of togetherness, sort of. Director Roland Emmerich pays lip service to the various cultures around the world eager to jump into battle, evoking World War II without any pesky human evil in the way, but Whitmore and the movie clearly have an eye on remaking the planet in the image of the United States: disparate but ultimately bonded together by our common humanity and/or anger at the alien cruelty. If this was fantasy in 1996, it plays as nearly unthinkable today. (It’s practically unthinkable within the United States, much less across the world.)

Thematically, anyway; in spirit, Independence Day signaled a major blockbuster strategy for the future. Though later iterations of this type of movie would be sure to include a Chinese actor or setting in a bid for increased global appeal, this film’s call to arms worked on the whole world anyway. The movie was a massive hit in the U.S., to the tune of $300 million domestic, but made even more overseas, totaling over $800 million worldwide. At the time, this was the second-biggest global total ever, after Jurassic Park.

Which brings us back to the idea of the summer movie as a genre. The summer movie season had been big business for over 20 years at this point, but 1996 does feel like a leveling-up point, with Twister effectively moving up the start of the season to early May from Memorial Day, and Independence Day explicitly tying itself to the summer season, becoming a rewatch perennial for decades afterward and a summer-movie ideal for other productions to chase. Future chart-toppers like Men in Black and Armageddon feel specifically influenced by Independence Day’s success, reviving elements like Will Smith fighting aliens or scrappy Americans saving the Earth. But they also share with the film a greater sense that their entire reason for being is to provide summer-season entertainment. (It’s a full 180 from something like Jaws, which is quintessentially summer-y in a way that makes it feel highly specific in the time, place, and themes it evokes, even as it seems to provide the cinematic equivalent of a beach read.)

This arguably reached an apex in 2001, a strike-rushed summer of sequels that in retrospect feel more like Summer Movies than any specific genre: The Mummy Returns, Jurassic Park III, Rush Hour 2. Even quasi-prestige movies like Pearl Harbor or potentially interesting auteur plays like Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes are overtaken by release-date-driven spectacle. Superhero movies would change the calculus shortly thereafter, but the summer-for-its-own-sake genre would live on in movies like Smith’s I, Robot, Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow, and the entire Transformers series.

So compared to a genuine Spielberg movie — like this year’s far more thoughtful and eccentric alien-encounter film Disclosure Day, even named a bit like a counterpart to this one — Independence Day is pretty chintzy. Compared to so many of the movies it inspired, directly or not, Emmerich’s film is a cornball delight: a cinematic stroll through a boardwalk full of cheap but effective games and rides. It gets just enough human feeling from Smith’s movie-star aura, Goldblum’s lovable-nerd shtick, and Pullman’s steadfast movie-president decency to not feel like a purely synthetic exercise, but it’s also not going to haunt anyone’s dreams or nightmares.

Independence Day didn’t invent or perfect the summer movie, but it arguably understood it better than anything since.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.

Stream Independence Day on Disney+