i feel like when i was younger i exclusively did the first thing, just relate to the main character. but now it’s more fascinating to zoom out more.
ex I’m watching Black Swan atm and instead of being like oh dancing is hard the teacher wants to fuck me etc, I’m thinking about like, that’s a lot of effort just to do ballet, which the opening 5 minutes establishes is a completely irrelevant art form
I have the same experience as your observation, i.e., when I was younger I primarily just empathized with the main character and never went deeper. And now I can do both.
Where I’m at currently, I still primarily empathize with the main character, especially on first watches. Although, I may be taken out of it by a really cool shot, or if I discover something important about the writing that takes my thoughts in that direction.
It is on subsequent watches, when I already know what is going to happen to the characters on the surface level, that i start to think about why the movie is written this way, like a step deeper. That’s when I will begin to think about the big picture things.