From what I can tell, some people are told by the movie “this character is important to the story,” and they say “okay, then they’re important to me,” and that’s all that needs to happen for them to be invested. Other people, myself included, will be told that the character is important and instead ask “okay, but why should they be important to me?”
A movie that doesn’t convince us to care will never be interesting, no matter how engaging it would be if we just cared for no reason. A lot of old movies didn’t bother getting people engaged because back then just the idea of watching a movie was itself engaging, so it wasn’t necessary to do more than that.
From what I can tell, some people are told by the movie “this character is important to the story,” and they say “okay, then they’re important to me,” and that’s all that needs to happen for them to be invested. Other people, myself included, will be told that the character is important and instead ask “okay, but why should they be important to me?”
A movie that doesn’t convince us to care will never be interesting, no matter how engaging it would be if we just cared for no reason. A lot of old movies didn’t bother getting people engaged because back then just the idea of watching a movie was itself engaging, so it wasn’t necessary to do more than that.