Some macOS apps are not launching in full-screen mode

Solution 1:

VLC has its own fullscreen structure; which means you can have the playlist windowed or fullscreen as you wish, then the movie fullscreened, either by re-using the same Space, or by invoking the Mac's native fullscreen structure, as you desire.

Prefs cover all eventualities/combinations…

VLC also has no capability to follow the Mac's "Close windows when quitting an app" pref. It always opens just the playlist window & never saves/reloads previous files automatically.

[Almost] all prefs changes in VLC require you to relaunch the app to take effect.

Zoom, I've never used.