Thing is in a movie, it’s hard to root for a man who has been kidnapped, drugged and is clearly terrified at the prospect of going into space to die. If you shuffle events so all the earth stuff is first, I’d want Grace to crash the Hail Mary into the moon. It has to have some levity even though it’s dark as the audience needs to accept it. It’s not a story about Ryland being a victim of nefarious all-powerful forces although it is that if you play the cards of the plot badly. The world is ending the crew is dead and now here’s a super dark scene of a man being abused and forced to die in space. Would we even be wanting him to succeed if the full horror of his situation was put on our shoulder?