Who made the decision to "jazz it up"?

Rating: 6/10 (27 October 2017)

It is clear that someone grabbed control of the script. Some producer who made the decision not to go with a slightly jazzier Apollo 13 and allow this film to be halfway believable.
I was ready to give this a solid 8 or 9 stars. Despite the usual needless Hollywood visual embellishments, I was hanging in there, liking the way they were resisting making this film just another special effects exercise. But they couldn't do it, so right in the middle of the film they seem to invent "Rich Parnell". Young kid who comes up with hare-brained maneuver, and somehow gets into the office of the NASA director to make a stupid unrealistic demonstration that no one would put up with even from a legendary mathematician, much less a grunt astrophysicist no one knows. A maneuver that is totally unbelievable because it is preposterous.
After that point, they continued to stretch our credulity until it broke. There were innumerable cases, but the final straw was when they had to honor political correctness and send a wisp of an woman, who had not trained for the maneuver, out on EVA when it would have been clear they needed the strongest man they could find. It's like Hollywood films have the equivalent of a Communist political officer -- "The party wants it this way!"
This kind of crap must sell, but it is sad. I would hope that the people who make this will realize they have relegated their movie to the scrap heap of history. "2001 - A Space Odyssey" is a classic because they didn't overreach. Likewise "Apollo 13". Those are films a director could be proud of. Instead, Ridley Scott will be remembered for laying a turd on the cinematic landscape.