Was wondering while I wrote above if in fact they might have shot a sampling scene then cut it for whatever reason. I cringed when I saw the kid in the spaceman suit scene, then read in your book that the scene was written by Essex and not Bradbury. You can basically go throughout the film and sense which scenes feel, well, tacked on during the re-write.

Also, my kids found it so strange that the spaceship crashed twice, and shook their collective heads as I vainly tried to explain how much this was a device to get the audience into the film, and literally two crashes.