Dumbing it down

[alatar]

Originally Posted by lord of dor-lomin

Yes! Thank you! It was a problem that could've been fixed. Someone could've said (Elrond, Gandalf, Galadriel, or Aragorn) when looking at the blade, "Hey, this blade was forged specifically to kill the WK". I know that seems like dumbing it down, but Tolkien was very clear on this point. When Merry stabbed TWK Tolkien specifically said that no other blade in the world, though wielded by a mighty warrior, could have hurt TWK so bad- so making it obvious would not have dumbed the movie down.

When Aragorn gives the hobbits their swords, it looks like he found them somewhere (in a junk pile) and hands them over, like, "here, these are better than sticks."

The boy's (Haleth?) sword at Helm's Deep gets more attention and scrutiny.

And why did PJ have Merry's blade wither? Was this to show that something important happened? I don't think that Eowyn's blade suffered so.