Dumbing it down

[lord of dor-lomin]

totally agree, but to me Im able to pretend in most cases that what doesn't happen in the film that SHOULD do, does happen. i.e. I can marry both film and book together whilst watching the film, so when I watch the WK scene, Merry gets the Witch King with the sword that Tom gave him.

Well, that's all fine and dandy for you, but non-readers certainly can't do this. There is no way for non-readers to reconcile the silliness of the WK's death.

First of all I think that the problem with the swords could have been cleared up by Aragorn saying that they were heirlooms of his people and were magic.

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.