A BIG problem with leaving out Bombadil...

Okay, I hope this isn't something somebody's already mentioned - I'll bet one of you has noticed this already.

Now, Bombadil was the one who first armed the hobbits at the Barrow-downs... cut Bombadil, and you've effectively cut the Barrow-downs, unless you find some extraordinarily clever way around this technicality that would probably piss off us devoted fans anyway who want to see as little change from the original as possible.

But then what of this passage from V.6 "The Battle of the Pelennor Fields" (p.141 in the Unwin paperback of RotK)?

"So passed the sword of the Barrow-downs, work of Westernesse. But glad would he have been to know its fate who wrought it slowly long ago in the North-kingdom when the Dunedain were young, and chief among their foes was the dread realm of Angmar and its sorcerer king. No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will."

So logically, if you cut Bombadil, then doesn't that nullify Merry's role in assisting Eowyn with the slaying of the Witch-King?

Of course, in the current 3-min teaser, in the shot at Weathertop, you see all the hobbits armed... but where do you get the blades from? How will they be armed, if Bombadil isn't around?