I thought that was a travesty. That chapter was where Merry and Pippin finally came into their own and showed what Free Men could do when they set to it.
The LOTR movies were pretty good at creating the WORLD of Tolkien. They were at best marginal in handling the characters of the story. Jackson didn’t understand the motivations or character of the people in the story. The movies were fun to see, but fell well short of the books.
And Jackson is raping “The Hobbit”...