Firstly: I agree.
Secondly, it should be noted that, in a later scene, Spock tells him exactly the same thing, albeit in a more Spock-like style, using logic.
Both scenes do the impossible: they make what is basically expository dialogue sound completely natural, as if they were real conversations. Important to the story? Yes. Important to the theme of the story? Yes, even more. Advances the plot? Yes. But somehow, they are even more brilliant because both scenes feel so unforced, so natural.
The Bones scene in particular is that way. I think Urban is a fine choice for the nuBones, but there is something wrong, either with his performance or the writing.. but with no scenes like the fireplace scene to go on, it's hard to say, but what made Kelly's Bones so great was that he never seemed to be forcing anything. He really seemed to be Bones. He never seemed to be acting like Bones. He made acting seem effortless.
I would also argue that, for a good portion of TWOK, we never actually see Kirk. At all. We see a middle-aged man with that name. But we don't see the hero, the innovator, the person that we all looked up to. Even as he took command to look into a communication glitch on Regula One, that wasn't Kirk: it was a guy giving standard orders.
Kirk doesn't appear in this film until the moment the guy named Kirk sees Khan on the view screen. From that point on, he is the hero we always knew, someone who can turn a dour situation into a hopeful one, someone who would never give up.
That's the point of the film, I think.
