Star Trek - the Ebert version

ps - What is it with Ebert?

"The logic is also a little puzzling when Scotty can beam people into another ship in outer space, but they have to physically parachute to land on a platform in the air from which the Romulans are drilling a hole to the Earth’s core."

Didn't he pay attention? A) Scotty hadn't figured out how to do that yet - in fact, he wasn't even there yet, and B) while the drill was operating no one could transport anywhere. That was like a major plot point, and a set-up for the end.

And then there's this:

Young Spock is deliberately taunted in hopes he will, as a Vulcan, betray emotion. Because Zachary Quinto plays him as a bit of a self-righteous prig, it’s satisfying to see him lose it. ....Chris Pine, as James Tiberius Kirk, appears first as a hot-rodding rebel who has found a Corvette in the 23rd century and drives it into the Grand Canyon. A few years after he’s put on suspension by the Academy and smuggled on board the Enterprise by Bones McCoy Karl Urban), he becomes the ship’s captain.

Ummm. No. Again, wasn't he paying attention? In order: Quinto wasn't the "young Spock" - that was Jacob Kogan. It wasn't Pine playing the Kirk who deliberately destroyed his step-father's car - and if people can have classic cars now, why not in the 23rd century? - that was Jimmy Bennet. And he becomes the ship's captain probably only days after being put on suspension. That was years after he crashed the car, but that's not what Ebert wrote.

He also complains about warp drive:

This method of transportation prevents any sense of wonder at the immensity of outer space and is a convenience not only for the starship but also for the screenwriters, who can push a button and zap to the next scene. The concept of using warp speed to escape the clutches of a black hole seems like a recycling of the ancient dilemma of the rock and the hard place. [Whatever that's supposed to mean, I add.] ... Consider, at light warp speeds, how imprecise it would be to say “At my command ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...” Between “2” and “1,” you could jump a million galaxies.

Look, light travels about 300,000 km/sec, which is around 186,411 miles. That's pretty fast, but not by galactic standards. In that 1 second, even at 10 times the speed of light, you'd go 2 million miles. Even at a thousand times the speed of light, that's 200 million miles. That's not "a million galaxies" by any stretch of the imagination - our galaxy is around 100,000 light-years in diameter, and one light-year is around 5,878,630,000,000 miles. Space is, as the Hitchhiker's Guide says, mind-boggingly big. Bigger than Ebert realizes. Too big to do stories in without that "convenience"...

But the worst thing is this:

Eric Bana’s Nero destroys whole planets on the basis of faulty intelligence, but the character is played straight and is effective.

No, no, and hell no. Nero destroys whole planets to prevent something from happening which hasn't happened yet; just because Pike tells him that he's in error, that Romulus hasn't been destroyed, doesn't mean that Nero actually is. And this was like the whole driver of the plot.

There's a reason I don't read him until after I've seen a movie!