“Oh. I always thought they were balls of gas burning billions of miles away.”

How does Disney create the idea that Simba’s animism (the stars are spirits of the dead) is the right astronomical view?

Timon and Pumbaa laugh his notion off, and yet every movie watcher walks out of the theater happy that Simba believed his dad and the subsequent delusional interpretation of one bright night’s dynamic weather.

It all starts with Pumbaa’s error.

Imagine with me if the writer had an ounce of astronomy training.

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Pumbaa: Hey, Timon, ever wonder what those sparkly dots are up there?

Timon: Pumbaa, I don’t wonder; I know.

Pumbaa: Oh. What are they?

Timon: They’re fireflies. Fireflies that, uh… got stuck up on that big bluish-black thing.

Pumbaa: Oh, gee. I always thought, when their light was analyzed with prisms, they were determined to be ever-changing balls of the very same elements that make up our world, acting, in fact, under the same forces and for the same reasons which carry both the sound of my voice to you but not much farther and the heat of this desert sand to our feet but not up our legs—but were like really far away and surrounded by LOTS of empty space.

****

Can you even imagine the ludicrous family tradition of past kings looking down following such a silly guess by the warthog?

No, no you cannot.

It’s not merely a killjoy, either. Plenty of ways to make the movie still work. Mufasa can talk about how his tribe had overcome great difficulties and that it took ridding themselves of envy and sabotage—and learning from whoever had something obviously better to contribute. And then Simba can simply remember this confirmable truth after a rebellious and disastrous few years of life with the poor—I mean—the wild animals.