As a general rule, the author is the party who actually creates the work, that is, the person who translates an idea into a fixed, tangible expression entitled to copyright protection

Yes that’s a thing directors do. They do the translation between script and image, anything cinematography in a movie is due to them.

Taking the judges’ reasoning to an extreme you’d expect them to rule that if I dictate a book to someone who then writes it down I do not own copyright because I did not give the work its tangible expression.

Whose lawyers was he up against? Disney?