October | 2020 | Handy With A Gun…!

Which of the two is more accurate?

This is a question that I’ve seen asked over and over for many years on discussion boards and on Facebook. I used to see the question asked regularly on the IMDb message boards while they were still active. Unfortunately, the discussion never really involves any real logical debate but instead it’s usually just casting a vote for a person’s preference. And of course there is nothing wrong with whatever a person prefers, they’re both good movies with good qualities, but when we present the question and hinge it on the element of accuracy, are we really answering the question?

The first thing that should be understood is that you’re not comparing two movies of the same topic, though at first glance it’s understandable why the comparison is made. This is usually the first mistake when people want to debate this. Tombstone is a movie about the town of Tombstone and the troubles it had from its boom in 1879 to the relative end of the cowboy threat in 1882. Wyatt Earp, on the other hand, is a story about an individual who lived in the Old West and played a key role in several events of that time. So, right off the bat, we have to be clear in understanding that one movie is about a place, a town, a community, and a series of events; while the other is about a man and the study of his life and personal timeline.

Obviously, Wyatt Earp is central to the telling of his own story, so of course it makes sense that he is front and center. Wyatt arrived in Tombstone with his brother Virgil in 1879, and was key in many of the events that transpired there involving the Cowboys and general outlawry. He is a natural key element of that saga, as well, but we have to be discerning and recognize that while the Wyatt Earp movie is about Wyatt Earp, the Tombstone movie is about many people, Wyatt just being one of them. So with the Wyatt Earp movie we need elements pertinent to Wyatt Earp’s life, and in Tombstone the key is to have elements that are pertinent to the town…not necessarily to Wyatt Earp, the man.

One of the common complaints I hear about Tombstone from those who prefer Wyatt Earp is that Tombstone did not feature Warren and James, the other two Earp brothers. And one of the common complaints about the movie Wyatt Earp, from those who prefer Tombstone, is that the Tombstone outlaws, such as Curly Bill and especially Johnny Ringo, hardly get any consideration and are merely background characters. These are certainly legitimate and noticeable absences, but at the same time there is some valid reason for these varying approaches.

In the movie Tombstone, remembering that the movie is not about Wyatt but about the town and the cowboy troubles, Warren and James did not play significant roles. James was present tending bar at Vogan’s bowling alley, but he was not a combatant, and very rarely was ever involved in the heated troubles. Warren was involved a bit towards the latter part of the Earps time in town, and was a part of the vendetta ride, but he wasn’t present for a lot of the troubles, and most significantly he was not in town when the street fight happened.

Then when we look at the movie Wyatt Earp we see that we get healthy doses of both Warren and James, but we don’t get much understanding of Curly Bill and Johnny Ringo and the rest of the Arizona outlaws. We get the gunfight at the OK corral, as it’s called, but yet we don’t get the same background that we do from Tombstone, and to some this is a big disappointment.

When we keep in mind what each movie is trying to focus on, then we can better understand what is brought into focus on the screen, as well as why it’s really a fool’s errand to try to compare accuracy. Looking first at Tombstone, and the issue of being short a couple of brothers, we have to understand that the writer and director have a limited amount of time to present all the important elements that existed. If they were to tell the story of Tombstone and not give the audience a great understanding, and a well-rounded picture of characters like Curly Bill Brocious and Johnny Ringo, then we’d be shortchanged. These fellas were extremely key to everything that happened in Tombstone at that time. The Earp brothers Warren and James, while in town and close with Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan, were not key to the events as they transpired. Essentially, one has to act ask, does the absence of James and Warren compromise the understanding of the Tombstone troubles? Clearly the answer is: it does not. The story can still be told, and understood, without getting into Warren and James’ presence in town.

With Wyatt Earp we have the scope of 80 years centralized on one man’s life. The gunfight at the OK corral is very important in understanding Wyatt Earp, but the involvements of Curly Bill and Johnny Ringo, and their thieving activities, is not as crucial to understanding Wyatt Earp as it is to understanding the town of Tombstone in the early 1880s. I think it would be great if we could have more fleshing out of the Arizona outlaws, but I understand them not being a central focus in a story about Wyatt Earp when family was so important to him. We needed James and Warren in the movie Wyatt Earp more than we did in Tombstone, because in this study of the man we get a better picture of his relationship with his brothers and family, in general.

I use the example of the brothers involvement in Wyatt Earp, and the outlaws involvement in Tombstone to underscore the fact that these movies can’t be compared one-to-one. Wyatt Earp contains so much more time that it will naturally involve many elements that don’t have any place in the movie Tombstone, and the movie Tombstone is such an acute focus on such a short period of time and such a relatively small location, that it naturally would not include elements that are not germane to the story. This principle applies to more than just this sample, but can be used when looking at many of the two movies differences.

Each movie has a lot of great qualities, and any fan of the Old West, and especially of Wyatt Earp and the Tombstone saga, has a lot to enjoy from both movies, but when comparing the two, the comparisons should be based around personal enjoyment and the elicited emotional response; not the accuracy of two things with an inconsistent tether.

Making some sense of the old west