Kurt Russell Vs. Kevin Costner: Who Was The Best Wyatt Earp?

Many years ago, onlookers watched with bated breath as Wyatt Earp marched out to confront ... Wyatt Earp. It was the mid-'90s, and two rival films about the legendary Wild West lawman were vying for the cinemagoer's buck: First up, on Christmas Day 1993, was George P. Cosmatos's "Tombstone," followed six months later by Lawrence Kasdan's "Wyatt Earp." Twin movies were a regular phenomenon in the '90s: You had "Deep Impact" versus "Armageddon," "Dante's Peak" versus "Volcano," and even "Antz" versus "A Bug's Life." But the dueling Westerns had a lot more at stake, because there was a significant beef between the two productions.

Kevin Costner was set to star in "Tombstone" before falling out with screenwriter Kevin Jarre, moving on to develop his own epic biopic of the frontier marshal with Lawrence Kasdan. Rather than let things lie, however, rumors circulated that Costner had tried using his considerable muscle in Hollywood to sabotage the distribution of "Tombstone." Kurt Russell (Costner's replacement as Wyatt Earp) maintains that Costner was one of the good guys, but took umbrage with other individuals. This caused him to take a combative stance against the "Wyatt Earp" film: "F*** you, buddy, I'm gonna take you on full force," Russell recalled thinking at the time.

There could be only one winner, with pride at stake as well as ticket receipts. In the end, Kurt Russell and "Tombstone" prevailed over Kevin Costner and "Wyatt Earp." Russell's concerns over box office competition were unfounded as "Tombstone" made more money from a smaller budget and also received better notices from critics. Since then, it has gone down as one of the best modern Westerns ever made, while "Wyatt Earp" has largely fallen by the wayside. More recently, there has been a fresh wave of affection for "Tombstone" after the sad passing of Val Kilmer, who gave one of the best performances of his career as ailing gunslinger Doc Holliday. But which actor was the best Wyatt Earp? Kurt Russell or Kevin Costner?

Matinee-idol handsome and carrying an old-fashioned sense of decency that keeps us rooting for him even when he's playing a bad guy, Kurt Russell embodies a sense of rugged American individualism that fits stories about the Old West perfectly. Many of Russell's most memorable performances have come in Westerns or movies that are in some way Western-adjacent. Just look at two of his star-making films with John Carpenter: He channeled Clint Eastwood and starred with Lee Van Cleef in "Escape from New York," and certain elements of his character in "Big Trouble in Little China" carried over from its original iteration as an adventure set in the Old West. In more recent years, two of his best performances came with magnificent facial hair in "The Hateful Eight" and "Bone Tomahawk."

Russell brings all the qualities we associate with his screen persona to Wyatt Earp in "Tombstone," not to mention a very impressive mustache that was almost even more over the top. There is some suggestion that the actor actually directed the movie instead of credited filmmaker George P. Cosmatos, but whatever the truth, it certainly feels like a film built in its star's image: Good-looking, dependable, no-nonsense, and carrying out its action beats with surefire efficiency. The real Wyatt Earp was a far more shady character than the romantic screen versions portrayed by Henry Fonda in "My Darling Clementine" and Burt Lancaster in "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral," and "Tombstone" gently touches upon his unsavory aspects. Early on, we see him and his brothers muscle in on the action in Tombstone, and there is an uncomfortably sadistic streak to how Wyatt pursues vengeance in the final act.

Russell doesn't always get to show his full range in movies, but he handles Earp's contradictions with an assured touch in "Tombstone." He also shows a lack of ego that really benefits the film. While he is the top-billed actor, he's happy to play part of a sturdy ensemble including Sam Elliott, Bill Paxton, Powers Booth, Michael Biehn, Thomas Haden Church, and Stephen Lang. Russell is the star, but his Wyatt Earp is the rock that "Tombstone" is built on, typified by how he is regularly upstaged by the scene-stealing Val Kilmer.

Much like Kurt Russell, Kevin Costner's career is largely defined by a strain of Americana, cementing his Hollywood star status with two classic baseball movies ("Bull Durham" and "Field of Dreams") before single-handedly resuscitating the moribund Western genre with "Dances with Wolves." That movie represents the high-point of his career, an epic that won him Academy Awards (Best Picture and Best Director) and his only Oscar nomination for acting. Over the years, he has repeatedly returned to the Western well with varying degrees of success in movies such as "Open Range" and "The Highwaymen," and TV shows like "Hatfields & McCoys" and "Yellowstone."

Coming at the height of his stardom, just before the monumental bombs of "Waterworld" and "The Postman," there is a similar whiff of hubris about "Wyatt Earp." Costner jumped ship on "Tombstone" because he wanted the movie to focus on Earp (i.e., him) rather than a larger roster of characters. His initial idea for "Wyatt Earp" was a six-hour miniseries, which may have been enough to satiate his ego and desire for screen time. Instead, it became a three-hour movie following Earp from his teenage years during the American Civil War to an aging man confronting stories about his frontier legacy. 

"Wyatt Earp" is a prestige film, but it suffers from many of the same faults as Costner's other mythmaking pictures, coming in both overlong and over-earnest. To make matters worse, much of it simply isn't very captivating unless you're an Old West completist. "Tombstone" understands it is re-telling a classic American legend and covers the time-honored tale with greater vitality, whereas even the famous gunfight in Costner's flick lacks the operatic intensity of the earlier movie. As for Costner's performance, he opts for the stoic and noble mode that served him so well in "Dances with Wolves," but it's a rather bland and uninteresting version of the lawman compared to Kurt Russell's two-fisted take. The Razzies thought so, too: Costner won Worst Remake or Sequel (along with Lawrence Kasdan and Jim Wilson) and Worst Actor. I wouldn't say he's that bad, but Russell is the hands-down winner in a shootout between the two Earps. (His mustache is more impressive, too.)